This is a picture of the Mini-Beast Buck last night, which means he stripped the velvet clean off his rack one day last week in late August. The bottom picture is of Mini-Beast with growing velvet antlers in July. The best description of the velvet-shedding ritual I have ever read comes from the research book Way of the Whitetail by Leonard Lee Rue III: Usually in the last week of August and the first week of September, the bucks begin to peel the velvet from their antlers. Mature bucks often peel four to five days earlier than the younger bucks, but I have seen younger bucks peel first on many occasions. Whereas up to this point the bucks have done everything possible [...]

A buddy shot me an email last night saying he’d spotted a buck with a tall rack outside his ears. The hay was too high so he couldn’t count points, but I told him to keep an eye on that dude. His antlers will continue to grow a quarter-inch or more a day over the next month, so he ought to be a shooter. John also said there were lots of little deer running around on his farm, so the fawn crop was good. You learn that kind of stuff by getting out there and going for walks and seeing what you see. Here are 4 more facts about summer antler growth I bet you didn’t know. I got them from Way [...]

Louis from Wisconsin posted this on Facebook:  Yesterday this little guy (picture) was lying in the road as mom (doe) watched in the ditch. I got out of the car and gave him a nudge on the butt and he got up and went into the ditch by his mom. Mom just stayed there looking at me as I helped the little fawn out. As we drove off they wondered back in the woods and trotted off together. Here in Virginia Saturday, my friend Ray was driving out his long gravel driveway through the woods. A doe jumped across the road and a tiny fawn “literally fell out of her onto the shoulder of the driveway,” Ray said. The thing was tiny, [...]

  Just in time to freak out the Memorial Day crowds that pack onto the beaches at Nags Head, heart of  the barrier island where I have vacationed many times, comes this story from WABF. A surfer dude found this weird fish that had washed ashore, and he photographed it. Because of its appearance and its long and very high dorsal fin biologists…believe the fish is a lancetfish... Lancetfish have large mouths and sharp teeth and are typically known to be deepwater fish… Very little is known about the lancetfish's biology… This we do know. With its eel-like body and piranha head and teeth, that is one strange- looking critter. Photo: Leif Rasmussen