Antler Drop

Half rack buck beginning of the month.

Likely more out there too.

Gonna keep a sharp eye-out for more pics on the trail cams and shed antlers in the snow....

Antler Drop is Nigh

Bucks on the winter landscape.

Not surprisingly they are still sporting their headgear.

With the arrival of March that will have begun to change as they shed their 2022 antlers.

And I am without a four-legged antler hunter.

Gotta do something about that...

It's That Time of Year Again

This showed-up on one of the trail cameras.

A boy deer with half of his headgear missing.

Which means it's time to let loose the hound and do some shed hunting.

Shed antlers that is.

Did you know that there is an entire vast organization dedicated to shed hunting?

Yup.  You can check them out at NASHC.

Ten Points

The consensus among my associates and I is that this is a 2.5 year-old buck.  He's certainly a healthy specimen and if your look at the spread of the antlers relative to the ears he more likely younger than older.  If he survives to next fall he could be a trophy worth hanging on someone's wall.

Anyway, the important thing to note is that the trail cameras are revealing that antler drop has just commenced with some of the boy deer sporting only half of their headgear - while others (like this) still have an entire rack.

Blonde dog is looking froward to antler hunting in the next week.

Antlers

We fetched the SD cards from the trail camera trap line and replaced them with fresh ones, batteries on one cam too.

First impression is that there are deer galore on the landscape.  Along with a coyote to two as well.

On any event a couple of the boy deer were sporting only one antler while most others were sporting both.  I take this as a sign of the start of antler drop and a signal to let the dog roam wide in hope of scoring a precious find.

From the camera that is set on video mode only there was this short, silent vignette of a couple one and a half year-old bachelors.......

Survivor

 

 

This bubba showed-up on the trail camera recently.

Gonna keep our eye out for the sheds before too long.

This is what we call a survivor.....

Walking the Dogs

With the frost beginning to go out of the ground, melting snowpack and rain the flooding down at the creek has been impressive. Nevertheless, in last 48 hours the waters have receded significantly.

From our walk we could see that the previous ice level stood more than a foot higher.

That is not the creek in the second photo - that’s a trail/firebreak - yet the water that flooded it laid the turf down in the direction of the flow.

It appears that the deer have eaten most everything except the emergent white spruce.

And we returned with a prize.

Raising a toast to mud season…..

Dead Deer Tell No Tales

From time to time I've shared that one of my retirement goals was to pay closer attention to the natural world that surrounds me.  If I can get some fresh air and exercise that is double-good.  

It's mud season here at The Platz so what better than to saddle-up the Labs and head-out on an antler hunt.  We found no antlers today - but we did find this in the woods...


Almost the complete remains of an articulated whitetail deer.

It was missing the skull and I have no way of knowing how it perished - nevertheless, a walk with a CSI plot line is triple-good.

And the girls got another bath today too. 


 

Antler Hunting

Two different bucks - photos taken only moments apart.  

Unless they've dropped in the last 7-10 days some of the younger bucks are still sporting their headgear.....

 

Look Who Grew-Up

Meet Pinus strobus - the Eastern White Pine.  The largest of conifers in our fair state. 
Before European settlement the great and vast northern third of Wisconsin was dominated by ancient old-growth specimens of this species. 

Wisconsin Historical Society

 

Following the war between the states the Great Cutover began.  Logging then dominated Wisconsin’s economy.  By 1893 Wisconsin had become the king of the logging business and was a world leader in lumber production with more than 3.5 billion board feet produced annually.  Sawmills sprang up everywhere along Wisconsin’s waterways to transport logs to the mill and lumber to build cities like Milwaukee and Chicago.  At the height of the Cutover eight million acres of forest were clear-cut by 1898.  The white pine forest was largely gone.

Since then a fungus called white pine blister rust has killed many of this species and foresters and private property owners are contributing to efforts to resurrect this tree to its former glory. 

click on images tor a closer look

 

Last weekend we were out hunting sheds with the girls when we came across these.  When these trees were planted in 1998 they were one year-old bare root seedlings – not much longer than a pencil and slightly thinner.  Look at them now.  They grew-up! 

Raising a toast to sustainable forestry…. 

Shed Head

We've been out a bunch of times and the girls have yet to find any shed antlers in the woods.

From January 25th was this dandy buck sporting his head-gear...

click on images to enlarge

 

And February 15th a resident fork-horn with half a rack...

We shall persist and continue the hunt.

Shed Head

There remain a large number of deer on the landscape including some dandy bucks.

Like this one...

And like this one...

click on an image for a closer look

 

These photos were taken by a trail cameras of two different bucks in two different locations on December 26 and January 5 respectively.  Both these boy deer are sporting their headgear.

I suspect that this may be about to change and before too long my girls and I are going to begin our end of winter chores such as pruning an occasional oak and cleaning out nest boxes for the birds that will return in a few months.  That also means an opportunity for the dogs to engage in the time-honored pursuit of shed antler hunting.

Stay tuned for what turns-up.....

Death Pays a Visit

While out antler hunting recently the girls found this prize deep in the woods...

click on image to enlarge

 

The intact skeletal remains of a female whitetail.  This animal has likely been dead since last fall or early winter.  I have no knowledge of an unrecovered or wounded deer from last year's deer hunt. And the curious thing about this dead animal is that everything is here.  Nothing is missing.  No critter has hauled any of it away.
Very strange.

Death Pays a Visit

This past weekend everyone was out in the woods to clean nest boxes.  Fifty-two of them are now ready for service (although a couple are in need of replacement lids).  Easy peasy - interchangeable parts.

In any event we came across more dead deer.  Or the remains thereof.

One was a fawn from the 2017 recruiting class and was pretty stinky.  I'm not sure what killed it or how it died - although it is possible it was struck by someone driving on the gravel road on the north property line.  Or maybe it died of rough winter conditions.  Who knows?

The other remains were of a spike buck - and since the antlers were still attached to the skull and the bones generally scattered it had to be from last fall.  Perhaps a deer wounded during the hunting season?









I'll post pics of another in a few days.  That makes three - that we've found anyway.  I sure hope they're not starvation victims.

Antler Queens

The best way to hunt for shed antlers is to stick to the known whitetail travel corridors.  Easy enough as all you have to do is look for the rubs left by male deer during last fall's rut.

The trails stand out reasonably well in the thawing ground.

And where there is snow - just follow the tracks.  Easy peasy.  Let the dogs do the work.

From a previous year are the results of the effort of my Antler Queens...

click on images for a closer look



Antler Hunting

Sunny, forty-degree day so I took a break from the routine for a walk in the woods with the girls. This time of year we make it a point to stick to the deer trails with hopes of finding some shed antlers.  Wouldn't you know it, I was chatting on the phone with my pal - Mennonite when the blonde dog sashayed into view with half of an eight-pointer's head gear.

Nice job.

Shed Head

click on the photo for a closer look

If you look closely at the photo above you will note the dark knob on the whitetail's head between the left eye and ear.

That is where this buck's antler used to be attached.

Time to warm-up my Labs and find us some shed antlers.

New Camera Location

A couple of weeks ago I moved two of the trail cameras to new locations - one of them on the western edge of the woods in the northwest corner of the property.  There was a well-traveled game trail located adjacent to this location and it was largely shaded from the sun.  I thought - What the heck.

One of the first pictures was a this two and a half year old six point buck.

 click on image to enlarge

He's still sporting his headgear.  And now I know where to take my girls antler hunting before too long...

Unicorn

click on image for a closer view

Just kidding.

It's just a buck with half his rack.  This is one of five distinctive antlered deer that were photographed in the last couple of weeks.  Like I said the other day - deer aplenty around here.

It strikes me as a wee bit early for antlers to be dropping already.  In prior years it was common to see antlers on the local whitetails well into February.

Nevertheless, individual differences have to be accounted-for and this particular buck may experienced some physical stresses that have cased antler drop already in December.

The Labs are looking forward to antler hunting already.

Chores

Busy day today.  For all intents and purposes I am finished with my pruning of the oaks.  There's some touch-up to be completed but the big stuff is done.

The girls tore it up pretty good today but came-up short on their shed antler hunt.

The blonde dog did find and retrieve a skull from a nubbin buck and she was mighty proud on that score.

Both dogs did their level best to perform the Labrador retriever impression of a hog wallow.  The blonde Lab was a good barometer of really how filthy, dirty they get.

click on images to enlarge

 
Raising a toast to clean dogs...