April Drought Brings May...

Trail camera pictures have been slow so far this spring in comparison to the last two years. Either the deer aren't as interested in minerals, or this weather has something to do with it. We haven't had any rain to speak of for almost two months! There's been some drizzle on the horizon, but nothing that I've felt here in town. Deer need sodium to regulate the gorging of potassium, which comes from new tender green shutes. It's starting to green up, but not like it would if we had an inch of rain.

I was up to the cabin on Friday and I scattered some seed in the shack field in anticipation of maybe having something for the deer to chew on this summer. It was just a mix of clover, brassicas, and turnips. I also brought a bag of Antler King mineral mix and dumped it out over two different areas. This time, I brought a spade to break up the soil to help it leech a bit. The cameras are getting pictures, but just not like I would have expected. Last year on April 19 was the first sighting of WideWeb and on the 25th was the first sighting of The Clown. Here we are and the cedar stump where both of these bucks were photographed has been very dead. I probably won't get up there for another few days. I need a jug of apple buck jam for the four sites. There's a total of 7 mineral sites with the addition of two others that I don't really monkey with until late season.

On the flipside, I've gotten a few pictures of bears messing with my trophy rocks, which always makes a person wonder if the deer are leery of bears this time of year.

Easterly

A friend and I headed back out east parallelling the Canadian border. We headed out to the place we set up a Trophy Rock back in January. We visited it in February again and applied some more molasses. This would be our third visit and this time we brought a Cuddeback Capture. It's still about 2 weeks premature as far as deer really hitting the mineral site, but it's better to be safe in case a straggler passes by the camera. There's no shortage of buck sign throughout the ridge and cutovers. There's lots of swamp surrounding the ridge for bucks to grow old in, so really it's more of a bowhunting paradise. Hunting the edges of the swamp during the rut, and the popple ridges in the evening

for browsing monsters.

We found a few interesting sights along the way, including some very large poop - probably moose, but possibly elk. Both are extremely rare. Moose have been thinned out and scattered farther west and it's rare to see one around here anymore. Elk have become more freakishly locatable. There are more running long distances in search of food. Someone found a fresh elk shed only 8 miles away from here last year, so it's possible.

We also saw a tree that I thought had been hit by lightning. Upon a closer look, it shattered due to high winds. The tree was dried out, and the wind bent it just right and it must have just exploded! There was a about a 5 foot piece that had pierced the ground and was still stuck there. There was also debris about 40 yards away from the tree. Unbelievable.

We'll have to stay tuned for what pictures will come from the East.

2 hours = 2 antlers

On Thursday, I worked until about lunch and I had a couple hours until we left for Fargo for Easter. There's been a few spots that I've been thinking about that I know I hadn't covered enough earlier this winter. We had a good 18-22" of snow and until Jan 25th or so, it was pretty fluffy. An antler could've easily been lost. We had some freezing rain on the 25th & 26th and oddly enough, that was the rough dates of when most of the 3 and 4 year olds had lost their antlers - between the 18th and 30th of January. To my knowledge, there has only been two antlers found off the 9 bucks on the hitlist, that is, unless the neighbor who picked up the typical twelve was indeed WideWeb. That remains to be seen. My high school classmate picked up one side of Mr. 140 and dad picked up one side of Scabby 8. That leaves between 12 & 14 more antlers to find. Frustrating! The upside to this post is that when I had only a few hours on thursday, I managed to pick up a set off a 2 year old 8 point I called the pencil 8 because of the complete lack of mass. He has 18" mainbeams, which is pretty good for a two year old up here. They were laying about 4 feet apart.

I saw the first one and after I figured out which buck it was from, I was backing up to take a picture when I stepped right over the other side. It was in a puddle mostly submerged. This buck has been sighted a number of times throughout the fall. In fact, the first sighting to my knowledge was one minute before The Clown on the night of October 22nd.

The two bucks' pictures were one minute apart. Because of this "Pencil 8", I nearly had ZERO pictures of The Clown out of velvet. Little Punk.

Steph and I are headed out a bit tomorrow in hopes of locating one of these other 12 antlers.