Buck Hollow Sporting Goods - click or touch to visit their website Midwest Habitat Company

Early shed year? Brother’s buck shed at shot

Sligh1 said:
My buddy has big farm & a smaller farm SE of Des Moines about 30 mins.... he knows his stuff & follows things close.
his big farm ran out of food a while ago. His words “I’m 100% shed. Never seen anything like it”. Pretty high deer #’s.
Other farm has a little food left & lil less deer. Said “guessing 60%”.
Both of us have watched this stuff for years. Never seen shed this early. Mind boggling.

Imagine if we had the late shed buck season still? Would have been a blood bath for shed bucks this year.
still wondering what is the cause of this early shedding. ?!??!?????!??????
Click to expand...
Were you guys dry anytime that could have caused some stress at all
 
I have every mature buck on cam carrying both sides. Have a couple 1/2 rack forkies. Nature varies wildly, and we all seem to waste a lot time trying to figure it out. In my case it could be as simple as there has been 0 pressure on them since shotgun season. They bed and feed as they please, and burn as few calories as possible.
 
Have not seen a antler on a 2yr old or older for 10 days already! All bald here!
c2cdfb5aad386275cfe09f99ea5d24ae.jpg


Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk
 
Bought my farm 3 yrs ago and was a mild winter came down to shed hunt and go to deer classic 1st sat in March and never found a shed! Looked at chip on Monday and almost all still carrying?? Came back 2 weeks later and found 5 sheds!! Really varies yr to yr!

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk
 
It’s crazy how it varies so much. We pulled our cams early last week so I’m out of the loop now but as of then we were probably approaching 40% shed. I WAS NOT shed hunting when I went and pulled the cameras, want to wait for them all to drop and have the whole family looking for them. But I literally about drove over this one so I had to take it lol. Even with all this said, I will wait until mid to late February before I start shed hunting. I’m getting the itch just as bad as anybody, but would much rather not push the deer around and add stress until I’m sure most of them have dropped. This year I would be comfortable going the first weekend of March, usually would wait another week or two to make the big shed hunts. This weather coming in might keep some early shed hunters out of the woods, you have to have a screw loose to try to find sheds under all this snow.
bdbeb0b5b64d623291c242c5ee549f71.jpg



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I have no idea if it affects shedding or not, but an observation. As a farmer, maybe I'm more tuned in to this than others. Have you ever noticed how deer feed heavily in fresh picked corn and bean fields? As the days go by it tapers off, really tapering off if we get a heavy rain that accelerates decomposition of waste grain. We had an extremely early harvest this past fall, and farmers have geared up to get crops out FAST because of the wet falls we have had lately. I noticed a real drop off of deer feeding in a bean field next to my timber after about 3 weeks post harvest. It was harvested in Sept. Same with a cornfield harvested early on one side of the road vs. one harvested 3 weeks later on the other side of the road. Did deer run out of "easy' food earlier than normal?
 
turkeyriver said:
I have no idea if it affects shedding or not, but an observation. As a farmer, maybe I'm more tuned in to this than others. Have you ever noticed how deer feed heavily in fresh picked corn and bean fields? As the days go by it tapers off, really tapering off if we get a heavy rain that accelerates decomposition of waste grain. We had an extremely early harvest this past fall, and farmers have geared up to get crops out FAST because of the wet falls we have had lately. I noticed a real drop off of deer feeding in a bean field next to my timber after about 3 weeks post harvest. It was harvested in Sept. Same with a cornfield harvested early on one side of the road vs. one harvested 3 weeks later on the other side of the road. Did deer run out of "easy' food earlier than normal?
Click to expand...

I don’t think so. We were hammered by the derecho and also a big seed corn county and the fields were harvested in September and early October. Deer are still hammering the fields. Heck I have corn and alfalfa out and the deer are still in the background eating in the field harvested Oct 12th.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Our ag fields got covered by 6-8 inches of snow with a hard crust of ice on top 2 weeks or so ago. Crunchy enough it supports my over fed frame. Deer are struggling to get at the Derecho waste grain. I got the Jeep stuck trying to bust it up some, ended up using the tractor to drive around the field a bit. 4-8" of snow forecasted for tomorrow. Should only speed up the shedding in my area.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom