Misty's first deer 'hunt'

Today we were planning a 'leisurely' (relative term with Misty) walk around the woods and such, and we ran into some deer.  Boy, did we!  Let me bring in a handy dandy map as I tell the story...

Now the brown line is the outline of the woods, the blue lines are the main trail  (as distinguished from the paths torn into the woods by the o-so-necessary golf course), and our path today is in purple.  Nothing out of the ordinary until we saw her first two deer (not from a bedroom window), indicated by their position (red star#1) and our position at the time, a good distance away (purple star #1).  Of course, Misty's first reaction was to take off after them at top speed, which meant that .35 seconds later she came to a full stop (end of leash) with her butt sliding until she was in a straight-up position.

I tried to get a shot of them, but my camera doesn't like cold weather (or warm, a story for another day), and when I turned it on it basically cycled through about fifteen settings I never asked for, took a picture that well might have been titled, "psychedelic in gray", and finally stopped after a good hard slap to the side.

I did get a nice shot of Misty after she caught her breath back up...

We continued down the side of the wood, as I tested the camera out to see if its psychosis had abated...

As the trail re-enters the woods, I had thought to veer off on one of the golf trails when we saw ahead of  us, not just 2, but a whole herd of deer (the #2 stars).  From where we were, there was a rise between us (not to mention a lot of trees), and as they were headed north (top of map), I figured our best bet would be to get to the "lower soccer field" to get a look at them.

Two notes of explanation.  The "upper soccer fields" were built later on the corpse of what was a lovely meadow and is raised about 10 feet or so higher than the lower.  Also, where a smart man (me) would have cut straight across, a not-as-smart dog (Misty) decided she HAD to follow the golf trail to get there, so as the map shows, we exited the woods somewhat more south than I had intended.

But when we got out on to the field- for perspective we we now about a field and a half away from the tree line on the map- the deer were at the tree line.  And, they were playing, running back and forth and chasing each other around!

Between distance, less than cooperative camera, and a dog joyfully running circles around me, I took a million dozen pictures to get the handful of half-assed ones I will show you now...

At a guess, there was a dozen deer in the herd.  Some of them were just south of the line chasing each other like mad men (note the one in the foreground of picture 3), while others were keeping an eye on us and going up and down the incline...

I tried to creep closer, but each time I did, I had to spin two or three times to get out of Misty's leash.  And, like I said, they were watching us, so they were starting to go back into the woods before we got very close- and of course, a jogger had to come down from the north to finish them off.

While we're here, I got some other Misty pics to share as well from a few days ago...

We were down by the Duck Bar, which was frozen over, but down the way it was open and she got her first view of ducks.  These were neighborhood ducks, used to Scrappy, and couldn't have cared less- and so neither did she.  But about 100 yards down was a set of non-hood ducks.  They saw us coming and started to quack and take off.  So Misty went to check them out, and when the rest of 'em saw her and split, boy did she jump!

Farther down, we saw what had to be the biggest collection of geese in one place I've seen in the 11 years we've been here!  Misty thought about checking them out, but got distracted by noisy doggies at the complex that were checking her out...