Deer Droppings 2016

Welcome to our Deer Droppings for 2016!

What are our deer droppings? That's simple, they are simply observations and thoughts that we have about whitetail deer and the outdoors as the year goes along. We also thought that calling them deer droppings was a little more creative than calling them our deer thoughts and observations. Hopefully the name will put a smile on your face!

How often will we find deer droppings? It's hard to tell when something will catch our fancy, but it won't be every day. Our fancy can be hard to catch at times so look for something about once a month.

A Trophy Spike

On my last trip I found another shed antler.....a trophy spike.  Now I always like finding the biggest shed antlers from our deer, but the difficulty of finding a spike makes them special as well.

The good news is that I found it on the path leading to some protein feed.  This little fellow needs to eat a lot of protein feed!

Just for the fun of it I measured the spike at over 6 inches.  This fellow only needs about 100 more inches and a decent spread to make Pope & Young!  He's well on his way!

With some rain and warm temperatures our food plots have started to green up.  Emma Sue has sent me a couple of pictures of the pipeline and it already looks greener than a week ago.  This little spike lived on this pipeline.  Eat Up!

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More Shed Antlers

This has been a good year for shed antlers.  I thought that since we didn't have our corn feeders running we would have a hard time finding shed antlers, but once again I was wrong.

Ryan and Emily have found two sets of antlers, both out in the open in the right of way and field.  It looks like the deer are spending a lot of time in the clover in these locations.

They found an eight point set and a seven point set.  This gives us two complete eight point sets of sheds, one seven point set and one side of another seven point buck. 

These along with two spikes that we've seen tell us that we have at least six bucks still around.  The two eights and two seven point bucks give us hope for next year.  We know that overbite will be a big buck and we hope the three smaller bucks will grow over the coming year.  Hopefully they stay in the clover and take advantage of our protein feed and pack on a lot of size.

Here is Emma Sue with one set of antlers.

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Shed Antlers

Since we've taken our cameras out of the woods we don't have the information about the deer that are left on our property that we had in the past.  This has made us go back to the older ways of determining what bucks survived on our property, one of which is finding shed antlers.

On January 29th I went to put out some protein feed for our deer and discovered a shed antler laying only about five feet from the container we put the feed in.  Since I had put feed at this location the evening before, this antler was shed within the prior twelve hours.

It turned out that this antler was from the buck we called overbite.  I was glad to find the antler and even more happy to know that he was still calling our place home.  He should be the biggest buck on our place next year.

When you find one shed it always spurs you on to look for others so I took a quick walk through the woods which didn't turn up more sheds.

Not being deterred I slowly rode the four wheeler through the small food plot nearby and found another shed antler.  This antler is from a seven point buck that we got pictures of during deer season.

After dropping off some feed near the new pipeline I decided to ride the pipeline slowly and look for sheds.  There was still snow on the ground so I was looking for signs of antlers sticking out of the snow.  Right after getting on the four wheeler I saw antler tips sticking out of the snow about twenty feet below me on the pipeline.  It turned out to be the other side of overbite's antlers.  We now had his complete set of antlers.

The other method of determining what bucks we have left is to simply see them. On Thursday evening I saw a spike with one spike left at the middle clearing and another spike on the pipeline so we know that we have four bucks left at the very least.  I told both spikes to eat a lot of the protein feed.  They need to do a lot of growing.

Here is the picture of the first shed as I found it lying in the snow and below that is a picture of overbite still wearing his headgear.

Read our deer droppings from 2015.