Around here, the bucks shed their antlers mainly during March but some late shedders do it in early April. It’s the end of the “Buck Year” for whitetail bucks. And equally important, April is when those same bucks begin growing their new antlers — which appear as bulbous bumps where the recently shed antlers separated from the buck’s skull.
It’s common to see beginner antlers during May. As the bucks main beams get longer the positions for the buck’s brow tines and points are established. The main beams continue to get longer and so do the brow tines and points.
In late August and early September the bone of the antlers stop growing. So does the velvet around the antler’s bone. Then that velvet constricts. And lastly, the velvet comes loose from the finished antler.
For me, it’s camera time.
I prefer to take pictures from a ground blind. You get a realistic angle of the deer as well as the terrain around you. Here is a buck from this morning. He stepped out of the trees a few yards behind where he is in the picture.
The buck walked in my direction and passed to the left side of my blind.
Twenty minutes later the same buck came by on the right side of the blind. I didn’t know it yet but he had seen something I hadn’t.
He stopped walking and came to attention. Obviously, he was looking at something. Then noticed a doe’s head, shoulders and part of it’s back take shape at the edge of the woods in the tall weeds.
The buck dropped his head and took a few steps toward the doe. However, the doe was not having any of this buck’s attention and it hurried into the woods and disappeared from view.
Next up were two bucks traveling together. The duo passed me on the right and I got a picture of them just before they went into the woods where the doe had gone.
So, that is the beginning of the 2019 deer pictures. There is gonna be more.
