The End of 2011 - Season Wrap Up

Our year went from very promising to kind of depressing with the death of four hitlist bucks: Scabby 9, Splitbrow, The Contender, and The Wide Heavy 8. There are still bucks around, but it's hard to imagine the genetics not being swayed for future seasons when four mature bucks are taken out. It's not all bad. Scabby didn't really grow from ages 4-6. Splitbrow actually shrunk up a bit from 4 to 5. Those two deer were both in close proximity to our main hunting area and it would be nice to get a better buck in our area. Right now, it's all on the shoulder's of Pencil, who hasn't blossomed as I hoped he would.
Anyway, the season started off with a small hitlist. I had a tremendous struggle to pinpoint some of last year's target bucks. I got onto some of the not so exciting bucks to the west: Whitey, Contender, PegLeg, and Junky Brewster, but the two mature bucks I figured were in that area never showed. I would say the biggest factor in mid summer scouting this year was the crazy amount of soybean fields. Great for the deer, but that definitely means deer didn't have to travel far to find the best food source. A buck could literally bed and feed within the same quarter mile and that made picking the right fields very difficult. I thought I had a gold mine when I got permission to put a camera up on Norvall's beans, but all I got were does. It wasn't until the end of October that bucks moved into that area to look for does. I finally got fed up and moved some cameras to areas they hadn't been before. the first week I got my Bushnell camera up I had videos of Splitbrow and Pencil. That was a relief. I also picked up on two good bucks out in the lake bottom: HighRise and Twigs. Since we were hunting bear out there, it made it unethical to hunt these two bucks, but I got thousands of pictures of them. Enough to know that there's some real potential over there for next year.
I hunted down in Whitewater and learned a bunch of lessons, but saw some truly amazing terrain, buck sign, and hmong populations. We may try it again in 2013.
Returning back up north, my hitlist was scattered. After I checked my cameras on the 3rd of November I was encouraged to find Bullwinkle, Contender, Pencil, Splibrow and a few other young bucks. The buck density wasn't as good as it had been in 2009 or 2010. This made sightings fewer and farther between. My only buck encounter during rifle season was the morning of friday the 11th. I had a buck chasing a doe up behind me near the east side of the little hill. I really didn't get a good look at him. I should have been patient and let him get further along his route before I grunted to him. He may have crossed the little opening I had if that were the case. I really couldn't tell what he was. Just a buck with a decent rack. Stephanie sat a few times and let a few does and fawns pass by. She eventually took a shot at a doe and we couldn't find any blood or hair. She probably hit it and we'll probably find it this spring. Mom and dad both shot bucks on the same day I had my encounter. Thursday/Friday/Saturday the 11th/12th/13th were good days around the area. Contender was killed on the 10th in the morning, dad passed up Pencil on the afternoon of the 10th, Scabby was killed on the 11th in the morning, Dad's 2 year old 10 was shot in the early afternoon of the 11th and Splitbrow was killed in the last 15 minutes of shooting light on that same evening. The Wide Heavy eight died of a gunshot wound on Saturday the 12th. There is definitely something that happens on the night of the 10th and into the 11th of November in our area. I would say hunting the 9th through the 21st would be the best bet of killing a big deer. Those are the days to take your vacation time.
I tried to hunt hard the remainder of the season, but it just wore on with odd weather and very little sign. Even when we would get a skift of snow, there would be hardly any tracks and definitely no obvious patterns. It almost looks like there are very few deer. This shed season should reveal some answers to carcasses, winterkills, etc. We need it to be legal to feed the deer not only to help them through the winter, but to get a more accurate idea of how many deer are still alive. It's good to have standing beans like we've had the last two winters, but there is a dramatic difference between the two seasons. Last year we had snow on November 18th that stayed and got deep. By New Year's, we had over a foot of snow. This year on New Year's, heck by the 6th,  we had NO SNOW. Deer are not stressed yet. There is no big reason to pile into a soybean field. Their body's calorie requirement is very low and until there's some impending doom on them, they will just browse and feed moderately. The temperatures are supposed to drop later next week, but there's still no significant snow in the forecast at this point. They may hold onto their antlers until February. Actually, my prediction is after a really cold snap (16-18th), the next surge of warm air triggers them to drop. As of today we are sitting at 40 degrees...ABOVE ZERO!! It's absolutely insane. I'm sure some bucks have dropped somewhere, but it will be a few more weeks.
The most recent pictures have shown that no bucks have lost their antlers yet, which is no surprise to me. Unless a deer has been badly injured, there's not enough stress on them to feed heavy or to lose antlers. So that will come by the end of the month and into February. Here's this last batch of pictures.

So the bucks we have left for a legitimate hitlist are: Bullwinkle, Chippy, Pencil, PegLeg, and HighRise. The rest would be speculation. I'm sure I'm going to pick up on a few good bucks next year. I have a few tricks up my sleeves. I may need to purchase a few cheap cameras so I can have more eyes in more places this year.
Filming your hunts does add a degree of difficulty to each sit in the stand. It will definitely be worth it, but I need to find somebody who can tolerate a little colder weather and who has the same determination as I do to get on these bucks day after day, early morning after early morning. But for now, it's time to take a break from the woods for a couple months and then scout out a few places this spring while looking for sheds. Should be fun.

Contender's Last Stand - A Tribute

Contender was a buck that got his name because of potential. I can assure you he will be referred to for years to come as an example of what a buck is able to do from one year to the next. Along with Inside Crabclaw that was killed in 2010. My first photo of Contender was in August of 2010 across the highway. I wrote in my blog that I hoped he was a three year old. The amazing reality was that he was only a two year old. It wasn't until after the 2010 season that I realized I had pictures of him as a yearling in 2009 by John's bins.

Then in the summer of 2010:

He was a clean 10 point buck and another neighbor had gotten a few pictures of him in October, but I never really expected him to venture our way. I picked him up on a camera I left set up near the creek by John's south end on November 7th after dark. Then, to my surprise, we got a photo of him NW of the bus in the tail end of the rut in November.

We got him once more up there in mid December and watched him venture back west over to the standing bean field. We got several pictures of him over there in the last half of the month of December.

As 2011 came, I was determined to focus my energies on the bucks closest to The Hill so I kept my cameras there throughout the summer. I really had a struggle to get good bucks on camera. I suggested to a friend to put a camera up across the highway where I did before and sure enough within a week he had four nice bucks coming in - Whitey, PegLeg, Junky Brewster, and Contender. I decided to move one of my cameras in there in order to get better quality images of these bucks and hopefully get a picture of Curly or Skyscraper. Well, I got some great images of the first four, but there was no sightings of either of the older bucks. These four bucks were in those soybeans all summer long. I eventually pulled my camera from there and gave up on getting photos of Curly or Skyscraper.

September and October were fruitless as far as pictures went. At least that was the case until I got back from Whitewater. I checked my camera NW of the bus on the 3rd of November and got some great pictures of Bullwinkle and one awesome picture of Contender out of velvet at 2 in the afternoon on November 1st!

The bucks weren't really using the scrapes near the top of the hill too much so I moved a camera to the east side of John's farmyard that same day (the 3rd) and boy am I glad I did. That very next morning I got four pictures of Contender working that scrape.

My friend checked his camera that he set up by his stand which was north of the landing and got a picture of Contender on the 30th of October. So we were putting some pieces together. Opening day of rifle season came on November 5th and hope were high of seeing Contender. We all tried to play the wind right to hunt our best stands. My friend chose to stay out of his stand where he had the picture of Contender because the wind was wrong. He made a good decision. On Monday the 7th, I was sitting NW of the bus and my friend was sitting in his stand north of the landing. We had a perfect west wind and at about 8:30 am, my friend texts me saying that he just missed a chance at a buck he thinks was Contender. I thought he was full of it but decided to climb down at about 10:30 and see what was up. He pulled his memory card from his camera and we went to see what was on it. Sure enough. There he was! 90 yards away from his stand, Contender slipped through a shooting lane because my friend was looking the other way. It only takes 3 seconds. Wow. Needless to say, he felt pretty crappy. After that, we had no pictures and heard nothing about Contender until Sunday morning in church I talked to Paul Krahn who said he talked to Eric Douglas and that Eric had shot a nice buck. Paul was trying to get a photo out of him. Tuesday morning I climbed up in the stand by the spring and got an email as I was getting set up. It was from Paul. "Let me know if you recognize this deer." I opened the attachment and there he lay - Contender was dead.  It's such an odd rush of emotions.

I'm super happy for Eric, but at the same time, this is one of those genetic anomalies that only happens once a year - if that. Now his genes are done being passed on. At least he made it to the end of the season and hopefully he was able to breed. I eventually went over to Eric's house to score the rack and take some photos. If he had not broken his left brow tine, he would have grossed over 151" as a three year old. He would have net somewhere around 146". Since he did break his brow, he grossed 147" and net about 138".

The amount of growth that can take place on some deer is absolutely incredible. Contender passed away on November 10th at 7:30am. Eric said he was following a doe and came in to about 30 yards. Typical YOUNG deer. No fear.
What makes some strains of genetics superior if all of these deer have roughly the same nutrition/cover/minerals? If Contender would have had one more year, I would guess that he would have grossed B&C and been a typical 12 with matching stickers off his G2s. I guess we'll never know.

This year there seems to be two different two year old bucks that have some potential. They both inhabit that same area. There's something about the creek that must have something these deer need. Maybe if I can connect the dots of soil content I might figure out why the create this elliptical pattern.

The Saga of Splitbrow

Our history with Splitbrow began way back in 2008 - my first year of running Cuddeback Captures. I set a camera over the scrape on the top of the hill under some century old oak trees. Almost every year there was a well used scrape underneath the oak on the west side of the hilltop. I hung the camera on the afternoon of October 28th, 2008. Immediately the buck pictures came pouring in. I had 15 different bucks hit that scrape in the month that the camera was up. There was everything from yearlings to 4+ year old bucks using the scrape with most bucks being 2 and 3. A small basket rack 8 point, two which nobody would pay attention, made his way to the scrape on the 20th of November for the first time. He had the rack of a two year old and the face of a fawn. We learned later that he must've been a late born fawn. His body was small, but I didn't want to over estimate his size so I assumed he was a 2 year old in 2008.

The next season, on November 2nd at 4am, we got two pictures of a buck that looked familiar. This buck had a typical 9 point frame with a split brow tine. It took me a while to connect the dots that this was the same deer, but it was because of his forward facing brows and short face that I knew it was him. So now the buck has a name - Splitbrow.

We got a couple more pictures of him in 2009, but that was about it. We couldn't really patten him or find much of a range, which I'm now learning is typical of a 3 year old.

A neighbor picked up his sheds that spring.

In the summer of 2010, at the same camera I started getting pictures of Scabby along with many other future hitlist bucks, I got a few pictures of Splitbrow. Some in July and a few in August.

Then he disappeared until October 15th. We caught him on the same logging road we did the year before at 10:15am - kind of an odd time to be moving that early in the fall. Must've been a doe that came into heat because there were two bucks that came by there that same morning at 6:30am.

We didn't pick up on Splitbrow at all again until November 10th at the scrape on the top of the hill. It was raining and his antlers were all slicked up.

We got another picture of him back at the scrape by the lone oak just a little ways to the west (kind of an alternate scrape). He came by at 10:00pm on the nose and this probably remains the best picture of him overall.

He definitely was mature, we thought 4.5. We never got any more pictures of him again, which was odd. The same neighbor managed to pick up his left side from that year in the spring.

The summer of 2011 came quickly and we decided to start a few new mineral sites. We hung a camera over one of them on the oak ridge and in the first half of June we got lots of pictures of ol' Splitbrow.

Then he disappeared and I fully expected to pick him back up in the Tweeten woods where he had frequented the summer before. Not the case. Hindsight tells me that he may have fed in those beans, but once he was crossed by Scabby, he moved on. Either way he was 5.5 years old and had to be around somewhere. I decided to move my cameras around a bit at the end of summer into places they hadn't been. I bought a new Bushnell Trophy Cam HD and set it up NW of Pete's where they had dozed the willows and we had picked up a few sheds that spring. I put it up on the 4th of October and by the 7th, I had Splitbrow on film. He only came by once, but he took his sweet time, so I got plenty of videos.

I had really hoped him to make a jump to a 135-140 deer, but he actually shrunk up a little. He kept the same mass and lost a little tine length. Thinking he would come back up and work the scrape by the cabin, I moved my camera up there on the 26th of October and caught him redhanded on the 28th.

We also picked him up on the same logging road the next day on the 29th.

Again trying to move my cameras around a bit I brought one down to my stand SE of the landing where I shot at Tank and killed Crazy 8. I hung that camera on the afternoon of the 5th and got him there on the evening of the sixth. My friend Zach got him on camera the day before. So we know he's in the immediate area.

On Thursday the 10th of November, dad had an encounter with Pencil and let him go. The next day, Friday the 11th, dad had another buck come towards the ladder stand and after he counted 10 points he shot. It was the two year old 10. Steph and I were on our way to GF when dad text me a picture of his dead buck and asked me which one it was. I was a little upset. Later that afternoon/evening as we were sitting down for supper at Whitey's restaurant in EGF I got another text that said Splitbrow was dead!

Sure enough Mom shot him! Apparently a doe came out on the strip near the south end of the shack field and dad saw it first. Mom eventually saw it and soon after a buck came behind her. Light was starting to fade quickly and she made up her mind to shoot. After fumbling with her safety a bit, she made a great shot and he only made it 50 yards. Neither mom nor dad realized it was Splitbrow when she shot. What a trophy for mom.  A five and half year old buck. Finally. We got lots of pictures eventually and both mom and dad were fit to be tied.

Dad did a european mount for mom and it looks beautiful.
Splitbrow was a classic story. He was most likely a wanderer until he established some type of dominance at 4.5 and then his core area was defined by the older more dominant bucks around him. I wonder what kept him from going north or west of where he was. To the south was Scabby. To the west is probably Bullwinkle. Where's Mr. 140? North? Our neighbor picked up Splitbrow's matching set as a 3.5 year old and his left single as a 4.5 year old. Pretty great history.