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.

Ice Age

Thursday started out just plain chilly. The temp was 7 degrees without the wind in the morning. Chris, Dad and I met at Grandpa and Grandma's and headed up to the hill. I borrowed a hatchet to try to pull out the shed that I found earlier in the week.

I eventually got the thing out of the mud, but not without a few dings from the hatchet. After I cleaned it up I measured it and it went 49 4/8". Not bad for something that had been lost there for who knows how long.
Afterwards, we worked our way to the NW side of Orville's mailbox. We belly-crawled across the ditch on the ice (cracking the whole way) and walked through the popples that were left along the road. We were heading back and I decided to zigzag through the red willows in hopes of finding Mr. 140's other side. I caught a glimpse of something white in the middle of a smaller clump of willows. Sure enough, it was an antler. I actually thought it was a year old antler because of how white it was. It may have been shed early. I'll check the date I last saw this buck with antlers. It was a small 2 year old four point antler. It has decent mass for a two year old. I hope he makes it to four. He'd be interesting.

After that, we drove up to the landing and walked north of the W trail trying to parallel it. We went west until we came out of the cedars beyond the bus. From there we turned north mostly and I cut back E to change the memory card at the Cedar Stump camera. I left the camera heading mostly W trying to zigzag between trails when I heard them coming through the woods and I heard dad say, "Sure would be nice to find the other side." I thought, no way, he's just saying that loud enough for me to hear and mess with me. Then he said the decade old joke, "I've got that pain in my ribs." I thought you do not but as he was appearing through the cedars I looked intently and sure enough I saw that it was one of the sides off Scabby 8. I've went back and forth about the age of this buck and it's hard to say. At first picture, I thought him to be 5.

Then looking at springtime photos, I thought more like 3. He's very identifiable because his left ear has a huge tear in it, which you can't see in this (the first pic of him out of velvet) His right mainbeam was 22 even. Which would suggest 4+. It's safe to say he's four, gonna be five. But we'll see. His G2 was a little short and we knew that from the photos. I measured the antler at 53 7/8". That's sad if that's a 5 year old deer. That's Minnesota Hill. You take the trophies you can get.

We spent some time up in the cedar swamps between the two cutovers, but there was good rut sign, but not much more than that. I'm hoping we were far enough north. After a lunch break and after I set up a third camera down by my honeyhole, we headed up by the gravel pits and walked around on top of the hill. Not a ton of sign, but enough to suggest a few does live there - enough to warrant some buck traffic. It also doubles as a wide bottleneck from two large woods. We just about turned around a mile north of Grandpa and Grandma's to drive across the county to look at another spot. Good thing we didn't. It feels so good to find one off the hitlist. That's like the entire goal, besides finding one or both of The Clown's antlers. A good day's work.

March 18th

The snow virtually disappeared over the last weekend. We had rain and weather in the 40s. Then this week we had a couple days in the 50s! I guess I shouldn't be that surprised, it happens every year. Now we'll need to get dumped on at least once sometime in April.

I took off to the woods yesterday morning and decided to hike out to John's island. This was a place that deer were traveling to quite heavily this winter while feeding on the sunflower pile and soybean scrapes in the yard. My biggest challenge was crossing a gumbo mud field. I brought out my water boots and took off across. Since I was alone, I knew I needed to take my time in order to not have to come back. I zigzagged from NE to NW and worked my way south through the island. On my third or so pass back and forth, I caught a glimpse of something hand had to look back over my shoulder.

Sure enough... "that's an antler." I said to myself and

worked my way over. As I walked up to it I knew right away which buck it was from. A small, narrow 2 year old 8 point that was chipped on most tips. After taking my pictures I continued to zigzag around through the grove. I finished as best as I could and then walked North up the West edge until I turned back inside on the best trail I could see. My plan is to set up a trophy rock in this island and have a place for some good photos. I remembered a natural clearing about 15 yards by 10 yards where pictures would be great. As I made my way over to it, I stopped dead in my tracks. It was like a moment on The Shining where Danny comes around the corner and those twins are standing there. I thought that the antler I just picked up was laying back on the ground. To make things more insane, I had just walked through this spot! I don't know how I could've missed it!

Regardless, it was the other side of the same buck. The crazy part was that I knew this buck carried one side for a few days. I never would've thought that his antlers would be in the same area as each other.

I headed back across the gumbo and went up to the cabin and got situated to set up two trail cameras. I put out some molasses NW of the landing and cut down a tree for a new site north of the gravel pit. I'm really hoping to get some pictures at both sites soon. It will be interesting to see what happens with the new one. I hope deer that were wintering there are still coming through.

After I set those up, I went for another walk on the County piece north of the cabin. I made my way around and something caught my eye that looked like an old stick, but too perfectly pointed. I walked over to it and there was about two inches sticking out of the grass. I stared right at it and said, "that's got to be an antler."

I got the camera out and tried to get a phone video of me excavating this old relic. it was buried. I don't even know how old this antler was. The year it fell the buck was probably a 3 or 4 year old, but it's probably been laying there for over 20 years. Dad shot a buck in 88 that resembled this antler an awful lot.

All in all it was a good day to find antlers. The wind really picked up and brought some colder weather in so the afternoon was fairly uneventful. At least we're narrowing down the spots to look.

Ides of March

Dad and I went out yesterday morning for about 4 hours. We hiked some swampy state quarters with no luck. There was plenty of sign there in December and January and so it should've been easy to come across something, but nope. Walking back there was cool to see the lay of the land. The majority of the topo is simply wet, but every 50-100 yards there were little plateaus that were dry and had prime bedding opportunities. There were plenty of small rubs and whatnot. We also came across the same massive scrape site as I found last year. Another plateau that had at least 8 licking branches. What a place for a camera next year.

Then at work yesterday afternoon, I mentioned that dad and I were out looking for antlers and a neighbor up there said he picked up a big 12 point

set just a few days ago. NW of John's Bins along a deer trail near where they were taking out trees. UNREAL! I asked him more questions about them and it really seems like they could be WideWeb. I hope so. He said his brother's got them down in the cities to have them officially measured. They should be back up here in April.

Mom and Dad walked around that clearcut, with nothing to show for it. I better get back out there.

The Legend of Tank

Like a loved one called into the morgue to identify a body, I walked into a friends cabin and in the middle of stomping the snow off my insulated water boots, I glanced up to see a photograph come to life. There was the antlers of a buck we knew as "Tank". A dozen possibilities ran through my mind as I tried to make sense of it. "How long had it been since I had been in his cabin?" That rack is from 2007. Where has it been? Has it been two and a half months since I had been in there?" Those where some of the many simultaneous thoughts that crossed my mind.

"Where did that come from?", I asked out loud.

"Oh that? I shot that with the muzzleloader a couple years ago." he said.

"2007?" I asked.

"I don't know. A couple years ago. North of Elmer's cabin. He was wounded...came in limping. Someone had shot him." he suggested.

"That was me." I told him. "Opening day of rifle season 2007."

"Really? That was you?" he asked puzzled.

Long story short. He said after skinning him he was all gangrene and so he "just took the head...cause the cape was shot." That part has stuck with me since. What? I'm not going to get into my own theories, and I want to believe him. So I will choose to. Regardless, the first buck that was 'named' at the hill is now dead. Officially. It's kind of nice to have closure. There are many parallels to a mysterious family death you see on a made-for-tv movie. He grossed 130 and net 125 4/8 typical, which was about 20 inches less than I had guessed from the trail cam pictures. This was probably due to the body size of this buck, hence the name. His main beams were each 3 inches shorter than I guessed. the spread was 2 inches narrower. The brows were each an inch shorter. That's 10 inches right there. The G2s were 10 2/8 instead of 11 4/8 and so on. We're learning to be more conservative on our field judgement based on trail cam photos.

Also interesting was that my friend had picked up a set of sheds a year ago from a nice buck my other friend shot this year. I picked them up and laughed out loud. I knew instantly that they were from the same buck. Also, he picked up three fresh antlers from this year. One from Mr. 140 (which actually measured 57 1/8 - putting a Mr. 130) and a matched set from a three year old with split brow. Cool sheds. Definitely a worth-while trip over there. Regardless of the means of tank's 'death and resurrection', I'm just glad to know his dead.