Ice Age

Thursday started out just plain chilly. The temp was 7 degrees without the wind in the morning. Chris, Dad and I met at Grandpa and Grandma's and headed up to the hill. I borrowed a hatchet to try to pull out the shed that I found earlier in the week.

I eventually got the thing out of the mud, but not without a few dings from the hatchet. After I cleaned it up I measured it and it went 49 4/8". Not bad for something that had been lost there for who knows how long.
Afterwards, we worked our way to the NW side of Orville's mailbox. We belly-crawled across the ditch on the ice (cracking the whole way) and walked through the popples that were left along the road. We were heading back and I decided to zigzag through the red willows in hopes of finding Mr. 140's other side. I caught a glimpse of something white in the middle of a smaller clump of willows. Sure enough, it was an antler. I actually thought it was a year old antler because of how white it was. It may have been shed early. I'll check the date I last saw this buck with antlers. It was a small 2 year old four point antler. It has decent mass for a two year old. I hope he makes it to four. He'd be interesting.

After that, we drove up to the landing and walked north of the W trail trying to parallel it. We went west until we came out of the cedars beyond the bus. From there we turned north mostly and I cut back E to change the memory card at the Cedar Stump camera. I left the camera heading mostly W trying to zigzag between trails when I heard them coming through the woods and I heard dad say, "Sure would be nice to find the other side." I thought, no way, he's just saying that loud enough for me to hear and mess with me. Then he said the decade old joke, "I've got that pain in my ribs." I thought you do not but as he was appearing through the cedars I looked intently and sure enough I saw that it was one of the sides off Scabby 8. I've went back and forth about the age of this buck and it's hard to say. At first picture, I thought him to be 5.

Then looking at springtime photos, I thought more like 3. He's very identifiable because his left ear has a huge tear in it, which you can't see in this (the first pic of him out of velvet) His right mainbeam was 22 even. Which would suggest 4+. It's safe to say he's four, gonna be five. But we'll see. His G2 was a little short and we knew that from the photos. I measured the antler at 53 7/8". That's sad if that's a 5 year old deer. That's Minnesota Hill. You take the trophies you can get.

We spent some time up in the cedar swamps between the two cutovers, but there was good rut sign, but not much more than that. I'm hoping we were far enough north. After a lunch break and after I set up a third camera down by my honeyhole, we headed up by the gravel pits and walked around on top of the hill. Not a ton of sign, but enough to suggest a few does live there - enough to warrant some buck traffic. It also doubles as a wide bottleneck from two large woods. We just about turned around a mile north of Grandpa and Grandma's to drive across the county to look at another spot. Good thing we didn't. It feels so good to find one off the hitlist. That's like the entire goal, besides finding one or both of The Clown's antlers. A good day's work.