February 2, 2007

Aaron and I went out today in hopes of finding some muley sheds since we've heard they've been dropping in our area.   We headed out to an area that we saw some muley bucks a couple weeks before.

I wasn't sure what I had here when I spotted these tines, but I knew it was fresh. 

What a treasure...my biggest whitetail shed of the year.  I thought it was a muley shed at first since we were in mule deer country and their tracks were everywhere.  This buck looked to be past his prime; he has a lot of sticker points around the base and pretty good mass.

Further along Aaron spotted this. I heard the "Whoo Hoo" and ran up the hill as fast as I could in my snowshoes to see what he'd found.  This could have easily been missed if we'd been a little lower or higher.

A dandy mule deer shed. It took a second to dig it out of the snow since it was stuck fast in the ice.  We weren't sure if it would be a muley shed or a whitetail....makes it kinda exciting.  

This little guy had a split off the G3....

Not much further down the hill, I spotted this through the trees. 

A good muley shed for sure.....

We continued on along a steep hillside. I looked up above me and spotted two little tines sticking out against the green grass. 

My biggest mule deer shed!!!!!!!!!!  just kidding!  My new smallest muley shed.

We ran into a pretty nice buck still packing. He had a rather heavy rack with some extra junk on his G3 point. We watched him for awhile, hoping that one or both might just fall off
We saw a couple more shedheads, and saw another buck packing only one antler. We didn't want to push them so we just circled around at a distance and went a different direction so they wouldn't be stressed. We want to make sure they don't leave that area since we know where they've been hanging.
Then I heard it again..."Whoo Hoo" and Aaron said it was nice..... So I trucked it up through the snow to him and saw it from quite a distance. I dandy with a little split at the top of G3.

We stood about 5 feet from it and took pictures. I took a number ATL pics while Aaron look around (at a distance) for his match! When I was done taking pics, I told him he could pick it up....That's when I spotted the match, maybe a foot away from Aaron's side.
It had landed tine down and was pretty much buried, but upon reviewing some of our pics when we got home, we could see it in the first pictures we were taking

My side and the set together...  A dandy set for sure!

February 4, 2007

I lucked out today....I was supposed to work, but they over staffed me since we didn't have enough patients!!!!!!!!!  So that meant we got to go shed hunting!

We decided to go back to the place we were on Friday to see if we could find a couple more muley sheds. We were hoping the nice buck we'd seen still packing, had decided to drop his antlers for us!  We also knew of three other sides yet unaccounted for.

We were able to take the dogs with us today!!!! Kodi was feeling much better and instantly turned into a puppy as soon as he got out of the truck!  We hoofed it up and up until it was time to put the snowshoes on. I felt pretty bad for the dogs. We need to get them some "doggie snowshoes" so they can keep up in the deep stuff.

Tundra and I were heading up along some muley tracks when I looked up and about 30 yards away I saw two antlerless deer watching us. They moved slowly up and away, heading toward Aaron. Tundra and I moved a bit left of where they were, but continued uphill. That is when I saw this.....

So exciting once the first of the day is found...at least I knew we weren't going home skunked!

Upon closer inspection...it was the bigger side from the nice buck we'd seen on Friday.   It has two little sticker points off G3 and a fair amount of mass and main beam length

Aaron and I made sure we located the tracks that were coming and going from the shed. They had a bit of snow in them, so we figured it had been dropped yesterday. Aaron went North along the tracks, and I went South. Eventually I was going in circles with all the tracks that converged with the set I was trying to follow. Aaron found blood in a bed and in some tracks so we assumed he was on the right track. After walking around for a bit I figured I'd go back to where I started and parallel the hill at that same elevation to see if I could find it. Aaron was sure the antler was around somewhere close sense both of the deer I'd spotted early were shedheads and one of the deer kept shaking his head ...

I started on a new path paralleling where I thought the buck may have walked...and sure enough...

Definitely the match!!!!!!
We knew because the buck we saw on Friday had the stickers off the G3 on the right antler and the left antler had a broken G3. Bummer it was broken, but it's still beautiful, and very fresh! A little sticker point off G2.

We walked for a bit longer before taking cover in the trees for a bite to eat....Here's some pics of how horrible our dogs have it....

After having our fill, we bombed down the hill to new country we hadn't walked yet. We covered the bottom edge of a clearing we missed on Friday and were going to head back to the truck since a pretty good snowstorm was brewing! BUT, we decided to walk one last hillside...
Thank goodness we walked this hillside.....I heard Aaron holler up above me and a sense of relief washed over me  I thought he may be getting fed up with my luck

 Definitely is the match to the four point I found Friday. Same curvy characteristics, and the G2 is shorter just like the other side.

The shed team....

Here's the match set I found today!!!!!!!!!! If that tine hadn't been broken it would have been a 180 class buck. He has great symmetry as it is!!!!!

February 5, 2007

After spending the last couple days at our other muley spot, we decided we needed to find another, but had no idea where to go, other than uphill!!

The weather wasn't ideal, with 40+ temps and snow melting off trees, we were soaked before we even made it to the bottom of the hill we were planning on ascending! It was like hiking around outside in a luke warm sauna with all the humidity.

We hiked and hiked and hiked. Snow was above our knees, and we hadn't brought our snowshoes since we thought we'd be sticking to the timber pockets! Whoops! We were beginning to think we better head for the timber on a different ridge, when we decided to walk a little south facing hillside that had some open ground areas from the sun.

We walked about 5 feet into the area when Aaron let out his "Whoo Hoo"....

A nice four point muley shed....decorated with chew marks already....

Tundra and Kodi getting in on the action!

It was nice to know that our scouting had kinda paid off...we at least knew there were muleys around somewhere recently!
We decided to follow some tracks that continued uphill. The snow was wet and deep, but we followed the sign. I saw a downed tree up ahead of me, and upon getting a little closer I saw a single tine sticking up!

A great forky...

We followed the tracks a bit higher, then decided that the thigh deep snow was too much. We headed down and across a ravine to head up another ridge. We spooked a bull elk in the ravine.

We made it up to the top of the next ridge and found a fair amount of muley sign. Aaron hollered when he found this...

What would have been a fantastic whitetail, (had a lot of mass on the mainbeam), had been chewed on by some sort of critter...not a squirrel. We figure by the chew marks it must of been a canine or feline critter. We had seen both cat tracks and wolf tracks in the area.

We were following some heavily used muley trails and saw a number of deer, but weren't finding the sheds.  Some may have been buried, but we thought for sure that with all the sign we'd find something. We dropped down in elevation and started side hilling back toward the ridgeline. I wasn't too much higher than Aaron; I looked down to see what path he was on when I spotted this...

And that ended our day....for finds at least. We still had to hike our tails off to get to the truck. Probably our biggest hiking day for mileage and elevation accents and decents....we are always learning new stuff about these areas though. Now we know where a couple more muley sheds may be found once the snow melts!

February 12, 2007

Went out with our friend Nate today and only found this little forky.  We were in a lot of sign, but I think there was just too much snow.