3:30-4:00 pm
I'm not in good shape, and lord knows i was heaving and hoing up the giant hills of the Bristol "mountains" but I do love nature and every second of the hike was amazing. This is the second time my boyfriend, Nick and I traveled up the snow-less mountain and I was on the look-out for wildlife in any form. Walking along the muddy terrain, Nick yelled out to me "Watch out for the poop." I rushed over to where he was standing and looked down. "Scat." I corrected. "That's what poop is called. I learned it in my Wildlife class." I asked for his phone so I could take a picture, since mine is useless and doesnt take very good photos.
We continued on out hike, stepping over the large piles of scat that was scattered all over the hill. There was another pile that looked different from the one we saw higher on the hill. They were rolled in balls, almost like cottontail's scat, but i knew it was the white-tail deer from my dad teaching me as a child. I snapped a picture of that and kept walking. The smell of winter was in the air, the leaves were turning bright reds and oranges, it was a beautiful day. Soon, some rustling in the brush above us caught our attention. I looked into the woods and saw a large white tail sticking in the air, jumping over fallen down branches, escaping from, what he thought, predators. A large white-tail buck. He didnt have a very big rack, maybe a 4 point but he was very big in size. I didnt have Nicks phone on me and just as he was getting it out of his pocket and to the camera app, the deer was out of sight. We decided to go in the direction he ran off to incase he stopped to take a break from running from us. Unfortunatley he wasnt in sight, we spooked him. The rest of the hike was trying to get down the mountain without falling into a pile of scat or mud. We decided that we would make a weekly adventure out of the Bristol hike before the snow touches down.
November 2, 2011 (3:00pm) - Nick and I decided to go for another hike after he got out of work. This would be our third time hiking Bristol mountain and i was hoping to see some wildlife on this adventure. We climbed the right side of the mountain this time around. It was a doosey getting to the top. Once we did, I was upset we hadnt seen anything wild. We heard some rustling in the brush but nothing showed itself. On our way back down was the most thrilling. We saw 6 white tail deer. Unfortunalty they were farther then what Nicks camera could get. I was excited and hoped that there would be some cool evidence that they were there. Once we got down to the spot they were at we saw this bed that one of the doe had been laying on. The tall grass was matted down (the picture shown above and at the bottom) and there were tracks in the fresh mud. We tried to take a picture, but none of the ones we shot came out so well. I was bummed but happy that i got to see more than one deer in their habitat. 
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