Saturday, March 22, 2014

Spring Shed Hunting - Found the First One!



One of the great things about owning quality deer hunting property with good deer habitat and REALLY big bucks is that you not only get to deer hunt in the fall but you get to shed hunt in the spring!

 Each year starting in late February the bucks on the C4 start shedding their horns (technically, they do not "shed" their "horns".......a "shed" is a building in the backyard and "horns" grow on a cow - deer "cast" their "antlers".....but let's not get bogged down in the details...) Each year on my birthday - March 3rd - my family holds the Big 'D' Birthday Shed Hunting Extravaganza out at the C4. The deer woods are still fairly open so getting around is easy and temperatures are usually pleasant. It can be great family time and you can get the little ones involved as well - they don't have to be quiet and they get to move around a lot.

But this year things were different - according to the pictures on the scout cameras there were very few bucks that had dropped by my birthday so we have had to postpone it. We plan to have it near the end of the month or the first of April......my oldest son, Codey's birthday is April 7th and his young patients (he is a pediatrician) call him Dr. Ducky so I guess this year we will need to hold the Dr. Ducky Birthday Shed Hunting Extravaganza.

But in the meantime, Chase and Lizzy (my grand-daughter) have found a few of the obvious ones where bucks have dropped in the middle of a food plot. Attached pictures are of a couple of those he recently found. One is from a young Non-typical buck that has a great deal of promise. He is only about 2 1/2 years old and has tons of points. This shed off of one side had over 85 inches of bone and he is only 2 1/2! We expect him to go well over 200" if he can get some age on him. He may be hard to kill by then though - I have only actually seen him twice and both of those sightings he was chasing a hot doe. Otherwise, he is fairly reclusive for a young deer and we only get to see him on scout camera pictures....but that is the fun in hunting these great animals - if it was easy then they would call it "deer shooting" and not "deer hunting"!

Will post more pictures of sheds as we find them........

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