better hury,,,bucks staring to drop antlers!!!

[Gofishleech]

I got a pick on the trail cam of a buck that has shed his antlers. Can,t tell how big they are but the deer looks big and I have a 140 class buck that im hunting in the area and I hope its not him,,,,o-well maybe its time to go ice fishing.

[lawdog]

WOW is that early. I've never heard of any deer around here dropping antlers this early...

[Mark Christianson]

Any chance the buck was wounded? I know its hard to say, but if they get wounded, their body will speed things up in trying to get the wound healed up.

My neighbor shot one last year with his muzzleloader, and found it had been shot in the front shoulder weeks before. It was healing nicely.

He got the deer to the truck, and an antler fell off. Right at the base, just as you would expect any shed to look like.

[Iceman77]

I have also found that wounded deer will loose their racks earlier. Another thing I have found is if the deer have been fighting very aggressively and were really run down after the rut they will also loose their racks a little early. I have seen 2 bucks around Hutch already with no head gear!!! I have also seen bucks before with racks by the end of January. I do believe a lot of it depends on how aggressive that particular deer was during the rut and how much it depleted its resources.

[Eric_Sieve]

Yea, it depends on a lot of things, i am really prayin that the ones in my area didn't!!! I've seen 'em with gear until late feb/early march shining.......

[jlm]

I was bow hunting three years ago (I think) when along came a very nice 8 pointer. He stops in my lane and all of the sudden jumped in the air and bolted into the woods. He later came back and started sniffing the antler which just fell from his head. That was before Christmas a couple of days. He was not wounded and appeared very healthy. I did not shoot the deer. That is the freshest shed I have in my collection! Thay can and do lose their head gear early in certain areas. However, I think the majority lose theirs after the new year and even into February!

[hunt4food]

Funny you mentioned that. I have a friend who took what appeared to be a doe with his blackpowder on the last day of the season in Washinton County. He was amazed to see a nice healthy buck that had already dropped his antlers.

[TomBow]

Did he have it registered as an antlerless deer? I have asked the DNR about post-shed bucks and what the DNR considers them (legal bucks) or antlerless because I thought I saw something in the regs about it being illegal to possess a deer that had broken off or damaged antlers. Just curious.

[bigbucks]

It has to be considered an antlerless deer. How could you possibly know it's a buck if it doesn't have antlers? I agree it's not okay to knock the horns off a buck & say it's a doe, but if they're not there & you thought you were shooting a doe, you did nothing wrong, you can't be penalized for that. We had a buck during gun season that had broken both spikes or whatever he had off, & it was tagged as a doe. A game warden looked at it & said it was fine.

[Mark Christianson]

Part of the reason we have "anterless" permits instead of "doe" permits.

[hunt4food]

I am not sure how he tagged and registered it. I immediately assumed the same as someone above said. It was "anlerless" when it was harvested and he also told me he could see that it was partially scabbed over so I suppose it would have been easy to prove he hadn't knocked the antlers off himself.

[benelli_dude2002]

I was up at my folks place in Morson Ontario for Christmas eve. My dada and I went for a snowmobile ride looking for any wolf-kills and checked out a few cabins along the way. We seen 2 deer running on the ice and they were both nice 8 pointers. About the average size I guess one was a little wider than the other. You can tell that they were running for a while because their tongues were hanging out flopping around kinda like a dog. 2 years ago i was hunting up on the lake on the Ontario side and shot a buck with his antlers dropped and this was Dec.6th. Before I shot it i could plainly see the flat spot where the antlers were and he must've just dropped them because it was still red on top. The season up there goes til dec 15 in case you were wondering. A few years ago also I shot a moose thinking it was cow and walked up to it and was a bull that dropped his headgear and this was dec 8th. At first we didnt notice the 2 spots on his head where the antlers were, we lifted up his leg to dress him out and it was a male and thats when we looked closer at his head. I guess every animal is different on when they lose their antlers. Happy new year to all, Brian

[TomBow]

As suspected, a buck that has dropped antlers becomes an antlerless deer in the eyes of the DNR. Yeah, I know it seems like a no brainer but I just had to check with the DNR to be sure and they confirmed it.