Finding Dead Head Bucks

Courtesy of Bill Winke

I do like finding sheds; I just don’t have the patience to walk for hours and not find anything. As a result, I generally just hunt the easy spots and then focus on scouting or planning my food plots.

I have had a great run of antler hunting so far this year!

As much fun as it is to find shed antlers, I really hate it when I find a good buck dead. It happens just about every winter. This year, I found what appears to be a really nice 3 year old dead. Last year, I found what I know was a really nice three year old dead.

It is so rare to get a buck with really good genetics regardless of the area, and then to have that deer die of natural causes is a real bummer. I believe they kill each other more often than we think. Over the years, I have seen enough bucks with really nasty infections limping around after the season to realize it happens more often than we think.

They are amazingly tough, and many of them pull through their injuries, but a certain percentage die every year. Bucks are also more vulnerable to cars in the fall than does, because the bucks are covering so much ground during the rut.

There is no real point to this; I just wanted to remind you to pay due respect to any buck that makes it to old age, and especially one with great genetics. That buck absolutely beat the odds even in areas with limited hunting pressure.

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