Exploring To The East

On Friday (a week ago), a friend and I took snowmobiles and headed a few miles east of where I hunt and ventured into some uncharted territory. Surprisingly, there was decent sign. We set up two trophy rocks with molasses about three quarters of a mile apart from each other. I'm really excited about these locations. There's a good chance at getting some pictures of some really nice bucks come April, May and June. The area is far enough away that it's very likely a whole other deer population, but at the same time, it's definitely not too far for a buck to venture when the rut kicks in. I'm hoping we can get a glimpse of the legendary 'Black Buck'.

You'll have to stay tuned to see what we find.

Today, I was out ice fishing with my dad and we did really well. We caught a lot of small saugers, but dad caught three fish over 18". We caught a total of 42 fish. Anyway, on the way back, we were driving down the highway and noticed that the ditchbank had been just demolished by deer. As my eyes scanned the ditch and then up into the field, and back into the ditch, I bet my eyes were twitching like a little freak, when all of a sudden, there was the sore thumb. "There's one." I nearly yelled. Dad was slowing down as I

saw it and we backed up and I hopped out and ran over to the field edge and glanced up at where I knew the antler lay. I was looking for the match, which I never did see. I pulled out my phone and got a couple pictures. Dad was sitting in the Blazer up on the highway and couldn't take the 1 minute photo shoot I was doing before I pulled it out of the snow. "Well are you gonna pick it up or what?"

It was a nice heavy, short four point - just chocolate brown. A beautiful antler that I probably won't find the other side to, but you never know. I'll keep my eyes peeled.