Well, I pretty much called it a wrap for bucks this season as of yesterday afternoon. We are experiencing brutally cold temps with chill factors well below zero daily now, with not much relief in the forecast. I sat for two to three hours at a time before I felt what I suspected as being rigor mortis starting to set in. Between icy stands, drifting snow on top of what we already have, shelf ice crossing creeks, frigid temps, lots of bucks shedding their antlers, lots of standing corn, frozen trail cameras and camcorders, fogging optics, hard to start vehicles, etc. it kind of took a bit of the fun out of it for me. Its been a very memorable season with lots of fun, many close encounters, some very nice bucks passed up, great camcorder footage and trail camera photos. I'm already looking forward to October 2010. Plus I still have several doe tags left to put some meat in the freezer when and if this cold spell passes next week. I picked up another fresh shed five point antler the day after Christmas. The buck had kicked it off rather than waiting for it to shed normally. Almost an inch of his skull plate came off with the antler. According to sightings and trail cam pics, I would say about 30% of our bucks already shed at least one antler by New Years....even year and a half old bucks. They seem to be shedding much earlier than they used to only a decade or so ago, I suspect due to stress from the cold compounded by better sex ratios and age structure in the herds with lots of competition among bucks. I did pass up another really nice buck day before yesterday. I had a hard time letting him walk past me at fifteen yards this late in the game. He was a mature buck but just fell short of my 160" minimum for this season. Gray muzzle with a dark forehead. I'll have Steve O. post a photo, as I had a camera on the trail right by my stand. It was interesting how he happened by. I heard a deer snort from almost 300 yards upwind of me in some open CRP. I glassed to find a nice buck snorting at my pickup truck. He had walked up a ridge and bumped right into my parking spot. He snorted twice and then ran right to me. So much for strategy! He slowed to a fast walk after a hundred yards or so and then walked even slower as a doe appeared from a draw he went into. He actually walked right past the doe and continued on toward the gap above the header where I was sitting. Like I said, it was a tough call but I can live with it. And so can he :>) There is still a lot of satisfaction involved for me in passing up nice bucks for one reason or another. According to the trail cameras, there has been a lot of nocturnal activity with the full moon this last week. The hours around dusk and dawn saw most movement. This has been one of my best seasons. When you hunt with a recurve bow, limit shots to inside the 25 yard line, shoot only at 160" class mature bucks, etc. I suspect one can expect to eat a buck tag or two no matter how hard you try. As a wise man once said, the satisfaction is all in the journey. Happy New Year folks!
Topic: Incredible two days of big bucks (Read 1649 times)
