First Sheds To Find : Pencil's

So after getting really excited to get a picture of Pencil on the 5th of December, our very next picture of him was in the shack field on the 15th of December and he was completely bald!

He made two trips through the area around the 15th. After getting home to review the multiple cameras, they told us that on the 15th at about 3 am, Pencil came from the east three corner and went west long enough to get a video and two pictures of him (one of his nose and one of his butt) - neither told us anything.

Then he must've bed down somewhere nearby because on the afternoon/evening of the 15th, he was caught crossing the shack field from southeast to northwest.

After confirming that it was him, we starting to imagine all the likely places he may have shed his antlers. Then on the 20th, at about midnight, he did the same thing again. This time Zach and I were out hunting and actually came into the property from the south east and cut a nice track that proceeded to take the strip the entire way north up to the three corner, then turn west right in front of the Bushnell camera giving us yet another video of him. So this time we knew where he came from at least. SOUTH. I later learned that he had been spending some time at the Little Hill. He was there on the 14th in the morning, and back again on the 16th at 6pm.

So all this data tells us two important things: 1) he shed his antlers between the 5th at 6pm and the 14th at 4:05am. 2) He was frequenting these two areas, which are unfortunately 1.5 miles apart as the crow flies. His sheds could be anywhere. His route on the 15th pm and 20th tell us he prefers entering the area from the south. When I look at what the weather did around the 5-14th, we had a definite cold snap around the 9, 10, 11th where his antlers would have really loved to pop off. Looking at his pedicles in the pictures on the 14th, it looks like he would have probably shed on the earlier end, more like the 8th (which we got a lot of snowfall) or 9th (in anticipation of the cold weather coming).

As of the 30th of December, he's the only shed buck that we have pictures of. There's supposed to be a lot of weather changes in the next couple weeks, some cold fronts, some warm. I'm guessing that the next cold snap/snow fall, we should see some more antlers hit the powder.