Call of the wild

We were on a walk in the upper forest when Buddy took off wandering far off to the west side of the path.  He was out of sight for several minutes and I couldn’t hear his bell, so I called him loudly and, sure enough, he came running back through the forest.  I spotted something in his mouth so I told him to bring it to me.  He turned on the path well ahead of us and headed right to me.  At first I thought he had a frozen squirrel, but it ended up to be a chunk of bone—the shoulder blade and part of the foreleg of a deer, I think.  When Buddy got up to me I told him to “Drop it” and he did, right at my feet.  I didn’t have my camera, so we went back home and on our next walk I brought the camera for a few pictures.  All three dogs were interested in the new bone.  At one point both Kilo and Buddy had the bone, but that didn’t last long as Kilo growled and Buddy backed off quickly.  Rather than just leave the bone on the path, I carried it as we headed back home.  I left the bone hanging in a tree branch about 6 feet off the ground.  Kilo protested loudly that he would rather take the bone home himself. 

Something big

As we were taking our usual evening constitutional looking for gobbler scratches and other signs of spring like Eastern tent caterpillars we came upon a whole deer carcass, totally devoid of flesh, but still hanging together, just off Pierce's Passage. We saw a white fuzz about 10 yards off the trail. That was hair scattered around a 5 foot radius. All the major bones were there and had been gnawed. We've been on this trail within the last 2 weeks. Wouldn't you have thought that we would have heard a commotion like the killing of a deer? Doesn't bode well for my future chicken farm.