26 04, 2021

Why Do Some Bucks Shed Antlers Late In Spring?

2021-04-26T10:16:26-04:00April 26th, 2021|Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Deer Hunting, Shed Hunting, whitetail deer|Comments Off on Why Do Some Bucks Shed Antlers Late In Spring?

Hey Mike: It was an easy winter on whitetails this year in NE North Dakota. We had very little snow and only about 1 week with really cold temperatures. The deer should be in good health. I got this picture of a buck still holding his antlers on April 10th! Does that seem abnormally late? What is the latest you have heard of whitetails dropping their sheds this far north? I figured it was possible considering the mild winter. Other ideas that crossed my mind were, is this an antlered doe? But usually, antlered does remain in velvet. Or maybe this was a buck who got injured or otherwise had low testosterone?--Derek Plautz Derek, thanks for checking in. I believe [...]

25 02, 2021

Shed Hunting: Most Antlers You Find Are From Mature Bucks

2021-02-25T09:16:44-05:00February 25th, 2021|Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Deer Hunting, Shed Hunting, whitetail deer|1 Comment

The Deer Lab at Auburn University has a 430-acre high-fenced facility. All the deer inside the fence are well known and documented. During the 7-year-period from 2012 to 2018, biologists and grad students were inside the facility daily, working, doing research, taking samples and looking around. They found only 284 of 747 (39%) of antlers they knew were shed by the bucks during that period. They analyzed the antlers they found, and determined from their records and data that the average age of the bucks that cast them was 5½ years. For the antlers that were never found, the average age of the bucks was 3½. Bottom line: The larger antlers of older bucks are easiest to see and pick [...]

21 02, 2021

Hunt Sheds In Deer Bedding Areas

2021-02-23T10:48:30-05:00February 21st, 2021|Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Deer Hunting, Shed Hunting, sportsman channel, whitetail deer|Comments Off on Hunt Sheds In Deer Bedding Areas

When you’re out shed-hunting, pick up a deer trail and follow it for a few hundred yards to a half-mile or more, until you come to a thick and obvious deer bedding area. In winter a good one is a brushy southern exposure that gets midday sunlight, or the east side of a grassy ridge where deer hunker out of a northwest wind. You're apt to find fresh deer beds, tracks and dropping in the melting snow here. Back in hunting season you would have stopped before entering the bedding cover, tested the wind and worked the outer fringes of the sanctuary so as not to spook any deer. But now, plow right in. Of all the sheds you find [...]

10 02, 2021

Why Deer Shed Their Antlers Every Year

2021-02-10T09:39:40-05:00February 10th, 2021|Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Deer Hunting, Deer Science, Shed Hunting, whitetail deer|Comments Off on Why Deer Shed Their Antlers Every Year

Why do buck deer spend so much time and energy growing new antlers each spring and summer only to shed them 5 or 6 months later? Scientists have chewed on this for years, but “we still don’t know exactly why,” says noted whitetail biologist Dr. Mickey Hellickson, who points to a couple of theories. Some biologists believe bucks (whitetail and mule) shed their old racks each January or February so they’ll have the ability to replace antlers that might get damaged over the course of the year. If a buck had to live his entire life with snapped tines or a broken main beam, he couldn’t intimidate rivals or posture for does in the local hierarchy. A second theory suggests [...]

27 01, 2021

Ohio: Land Of The Giant Deadhead Bucks

2021-01-26T10:27:53-05:00January 27th, 2021|Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Bowhunting, Deer Hunting, Shed Hunting, whitetail deer|1 Comment

A couple of days ago a guy on Twitter posted this photo, and it broke the hunting Internet. I’ve now seen it Tweeted dozens of times and it’s all over Facebook and Instagram as well. From what I can piece together, hunter Jason Kline found the massive deadhead about a week ago on a big tract in northwest Ohio (not high fence) that doesn’t allow any actual hunting, although Jason does have permission to look for sheds there. As you might expect, a buck like this was no secret. People and hunters in the area knew the big deer and had named him Herman. Trail camera pictures of Herman have since showed up online. Nobody knows how the massive buck [...]

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