Ralph and his brother Dale were camping on MSU land (University owns the north haff of Neebish as a portion of the Dunbar Forest ResearchFfacility) when he located the sign of this buck. He initially thought that the rubs and scrapes were those of a moose, since they migrate across the river channel from St, Joseph Island where there is a large population and winter yard. He said he and Dale spent about a half-hour moving the deer to a spot where they could get their Deer Sleigh'r under him and get him "stiched-in" after gutting him. It took them the rest of the day to get him dragged to a skidder road that they could get the truck into but still had to drag him behind the truck on the woods roads back to their camp site about a mile west. They ended-up driving down to Cliff Tyner's ( Neebish Island Ferry captain at that time) farm asking him to use his front end loader to get the deer loaded into the truck prior departure on the ferry. The deer was never weighed until several days after he killed it...
We frequently saw deer swimming across the shipping channel from Sugar Island to Neebish in fall, as well as from St. Joseph Island back-and-forth to Neebish down by Moon Hill where there was a large dense conifer swamp. Several times when we would kill the lights on the Montauk and pole it inshore prior doing shoreline sampling tows to assess larval fish abundance we would blow a feeding moose out of the marshland along the shore-always an exciting encounter in the dark as we marked them with our hand-held dive lights as they pounded inland.
We frequently saw deer swimming across the shipping channel from Sugar Island to Neebish in fall, as well as from St. Joseph Island back-and-forth to Neebish down by Moon Hill where there was a large dense conifer swamp. Several times when we would kill the lights on the Montauk and pole it inshore prior doing shoreline sampling tows to assess larval fish abundance we would blow a feeding moose out of the marshland along the shore-always an exciting encounter in the dark as we marked them with our hand-held dive lights as they pounded inland.
Last edited: