General Update

I haven't really sat down to update in awhile, so I'll covered a few new things.
We got some nice snow accumulation about 2 weeks ago, which was also my first snow experience in Maryland for about 3 years. I've grown used to dry powdery snow in Montana, so the wet, icy snow of Maryland is quite different for me. We usually get at least one big snow storm a year in Maryland with significant accumulation (save my senior year of high school when we failed to accumulate any snow days), so I look forward to another big snowfall as Spring draws closer.

This picture doesn't really reflect how much actually fell, this was pretty early on when I was visiting my old debris hut.

This hut is in very poor condition, and I was going to tear it apart earlier and rebuild it so I could use it when snow came, but the snow beat me to the chase. I was looking through the contents of the shelter and found a bundle of milkweed stalks and some polypore fungus I had left last December. I also left an elk knuckle bone, however it appears the local animals have made off with that. It always amuses me to find things I've left from the previous year.

I spent some time exploring the woods in the hills above Ellicott City this past week and found an exceptionally large deer rub. I'm no expert on deer rubs, though I enjoy finding them, but I'd say this is from a rather large buck, judging by its distance from the ground. My friend who hunts further west of Ellicott City agreed that a very large deer made this. It does seem unusual to me that it would be on such a thick tree. I see them on smaller saplings usually.