Chicago Style Sheddin'!

Man, it's fairly clear that a person could make a haul living in Chicago. If a person planned it out right, you could pick up quite a bit of bone in a weeks time with good boots, and a little preseason scouting. The tough parts are that some parks have people visiting every single day feeding deer and picking up fresh antlers. It takes some work to find the herds of deer that are tucked away, let alone bucks worth chasing. Luckily, on my first morning, after eating a meatball sub and warming my toes up, I stumbled upon a place several deer had been hitting pretty hard. I dropped off this little ledge toward the river bank and as I was scanning the areas these deer had been digging, I spotted a couple good beds I figured I better investigate more closely. As I walked up to the beds, my eyes rose back up the ridge and BINGO. The old familiar curve of a mainbeam. It was a nice 4 point shed.

After I pulled it out, I knew I had at least one bigger buck in this woods and I hadn't encountered any people tracks. On top of that, this shed was mostly covered in snow, telling me he dropped it about a week or more earlier. I slowed my pace way down and scoured the area. I went back up the ridge and back down. I walked all the way back out to the river bank. Thankfully I did, because when I turned around, there was number two! The match to the first one. This one was also a big four point that was no more than 40 yards from the where the first one was laying. It was tucked behind a big tree so I couldn't see it until I got out a ways. In the snow, this one looked a little bit smaller than the first, but it actually turned out to be the better side.

The first side, the deer's right, measured 57 2/8" and the second side, the deer's left, measured 59 3/8". With a 16" inside spread, that puts the buck at 132 5/8" gross. I figured he would net 129"or so.

On my walk back to the hotel, as I was about to walk out of the woods, I saw a city police car parked in the park's visitor lot, right where I was headed! My mind was racing as to the city having an ordinance about removing any items from the forest preserve areas. I know they banned metal detecting last year, so I panicked. I hid the sheds at the base of a tree and walked out of the woods right towards the cop, not knowing if he wanted to talk to me or not. I walked right past his car and just kept walking as to not seem suspicious. Had he already seen me in the woods carrying antlers? Was he going to get out and steal my sheds? I just kept walking. At this point I'm about a block away and I have no plan. My mind is racing about a mile a minute when I figure it out: I'll go into this gas station as  if it were my original destination. I'll buy something, ask for a bag and walk back past the cop. Maybe he'd be gone. So far so good, except the cop is still sitting there. Phase two of the plan was to just walk past him again pretending like I'm headed home and once I make it out of sight, cross the road and dive back into the woods. So far so good. What a rush! I felt like a 13 year old again. Haha. I made it to the antlers without him seeing me. I put the antlers in the grocery bag and started inching my way back to the cop. By the time I got to where I should've been able to see him, he was gone! I headed straight back to the hotel with a grin from ear to ear.
That was day one.
The second trip out was on a warm morning and I decided to try look on the other side of the river - a place I had never been. After having my mind blown as to why there were so many deer right by the road/bus stop, I figured out that people were feeding them there. Since it was close to residential areas, people could watch the deer from their homes and leave corn around. The bus stop was literally trampled with tracks. I started a grid and the tracks got to be less and less. The further north I went, the more the tracks picked back up. I didn't bump that many deer so I wasn't really looking for them that diligently, when all of a sudden there's a full racked buck staring right at me at about 15 yards! He scared me. I was frozen. The hilarious part that I eventually learned was that I didn't need to respond to these deer like I would an encounter back home. These deer saw me coming too, except that meant for them, the possibility of food, so they approached me! We had a staredown for probably about 5 minutes before he took off walking. My next experiment was to sprint after him seeing if I could get him to jump high and maybe jolt an antler off as he ran away. So I took off running through the brush with no luck. I crossed an opening with a long driveway into the park. I ignored it and kept going north until I got closer to the river. Finally I jumped two deer. One had a decent 9 point rack (130?) and the other was a busted up 8 point. They seemed less tolerant of people. Anyway, as I worked my way around, I came to an area where the deer had again trampled the forest snow. Sure enough, I pop out onto this hiking trail and its all starting to make sense. This is an area that people frequent to watch the deer. They feed them and talk to them. They even can park their cars, lay down some feed and get back in their cars to watch them! It's literally like a zoo with wild animals. So now I knew I would have some competition when it came to antlers. At this point I was starting to see more bucks, too. I walked back in the brush where these deer had come from. I was bumping more and more deer. I would say that in total I found 10 different bucks and probably 25 antlerless deer. Eventually, when I got back into my grid system, I found an antler. It was hard to tell what it was, but that's half the excitement. I pulled it out and although I was a bit disappointed, it was another shed on the year! Here's where the story gets good. So now I'm carrying around an antler as I'm gridding these deer infested woods. I've already had 4 or more good bucks within 20 ft or so. Now I have a weapon. I ran into a big old buck and threw my antler at his rack. Miss. He didn't seem too bothered so I picked it up and followed him around until he let me get back into range. I hit him in the back! He didn't like that too much. I got on the tail of another 3 year old 8 point and threw the antler underhand quite a ways and hit him square in the side of the head! He wasn't having that. He shook his head pretty hard. Finally I was about to give up on this strategy, when a little yearling 6 point walked up really close, thinking I had food. Boy was he wrong! I tossed the antler at about 10 ft and Bullseye! I knocked one of his antlers right off his head! I could hardly stop laughing. I wish I could've gotten that on video! Maybe next time. It was hilarious. So I ended the day with two more sheds and that made 4 for the year! I look forward to my next journey to the land of the trapped Auschwitz deer.