Mid-February Blues

Our weather this time of year can keep you locked up inside and pushes cabin fever to starting to settle in. The shorter days have us leaving for work in the dark and returning home after dark. Even with our great weather thru much of this winter it still begins to take a grip every year about the same time. Not to worry we are only two weeks away from March and it will soon be time for shed hunting, stealhead fishing, and scouting for the spring gobblers! We will normally try for the stealhead as soon as most of the ice has pulled back and the sheds are already being found in limited numbers.

Our bucks are slowly giving up their antlers and my guess would be that the last single digit cold snap probably helped to hurry some of them along. We have been finishing the clear cut for 2016 and also clearing some of the larger hardwoods back from the “orchard” around the Condo. The tops are left overnight and the deer take full advantage of the available fresh browse. The brush piles that are created from this thinning will add greatly to the available ground cover for rabbits, mice, snakes and even some nesting birds. A lot of different wildlife benefits from our habitat improvement designed for our whitetails. All of these changes make it so much more exciting once spring has arrived here in NE Ohio!