Dropping horns

[Mr. Longbeard]

Deer in western Md are dropping horns... Seen 2 bucks with freshly dropped horns yesterday

[Marylandbowhunter]

A buddy of mine found 11 sheds on tuesday . Only 2 were from last year

[WestVirginiaBrent]

They're dropping them in central WV as well and already back to bachelor groups.

I found a set of fresh sheds during Muzzleloader, the rodents had already ate them pretty damned bad too, would have been big ones. The pictures don't do them justice, I plan on rebuilding them and putting them on the cabin wall, I ordered the tine repair stuff from Van Dyke's Taxidermy last week. It will be some work but they're fixable.

[Shed94]

Nice finds WestVirginiaBrent!

[BTBowhunter]

Man, you got some hungry squirrels down your way!

[WestVirginiaBrent]

ORIGINAL: BTBowhunter

Man, you got some hungry squirrels down your way!

Seriously. When I showed a pic to my hunting buddy he said, "now you know why we don't find sheds..."

The deer in my area do drop their antlers fairly early but this one was real early. The largest buck ever taken from our property didn't have antlers. At the time I thought itmust have been a freak, but now I think the truly large bucks just breed harder, lose that testosterone level and lose their antlers in early December. In the last few years we have lost most trespassers because our game warden friend is on our land a lot and the power company bought out most of our neighbors land to put up a conveyor belt for the coal so we're finally seeing some decent bucks but the movement of deer is easily cut in half, which I'll gladly accept if it means not having a bunch of trespassers disrupting my hunts.

Unfortunately we're going to have to address another big problem back there, irresponsible neighbors letting their dogs run deer 24/7. I don't have the heart to shoot a dog, but a few of my buddies sure do.

[sproulman]

47 years hunting in woods with lots of bucks and i never found a shed and not 1 of our 20 guys in our gang did also.

but we never hunted after the first 2 weeks of buck too so they may have had their horns on then.

yet, we always killed a buck or 2 then in season with fresh horns off.

[sproulman]

ORIGINAL: WestVirginiaBrent

Seriously. When I showed a pic to my hunting buddy he said, "now you know why we don't find sheds..."

The deer in my area do drop their antlers fairly early but this one was real early. The largest buck ever taken from our property didn't have antlers. At the time I thought itmust have been a freak, but now I think the truly large bucks just breed harder, lose that testosterone level and lose their antlers in early December. In the last few years we have lost most trespassers because our game warden friend is on our land a lot and the power company bought out most of our neighbors land to put up a conveyor belt for the coal so we're finally seeing some decent bucks but the movement of deer is easily cut in half, which I'll gladly accept if it means not having a bunch of trespassers disrupting my hunts.

Unfortunately we're going to have to address another big problem back there, irresponsible neighbors letting their dogs run deer 24/7. I don't have the heart to shoot a dog, but a few of my buddies sure do.

all years in woods, i never saw dog chasing a deer other than hunters beagle on trail of doe .

i did see a guy shoot 3 beagles with a 22-250 accross river, it was terible thing to see.

some kid left gate open and beagles went on deer scent.

i dont believe they should have been shot, no way they could run that doe down,they were just following the scent.

i could see it if dog was jumping at rear legs of deer and getting close to possibly killing doe, but a BEAGLES, no way.

i had my dog shot at by a road hunter shooting grouse out his chevy s-10 window.

HE THOUGHT IT WAS BLACK COYOTE WITH A EMERALD GREEN COLLAR ON IT.[:@]

stupid drug addict son of b.[:@]


you would not believe how mad i was, i had my finger on trigger of my shotgun,then i saw that my dog was ok.

if he was shot dead,i know i would have killed that DRUG ADDICT LOSER SON OF B ROAD HUNTER WELFARE SON OF B.

[Buck Hunter 1]

I've been talking w/ quite a few good hunters in 2D, no bucks shot. We believe the horns came off esar;ly this year on larger deer. I saw a bunch of small bucks (2D requires4 on one side) We saw shooter bucks in bow season and got a decent 7 point. But this gun season has smoked some good old boys. This is the foirst year in a long time we have only 1 bow buck and no gun bucks, not beciuase of misses, just saw nothing to shoot?)*^%$#@

[Canuck33]

I've got cam pics of buck woth and wothout bone on so I know they are dropping, I also shot a small buck the last weekend of NY season that had dropped his horns. I went shedding this past weekend in all the hot areas didn't find any sheds but found 2 great bucks one 140 class 8 and another great 1 1/2yr 8 pt that were casualties of the season.