Sheddin' Comes To An End

It's always sad to have to give up when you know darn well there are still plenty of antlers, big ones in fact, just laying out in the woods. How close did I come to finding some of the hitlist antlers? 100 yards? 50? 10? Sometimes you have be heading directly for an antler to finally see it. How many antlers did I miss this year? Hopefully none. This spring was a pretty good one for finding antlers. I managed to pick up 12 antlers this year. Mom and Dad picked up another 9 I believe. 10 of mine were from The Hill and 6 of Mom & Dad's were from The Hill. There were only 3 antlers off the 2010 hitlist that were picked up and positively identified. 2 are in question. In hindsight, there were only a few mistakes I made when looking for them:

1) I need to keep in mind that when the swamp freezes up, deer will spend time out there.

2) Rivers and creeks are not boundaries when they're froze over.

3) You've got to beat the snow storms - not all sheds have fallen, but the ones that have will be buried.

4) Getting permission pays off.

We had an incredibly dry March and April. March was the driest on record and in April we didn't get any precipitation until the 28th! May so far has been a little wet, but it's supposed to snap out of it and get warm again. Most people's crops, with the exception of tender soybeans, were seeded in April and have a great head start. It appears that we will have soybeans to the east of us this summer, which will make things very interesting as far as the Trophy Rocks go. Location is everything. Pictures are beginning to pick up and I'm looking forward to a fantastic summer.