Backwoods Trail

A week ago while participating in the Pinelands Midwinter Bird Census, I mentioned that I went wandering in the Backwoods behind our place. 

This tree had fallen across the path, with evidence of Sapsucker visitation. Alas, no Sapsuckers appeared for me to count. 

There were numerous other trees which had fallen, several others also across the path. I cleared some of the smaller branches, but access for anyone bringing anything back there is severely constrained, especially if they are coming from the road point access. And stuff has been brought back there.

After I passed this tree, and after I had spotted the Pileated Woodpecker, I noticed this:

A trail. Look closely and you can see pink blazes on the trees, foot prints in the mud, and a wood plank across some of the deeper mud.

Further along even more obvious trail 'improvements'.

I followed the trail until I found this:

A fallen deer stand. 

Note the fallen tree in the background. It has a "posted sign" on it. Which is curious because this is Sate Forest land.

The other curios thing was the significant amount of deer hair along the trail. The deer hair, along with the boot prints in the mud, were seemingly at odds with the fallen stand. Of course, it could have fallen very recently, but that did not appear to be the case.

The view back from the fallen tree and stand.

Someone (or ones) had gone through quite a bit of work to haul all of this out there.

Which is rather curious as well.