Lots Of Fallow Deer On The Trail Camera

Last week I blogged about finding the track that has been made by the deer. I put my camera in a clearing where I had found lots of droppings and put down some apples as bait. I finished school yesterday at lunch time and as soon as I got home from school went out to go and get the SD card. I got some amazing footage of a large Fallow deer buck and a small Fallow buck (with no antlers yet).

I was pleased to get the buck in the daytime because last week I got him but it was dark and the video was not very clear. His antlers are quite large (about 50cm). I also got another Fallow buck a few minutes after, but this one was a very small one (a yearling, with no antlers yet), he did a bit of jumping around and it was great to see. 

I also got another buck with similar size antlers to the first one, another buck with small antlers (about 10cm), two Roe deer and a fox. It seemed like a good move to put my camera here because in five days I managed to get 35 videos. 

Muntjac Buck And A New Deer Wood

last week I got a Muntjac buck on my camera but unfortunately because a squirrel had knocked the camera I only got the tap part of the head. fortunately this week the camera wasn't moved and a got a great video of probably the same deer. 

I also got the usual two Roe deer.

Whilst out checking my camera this morning I noticed a track that lead into some woods. It didnt look man-made because it wasnt that well used but was a very obvious track and it was definitely made by some kind of animal.  The reason it was so obvious was because itpractically  went straight through a bramble bush, into a very deep pine plantation. 

Once inside it was a very obvious track and was clearly used lots by the deer. It had lots of junctions leading to lots of other tracks and it was amazing that all these tracks were made entirely by the deer. 

We came across a clearing that was very large and was probably where the deer spent lots of their time (although they are almost always on the move). The trees near it were chewed and there were lots of deer droppings. 

There was a great water source for the deer to drink because there was a small, natural stream going straight through the middle. 

I will try and set my trail camera up there tomorrow  but the only problem is that I might not find it again because there were so many different tracks leading off into all directions. 

Fallow and Muntjac buck on the Trail Cam

this week I got some footage of a very large Fallow Buck and a Muntjac Buck (A new species for my cameras as have never got them before). Unfortunately earlier that week a squirrel had knocked my camera so it was pointing at the trees so I only got the top of the deers' bodies.

Although it is not a great video because it cuts his feet off and it is in black and white, I am very pleased with the size of those antlers and hope to get some good daytime images of him in the not so distant future. I would estimate that those antlers are about 50cm long each and he is probably about 4-5 years old. 

I also got a Muntjac deer buck but unfortunately you can only see the top of his head. I have left the camera there for another week (but aimed it down this time) so hopefully they will come back and I can get some good footage. 

   

Lots Of Roe Deer On Trail Cam

Last week I moved my trail camera to a spot where my mum had seen two Roe deer last week. It was quite close to a cycle trail so I had to be careful to hide it so that it wasn't seen. I found a well used deer track, and walked along it until I found an opening where there was an obvious amount of Roe deer droppings as well as footprints and placed my camera on a pine tree. I dropped some apples as bait and left it for a week.

When I went to check it yesterday (Saturday) I was pleased to see that all the bait was gone. I checked and I got a family of 3 Roe deer (2 Does' and 1 button Buck), they obviously used the track often because I got them about 5 times over the week.

I managed the blend the photo of me, and the photo of a Roe deer together in the same place to work out the scale. 

I also got a Fox, a lot of Squirrels and a Rabbit.
 

Fallow Deer On My Trail Cam

Two weeks ago I moved my Trail Camera further out into the forest in a hope that I would find some Fallow deer out there. unfortunately last week I only managed to get 3 days of videos because the battery ran out three days into the week (I only go and check the camera every weekend because it is dark when I get home from school now). But this week I got plenty of footage. I got a Fallow buck with small antlers and a family of Fallow does. I used an Apple for bait and that is why he is foaming at the mouth in the second video.

the Buck stayed there for 7 minutes at 17.00 and then came back at 20.00 and then came back again at 23.00. 

 

then the next morning two does came to the camera. I am very pleased with these videos as before now I have only ever got Fallow deer on my camera once. hopefully next week I will get some videos in Colour.

Watching the Red deer rut

Last Monday me and my family went to watch the deer rut in Richmond park, London. As soon as we entered the park we could see a huge herd or around 20-30 Red deer along with 2 Fallow deer. 

The deer are very used to humans so they will let you get to about 10 metres away from them, but it is not recomended to walk up to them as they are such big animals and they could easily kill a person if they wanted to. 

On the first day we saw a few Red deer rutting, it was amazing how close the let me get to them to take photos. The following photo of them rutting was the only one that came out well, but it looked better in black and white so I did some editing. 

After it started to get dark we headed back to the car. Annoyingly, the gate was closed so we had to climb over it. 

That night we stayed in a premier in about 5 minutes away from the park. The next day we didnt see many of the deer rutting but we did see loads of the deer just sitting around chewing the cud. I got loads of photos, but unfortunately they were also all blurry. The following photo is my favorite. 

We also got some pictures of the ducks and geese.

 

Two Roe Deer

Last week I got some really clear footage of two Roe deer. I think that they are probably this years fawns. The first one is obviously a male due to the fact that you can see small stubs or antlers, the second looks like a female but could maybe be a younger male.

Their mother is probably nearby because it is uncommon for a male and a female to walk around together unless they are still with their mother.
If they are both this years fawns from the same mother then they have done well because it is not common for both fawns to survive in Roe deer because the mother struggles to feed both of them.

My Trail Cameras (Part 2)

A few weeks ago I wrote about my two camera traps and I thought that I would write another post as I have caught a lot of footage in it in the last few weeks, Including Badgers, Deer, Foxes and Pheasants.

I recently moved both of my cameras to a wood that is on the other side of one of our fields and that we do not actually own. I didn't expect to find much on the first day because I hadn't placed any bait in front of the camera. The next day when I checked I was surprised to find a video of a mother Roe deer and her two fawns and two badgers.

                                     

Bait:

My favourite type of bait for badgers is apples as they absolutely love them if you squish them with your boot, (I was told that the best bait for badgers was peanuts but I find this attracts mice and birds and it can be annoying when I get 300 videos of the same mouse in 1 night).



My favourite type of bait for foxes is peanut butter as they absolutely love it, I smother it on a branch or twig and they will stay there for a long time eating it.

My deer don't really have a favourite bait but if I put out some hay and apples then they can smell it from a long distance but for some reason they don't tend to eat it.

The Badger Cull

As many of you will know the badger cull has recently restarted in Gloucester and Somerset. They are estimated to kill over 1,000 badgers in an effort to tackle the disease bTB (Bovine Tuberculosis) in cattle, which caused 26,000 cows to be slaughtered in England last year! 

It is though, that the cull is not scientifically proven to reduce the spread of the disease so could mean that 1,000 badgers are killed for no reason, this upsets me a lot. 

Badgers are often blamed for the spread but almost any plant eating mammals transmit too (EG. Deer, Sheep and Pigs). The reason that badgers are blamed though, is due to the fact that they are found to cross graze with cattle. The infected badgers dig for earthworms in the cows field and spread the disease on to the grass, the cattle will then eat this grass and catch the disease, later this is then spread to the whole herd, eventually causing the whole lot to be slaughtered. 

It is estimated that the cull will cost £1,000 pounds for every badger killed (Meaning that the whole cull will cost £1.2m of the tax payers money), whereas it only costs £850 for the badgers to be cage trapped and given a vaccination. 

Last year out of the 600 badgers shot only a handful of them were infected with bTB, and 50% of them took longer than five minutes to die, quite inhumane in my view!

If you are interested in helping the badger cull then you can sign a petition at: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/stop-the-badger-cull

Two Fallow Fawns

Today was a great discovery... We discovered a new breed of deer (Fallow deer), we did not even realise that they lived in bedgebury forest as we have only ever seen roe deer.

 

 

The Christmas Bunny

I found this rabbit skull whilst out walking with my dad on christmas day, the whole body was perfectly decomposed, which is rare because normally it is eaten by foxes before it has time to rot. 

Mother And Baby Roe Deer

Yesterday I checked my camera trap and saw two lovely roe deer fawns and their mother, I was over the moon. Its hard to tell whether the fawns are male or female yet as they have not started to grow their antlers yet. Tomorrow is back to school so I won't be posting much, but I will try and post at least once a week.

 

My Trail Cameras (Part 1)

Today I am writing about my trail cams. I have two trail cams that are both made by Bushnell. 

1) This is my original camera that I got 2 years ago, and it is called a Bushnell trophy cam 2012. Unfortunately it was smashed a few weeks ago by my mums horse so I had to buy a new one (#2) Below is a picture of it: 

2) This is my new camera trap and it is called a Bushnell trophy cam HD 2014. Below is a picture of it: 

My trail cam gallery:

Brock the badger

This is Brock, he is a young adult badger that was unfortunatly hit by a car up the lane from my house in March. Me and Dad walked up the road in the dark with a wheelbarrow to go and pick him up. We lifted him up and placed him into the wheelbarrow (he was quite heavy). We then headed back. I had already dug a hole to burry him in (I now know that it would have been better to leave the body above ground because it would have made it easier to find the bones later on).

5 months later...

In July I thought that the badgers body may have rotted down by now (but I was wrong). I walked down to where we had burried it with a spade, I started diggiing and suddenly it started to smell really bad. The body had still not rotted down properly.

Getting the skull...

I prodded around the grave a little bit until I saw the head (it still had lumps of fat and soft tissue still attached to it), I lifted it up and it looked horrible.

Cleaning the skull...

To clean the skull and to get rid of all the fat and soft tissue I placed the skull into a bucket of boiling water and left it over night, I then did this a few times and it worked. Unfortunatly all the teeth had fallen out (I had to glue them back in the next day).

I now have brock in pride of place on the Window sill and I hope to have more skulls to live next to him in the future.