Here's a story some here might appreciate - my wife didn't quite understand why I was upset. Yesterday I left work early so I could spend the evening in a treestand behind our house. My father-in-law was coming over to spend the day with my wife and kids and when I pull in he was walking with my dog behind my house. Not a huge deal, but somewhat irritating since a doe group often beds by my house and this time of year the bucks occasionally come through. Initially I was happy that I caught him before he messed too much up back there. When I talked to him he told me he was just on his way out walking my dog on the second "loop" of the afternoon. While my baby, 2 year old and wife were taking an afternoon nap, he took my dog on a walk through my entire 40 acre property. I did quite a bit of work in the back woods last winter to make a few thick nasty bedding areas to hopefully keep a few older deer in the neighborhood and I try not to step foot back there unless the wind and timing is perfect - I think I've only been in there 3 times in 6 months. He mentioned that they saw lots of white tails running away when they made their loop through the woods. So I guess I learned that my habitat improvements worked and I was holding quite a few deer back there, but this was not exactly how I wanted to learn my efforts were paying off.
There's a group of does that bed on my neighbor's place and feed in my field, so I went hunting anyway and was happy to see a group still showed up and a small buck chased them all around. Unfortunately nothing showed up from my bedding area and that's typically where the older bucks spend time.
