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Another pretty good 9

SaskGuy

SaskGuy

Active Member
It appears as though I've located the bucks main river running trail. I'm getting buck after buck in the same location, a steep bank leads them through an opening in one spot..buck after buck are appearing on cam, crusing the valley, NONE of them are moving during the day. Here's another pretty good 9 that has moved a mile since late Sept. where I was watching him feed on alfalfa night after night.
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Weak brows..big beams, good mass...he's looking better now!!
nov7_114.jpg
 
Back to nocturnal and cruising...Hang in there, the second round of rut (around thanksgiving) will get them back to day-light hours.

Keep scouting and you'll get them figured out and close the deal.
 
How come they're always dark colored racks up there? Do they all live in brush piles and not get any sun to bleach their racks? Seems like down here in Iowa, you get about half bleached racks from the deer that lay in the crp grass or fencelines and half darker "woods" racks.
 
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: booner12</div><div class="ubbcode-body">How come they're always dark colored racks up there? Do they all live in brush piles and not get any sun to bleach their racks? Seems like down here in Iowa, you get about half bleached racks from the deer that lay in the crp grass or fencelines and half darker "woods" racks. </div></div>

I think it all depends on what they rub on. The farm I hunt has mostly dark racks, it being mostly timber. The other farm I hunt is mostly CRP and ditches, and every buck you see has a bleached rack. I don't know for sure, somebody will probably prove me wrong, but that is what I have heard in the past.
 
where i hunt i have saw dark racks and bleached racks. about 1 out of every 7 bucks i see one is really dark. I hunt in a very think timber area. But yet again idk what to think. That buck is a PIG though. Huge body deer.....
 
Here's my guess on the dark rack theory....bear in mind it is just that a guess.

Most of the bucks here spend almost all their daylight in hours out of direct sunlight. I understand their is timber in Iowa but alot of the habitat is more open, crop fields, CRP etc.....Here
it is mostly dense woods with thick understory and coniferous trees that allow very little light to reach the forest floor. In turn. the antlers stay "dark" as opposed to "fade" in the direct light. Also the trees they rub on here would likely have a different effect on the ones there as there are very simlar trees.

Juest a guess!
 
I agree with you Kaare and what you said is in part what I explain to people when asked the same question. However, I believe that genetics play an important role in this also. I hunted just west of you in 2005 and the biggest buck I seen had antlers as white as snow. This would have been about 40 miles north of the agriculture line so there were no open fields anywhere close by, this was a big woods deer.

Also, while shed hunting in Alberta a few years ago, I found a giant 4 point antler that was as black as any I've ever seen. A short time later and in the same grove of tree's, I found a 75 incher that looked like it came from an Iowa deer. No big woods around the area.

Science says it has something to do with the amount of blood in the velvet when it is shed. To me that doesnt make sense because most times the velvet is peeling because its dried, not full of blood. However, I have seen pictures, and a few were posted here, of bucks stipping velvet and being full of blood.

Who the hell knows!! I'll stick with habitat and genetics. /forum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/crazy.gif
 
I found this on the web. I guess we were all right.

"Mick Hellickson, chief wildlife biologist for the King Ranch in TX and a great friend of the ZONE, says:

The best rule of thumb is that white-antlered bucks are young. Younger bucks tend to have lighter-colored antlers.

But antler coloration is determined by several things, including: (1) buck age (older, more dominant bucks make many more rubs on trees than younger bucks, therefore their antlers tend to be darker; (2) bark coloration of the predominant rubbing trees in a region; (3) genetics (some bucks have light racks in their DNA while other have dark antlers); (4) time of year (early in the fall “new” antlers are darker; later in the season antlers that have been on a buck’s head for 3 or 4 months or more have been exposed to the sun and are more bleached out, especially in open habitats."
 
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