First of 2011

The weather has been so beautiful the past few days. Yesterday the temps were in the high 50s, the sun was out and there was nothing that was going to keep us inside. Being the end of January, we knew that it couldn't last long. So with lots of people talking about finding sheds, we decided we would go give it a shot (even though I thought it was a little early for our area). We got out at around 10:30 and began searching. I knew that not that many deer had dropped in our area, so our chances of finding a lot were slim. I thought to myself, if we could find one or two it would be a pretty good day. After a few hours of looking, I began to wonder if we were going to find any. One of the things that I knew needed to be done while I was out, was to put up the two Ameristep ground blinds that were still out from deer season. We made our way to where one of our blinds was supposed to be and there was nothing there but two chairs. I began to wonder and to be honest, I started to get a little mad. I wondered if someone had stolen our blind. I began to walk around the area and actually found the blind about 40 yards from where it was in the woods. The wind must have been blowing incredibly strong to pick up the blind and move it that far. As I walked up to the blind, I just knew that something was going to be ripped or even broken. However, I was amazed to find that nothing was wrong with it at all. We folded it up, layed it down by the chairs and made our way back to the house to get the Stealth. We began searching again as we headed back and Sarah yelled "Matt, I found one!" I started heading her way and asked "is it a good one?", "Ya, but it's attached to a skull." I thought, Oh great, a dead buck. I don't like finding dead deer when shed hunting. When I got up to it, I realized that this buck had to have been dead for at least a couple of years. Upon inspection, I realized that I had never seen this buck or gotten a picture of him. He was a decent 10 pt with exceptional mass. One side of the rack was chewed up pretty bad but the other side was pristine. After looking at the teeth and with the mass that this buck had, I assumed that he probably died of old age. It was a pretty cool find, but we still had not found one shed.

We got the stealth, loaded up both blinds, a few trail cams and headed over to another property. By this time, it was starting to get late and we knew that we didn't have much time to shed hunt on this farm. We decided that we should at least grab the cameras that were still out. We had been out walking for around about 4 hours and by now we were almost certain we weren't going to find a shed. We headed down the trail and there it was! The first shed of the year!

Even though it was not a huge one, it is always a good feeling to get that first one under your belt. It's kind of ironic that we searched almost all day and found nothing, we had nearly given up and there it was laying right on the trail. I was really pumped to find this shed and look forward to finding more.