He spreads corn in the yard in front of the farmhouse — a task that Alana gets quite upset about if she finds out that he has tackled it without her:

Bob took me along with him on Saturday as he went to spread corn in a few other places on the property:

He tossed out some corn, then sat back down on his 4-wheeler, and, within 30 seconds, there were deer converging on the spot:

And, that was just the beginning. Those deers hung out as long as we did:

As we headed over to another spot, a young buck passed us on a lower trail going in the opposite direction. We stopped…and so did he!

At another spot, we found a doe and a spike who were starting to fill in their winter coats (I assume):

On Sunday, I went for a quick ride to do some exploring and stopped to take some pictures of the woods. I heard a rustling and turned around to find this guy watching me from behind a tree:

This post covered maybe half of the good shots I got of deer on the trip. I didn’t pull off any shots of the whole herd eating the corn in the front yard (that Alana is spreading in the first picture above), but I will at some point!

The foliage was pretty great on this last trip. Benton and I took the 4-wheeler for a drive and went up to “The High Point,” which is a grassy knob that is the highest point on the property. From there, you can look out and see a good chunk of the property and where different things are in relation to each other. And the foliage was spectacular.

Looking back towards the hunting cabin, where Benton and I spent Saturday night so we could watch the Texas-Texas Tech football game (the cabin is the little red building near the middle of the photo):

Looking over towards the farmhouse and the barn. The barn has a new green metal roof, and the farmhouse is white — they’re to the right-middle of the picture:

While we were driving around on the 4-wheeler, we saw a half-dozen groups of deer, including a few that were below us on the high point:

And, the next morning, as we walked back to the farmhouse from the hunting cabin, we walked down in the woods rather than on the gravel road that runs between them. There were a half-dozen deer up on the road, while we were down in the woods, so the normal perspective was reversed:

And, finally, we walked down to the river — not shown in any of the photos above — on Saturday. There’s a little cut/gravel bar along the river that I always like to walk out on and take a few photos from looking upstream. It’s amazing how the picture always looks different. Three main variables that cause that: the time of day, the time of year, and the weather. This was a fall afternoon on a sunny day:

Benton decided before we even got to the farm on this trip that he wanted to try to make a small raft, light a fire on it, and push it out into the water. It took some doing, but we were successful! That’s a topic for another post, though.

On the second night at the farm, Tim and Benton headed up to the cabin to sleep. Benton really wanted to walk back to the farm house in the morning, a 10-15 minute walk. So, on Monday morning they ventured out from the cabin, taking a path through the woods rather than along the road. On their walk, they found another hidden fawn. After getting packed up to head back home, we drove up to the woods and ventured down to find the fawn. He was still sleeping soundly, motionless in the leaves.

I cannot say the same for my children on the 3-and-a-half hour trip back to our house, but there is a lot to be said for 5-point-harness type car seats and seatbelts to help keep them in the same spot, although far from motionless.

Alana…is wildly into jigsaw and similar-type puzzles these days. Her favorites are: a puzzle of the U.S. with each piece being a state, a Winnie the Pooh (and friends) jigsaw puzzle, and “the silverware puzzle.” This last is what she calls the silverware basket in the dishwasher. She jumps up and down with excitement when she sees that the silverware puzzle is ready. We pull the silverware drawer out, bring her stool over, set the basket on the counter, and she sets to work “solving” the puzzle. Entertaining and helpful!

Carson…is heavy into doing “research” on the U.S. presidents. This started as a discussion on our outing two weekends ago. As you might expect from Carson, he first wanted me to tell him about “all the Presidents who got shot.” But, we expanded it to a routine where we’re starting with George Washington and printing out the Wikipedia entry for each President and reading through it. Carson has a log where he writes the President’s name, which number President he was, when he was born and died, when he took and left office, and “interesting notes.” For George Washington, he noted that George and Martha were both 27 when they married, and that George fought the British. We’ve only made it to John Adams so far, but he is very excited about the exercise (and I’m certainly learning a thing or two!).

Benton…loves to make buckeyes. Mix up peanut butter, powdered sugar, and some other ingredients and roll them into 1/2″ balls. Then, dip them most of the way into a chocolate/paraffin mixture. The result is a Reese’s-like treat that really does look like a buckeye. I think we’ve made them three times since we moved.

The Buck…in our backyard has been spotted again after several weeks with no sitings. The last time we saw him, he was limping fairly severely, so we were afraid that the local coyote or something else might have ended his existence. But, Carson, Thomas Schinabeck (Carson’s second-cousin), and I went on an impromptu hike behind our house last Saturday, and we saw the buck just as we were returning to the house.

Carson, of course, identified the barn owl just by looking at it (“I recognized it because of the heart shape on its face”) and the red-tailed hawks. And, he spent a good amount of time studying each one. We then moved on to what looked like a hiking trail that led off behind the buildings. It has not been highly used or maintained, but it had signs at various spots explaining the different types of trees and flora in the area, which Carson was interested in stopping and reading. And, of course, anything that looked climbable really held his attention!

We found a side trail that went down 50-80 feet to the water’s edge. I’m not entirely sure what the body of water was — part of the Scioto river, part of some reservoir? I simply don’t know. But, it was frozen and 1/4- to 1/2-inch thick (the temperature was in the high teens). I gave carson a stick to explore it with, and he proceeded to break through the ice for a good 30′ stretch of shoreline. He also occasionally “posed” for a picture that might get both of us in trouble when later viewed by his mother:

We also discovered that, if we throw a stick out on the ice, it would skitter along for a good, long distance (even to the other shore), which was pretty fascinating for a couple of warm weather natives! We agreed that we will be going back for further exploration!

Yessir. Black oil sunflower seed. That’ll bring the birds to your yard.”

So, the two men loaded up a 20-lb. bag and returned to the son’s new house. The previous owners had left a freestanding birdfeeder in the backyard, and the son’s middle child was quickly turning into an avid avian-watcher in his own right, following in the footsteps of his paternal grandparents.

It took only a couple of weeks for the 20-lb. bag to disappear. The last of the sunflower seed had been loaded into the feeder, and the son had made a mental note that he needed to get some more.

The feeder had attracted its share of birds, certainly, and also quite a few squirrels. “Wildlife is wildlife,” the son and his family concluded, so there was no point in trying to discriminate as to whom was fed and how.

A couple of days later, in the middle of the day, when only the son, his wife, and their daughter were at home, their eldest dog noticed a strange bird indeed at the feeder.

Strange bird, indeed! By golly, they had attracted an 8-pointed Deerbird! And it was BIG!

The son headed out that evening to buy a 40-lb. bag of black oil sunflower seed. And, he made plans to build a deerbird feeder in the near term as well, as he had heard that deerbirds, especially the 8-pointed variety, prefer corn.