A few weeks ago Bo and I put a freshened up a few salt licks on one of our Missouri properties and hung a few cameras on the licks.  Yesterday, Bo had a few hours to run out in the ~100 degree temps and check two of the cams.  The first cam was put on a lick that hadn't be freshened up in nearly three years.  But every year I usually see signs of pawing at the lick.  Unfortunately, we didn't have any deer hit this first lick during the first couple of weeks.  But I'm positive it's just a matter of time before the deer find this fresh lick again and we start to get a few more pics on this portion of the farm.

The second lick was another story.  This area is always a hot spot during the summer and early season.  It always seems like the bucks really swarm to this area for some reason.  With the first picture on the camera, we started off the preseason with a new target buck.  The first pictures of him weren't the best, but as the weeks progressed, he visited the lick multiple times and we were able to get some decent pictures of him.  This buck has been named "First Pull" since he was the very first deer we got on cam this year.

As you can see, this buck all ready is starting a split G2, split brow tine and has a kicker coming off of his base.  Based on body size, this buck is definitely mature.  When Bo was walking to this cam, he actually spotted this buck and another good buck browsing in the corn field.  He wasn't able to get too close to them before they got back into the timber, but here is the photo zoomed in.





Besides "First Pull", we got pics of two more bucks that look to be at least three years old on the same salt lick.  We're going to need to get a few more pictures of these bucks before we can say one way or another if they're going to be shooters or not, but it's nice to see some really good deer hitting the salt licks.