March 18th

The snow virtually disappeared over the last weekend. We had rain and weather in the 40s. Then this week we had a couple days in the 50s! I guess I shouldn't be that surprised, it happens every year. Now we'll need to get dumped on at least once sometime in April.

I took off to the woods yesterday morning and decided to hike out to John's island. This was a place that deer were traveling to quite heavily this winter while feeding on the sunflower pile and soybean scrapes in the yard. My biggest challenge was crossing a gumbo mud field. I brought out my water boots and took off across. Since I was alone, I knew I needed to take my time in order to not have to come back. I zigzagged from NE to NW and worked my way south through the island. On my third or so pass back and forth, I caught a glimpse of something hand had to look back over my shoulder.

Sure enough... "that's an antler." I said to myself and

worked my way over. As I walked up to it I knew right away which buck it was from. A small, narrow 2 year old 8 point that was chipped on most tips. After taking my pictures I continued to zigzag around through the grove. I finished as best as I could and then walked North up the West edge until I turned back inside on the best trail I could see. My plan is to set up a trophy rock in this island and have a place for some good photos. I remembered a natural clearing about 15 yards by 10 yards where pictures would be great. As I made my way over to it, I stopped dead in my tracks. It was like a moment on The Shining where Danny comes around the corner and those twins are standing there. I thought that the antler I just picked up was laying back on the ground. To make things more insane, I had just walked through this spot! I don't know how I could've missed it!

Regardless, it was the other side of the same buck. The crazy part was that I knew this buck carried one side for a few days. I never would've thought that his antlers would be in the same area as each other.

I headed back across the gumbo and went up to the cabin and got situated to set up two trail cameras. I put out some molasses NW of the landing and cut down a tree for a new site north of the gravel pit. I'm really hoping to get some pictures at both sites soon. It will be interesting to see what happens with the new one. I hope deer that were wintering there are still coming through.

After I set those up, I went for another walk on the County piece north of the cabin. I made my way around and something caught my eye that looked like an old stick, but too perfectly pointed. I walked over to it and there was about two inches sticking out of the grass. I stared right at it and said, "that's got to be an antler."

I got the camera out and tried to get a phone video of me excavating this old relic. it was buried. I don't even know how old this antler was. The year it fell the buck was probably a 3 or 4 year old, but it's probably been laying there for over 20 years. Dad shot a buck in 88 that resembled this antler an awful lot.

All in all it was a good day to find antlers. The wind really picked up and brought some colder weather in so the afternoon was fairly uneventful. At least we're narrowing down the spots to look.