Deer Spotting

Max and Maya and I did our five miles in the middle of the afternoon.  That's not usually the best time for wildlife spotting, but it was a pretty warm day and we encountered several deer coming down to the water for an afternoon drink.  It was a part of the day when there weren't many people about so the deer we saw seemed as surprised to see us as we were to see them.

Max goes into prey hyper-drive out on the trails and he uses his ears, eyes, and nose for all they are worth.  Maya is more relaxed until she picks up a scent, hears movement in the woods, or spots something and then she pulls every bit as hard as Max.

We saw several deer, but also spotted some squirrels, an owl, pileated woodpeckers, and something that looked like some sort of weasel.  It was bigger than our scrawny eastern grey squirrels and it shot across the trail in front of us in one fast, fluid motion.  We met two people sitting on a bench eating lunch, and Max gave them a low growl, which pretty much confirmed my decision about not adopting him to a young couple living in an apartment in an urban area.

In the upper left hand corner of the picture you can make
out the deer.  She held still long enough for me to get my
camera out and didn't move until we got fairly close.
The dogs didn't see the deer until she ran.

A fuzzy pic that I zoomed in and cropped to show the deer,
just left of center, after she started to run.

Deer spotting on a warm day is hot work, so we took
several opportunities to wade in the creek to cool off.