January Came And Went

Today, February 1st, was 38 degrees! We've had some unreal weather this winter. Hardly any snow and our overnight lows are above our historical average HIGHs! I spent last week in Chicago for my last of four Covenant Orientation classes. I managed to find one little forkhorn about 50 yards or less from where I found the nice 63" 6 point last year. I pushed a bunch of deer around and eventually found some bucks, but  I also encountered some fairly fresh human tracks that were obviously looking around. Not walking a pet. There were at least 6 bucks that were shed and I found two that hadn't - a yearling 3 point and a nice 3 year old 9 point.
Right before I left town I got a picture that let me know Bullwinkle was holding on to both sides as of the 15th of January.

I'm guessing he's shed by now, but I'll have to either find those antlers or get a picture that tells me otherwise. I also was able to check my camera I set out in an attempt to get pics of Twigs and/or HighRise. I got Twigs, but he already shed both sides as of the 26th/27th of January. I should've had that camera up earlier. There's also a young buck that's been coming in with both sides on. He's either an awesome yearling or an average to weak 2 year old.

For the most part, people are reporting later shed dropping because of the warm weather or lack of stress on the deer. It's crazy to be able to go out looking during the peak time of shedding because there's usually a foot or two of snow to contend with. At this point, we'll have barely any by mid February. It'll be a treat if we can pick up Twigs' sheds. They're going to really push 60" each. I'm going to guess 59" and 58". We'll have to see.
I checked the cameras near the standing beans and learned that at least five bucks haven't shed yet as of the 25th and 29th. The most interesting picture is of a buck that had kind of disappeared or at least stayed somewhere way south. It's a really nice two year old I call Black Nose. As a yearling last year, he had 6 or 7 points and had a really black muzzle. This year he's a nice clean 8 and should be a dandy 125-130" 8 next year. Here are the five bucks that strolled through. The first one is a broken up two year old that was hanging around Pencil in the summer and early fall. The second is Chippy. The third is Black Nose. The fourth is a twerp. The fifth is the wide 2 year old 9 (Dad wants to call him Contender 2)

Another interesting thing was that I moved this camera in from about a quarter mile north and set it up 20 yards from another camera! This camera had 27 or so images and the one that used to be hot had only 2. What does that tell me? A) Deer are unpredictable. B) There's a good chance they get used to and/or annoyed of being flashed in the face. C) There's simply not enough snow to corral them to using fewer trails. They're walking anywhere they want still (which makes looking for sheds a bit tougher.