A deer hunter in Kansas had one in all his path cameras go lacking in early November. He ended up discovering it final weekend in one of many strangest locations conceivable: tangled across the antlers of a whitetail buck. The hunter acquired his digital camera again, however solely after he shot the eight-point shutterbug.
Jake Mitchell, a 22-year-old farmer and rancher, says the property the place he grows crops and runs cattle in southwest Kansas is typical for that a part of the nation. It’s wide-open and windswept, with nary a tree in sight. And since he doesn’t have any blinds or feeders arrange on the property, he says the very best (and actually the one) place to hold a path digital camera is on a fence put up.
Spoiler alert: Mitchell explains that since there are not any timber for them to work, the native bucks additionally have a tendency to make use of these fence posts as scrapes.
“I had 4 cameras up this season, they usually have been strung alongside a mile stretch on the northern fringe of one in all our fields,” Mitchell tells Outside Life. “The deer come out of the sandhills into us due to the farm floor. They prefer to feed on the market on the milo stalks and the wheat. So, I attempt to catch them once they’re coming by to feed.”
Mitchell makes use of conventional path cameras, and when he went out to tug SD playing cards on Nov. 7, he seen that one in all his 4 cameras had disappeared. He additionally noticed that the fence put up it was on was busted, however he simply figured someone will need to have seen the digital camera and brought it.
4 weeks handed, and Mitchell had just about forgotten in regards to the lacking path digital camera by the point his cousin got here out for a pheasant hunt on Dec. 3. Mitchell had noticed a monster muley buck the night time earlier than, and he nonetheless had a landowner tag, so that they had shotguns and rifles with them within the pickup. They stopped at a vantage level to glass that morning and noticed a good buck with an irregular rack a pair thousand yards away.
“He was simply sitting on the market within the CRP discipline on the neighbor’s land. I didn’t actually suppose something of it as a result of he was thus far out that you just couldn’t actually inform what was on his antlers. I believed possibly it was a deadhead, or one other antler that he caught from a battle.”
After pheasant searching all afternoon, Mitchell and his cousin returned to the identical spot round 4:30 p.m. they usually noticed the identical buck once more. This time, the deer was a lot nearer, and when Mitchell seemed by his recognizing scope, he was fairly positive he might see a path digital camera dangling from one in all its antlers.
“I gave my recognizing scope to my cousin and he’s like, “By God, that’s the digital camera!’” Mitchell says. “So it was on from there.”
Decided to get his digital camera again, Mitchell dropped down right into a draw and acquired inside 80 yards of the buck. He didn’t have an excellent taking pictures lane—the buck’s physique was lined up by milo stalks—however he pulled the set off anyhow and the bullet related. The shot hit a bit farther again than he would have appreciated, however the buck expired after a 200-yard dash, and Mitchell walked as much as discover his path digital camera wrapped up round its proper foremost beam.
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He says the digital camera was busted and the SD card was gone, so he didn’t get any images documenting its unusual, circuitous journey. However when he known as his neighbor on the cellphone to clarify what occurred, the neighbor instructed him he was properly conscious of the digital camera thief and had picture proof on his personal path cameras.
“The neighbor was guffawing about it. He mentioned, ‘We simply noticed him on digital camera with a digital camera, and we have been like: Who’s is that and the place the hell did he choose it up?’”
