The deer rut begins with first snow

 

Nice whitetail makes the first scrape on our property

We had escaped the first snowfalls of the season until last night when we got about an inch of the white stuff. That was enough to set off the whitetail rut. This nice eight-pointer made his scrape right in front of my trail camera.

The deer population took a shellacking in these parts from last spring's deep snowfalls, so much so that I wondered if any had survived. I couldn't find a track on our land for days when we returned to Nolalu from Red Lake. 

Today's tracking snow and the photo above showed there are still some around.