Up close. Changing to a winter coat but still not in hard antler. WE do have some in hard antler now and got a video of a couple young bucks sparring on 8/29.
Unfortunately this is the biggest busk I have at my place . My cousins camera caught a pic of him as did mine.
Well so far, looking like a bumper crop. The 12pt that survived last season is still MIA. Hope he shows up yet. Oh and the 200lbs of corn most certainly did not rot! Took 4 days for them to get on it, and another 4 to eat most all of it. Pics indicate that the coons helped out significantly.
You will want to go south of me. South Georgia has some monsters, some that rival some midwest states. My deer don't seem to get very wide racks but will get heavy antlers but they just don't grow to be monsters. If you want to come down here there is a room at the farm you can stay in and I will set you someplace on the property.
Hunting pressure in the area has relaxed quite a bit in the last five years. Results starting to show. Got a new lease neighbor last year that seems to be interested in improving the herd. Good news: The land he leased borders me by probably 65%. A utility company owns the land he has leased and has been a pita through the years with non-sanctioned hunters running amok on it and inevitably crossing into my ground. Hoping he will police it well and protect what he paid for. I will benefit from his efforts there, while he is benefiting from my management practices.
What is the purpose of velvet? And why do they scrape it off? Ya, that photographer is in WY somewhere, guessing up NW, he gets gorgeous shots!
Antlers are alive. Velvet caries the blood and nourishment to them as they grow. They then harden off and it falls off. I have heard it itches them i guess like a healing cut? They also scrape it off in scent marking and marking twrritory/shows of doninace in rub lines. Once they harden off the antler is dead. It breaks off and nothing. When it breaks off in velvet it bleeds. Velvet antlers can get ticks too. Antlers fall off and grow back every season. Horns grow for the life of an animal like fingernails, the ends are always dead and they grow from the bases on the bottom as antlers grow from bottom but also extend and grow in girth along the lengh of them while live. Usually only males of a species have antlers, one exception is caribu where both grow them. I am not a biologist in full disclosure, just a hunter and have several college level wildlife biology classes.
That's mostly because many moons ago they transplanted some big whitetails from Wisconsin into Georgia.
That is mostly very true except for the getting off of the velvet. The rubs you find on trees are not made from rubbing velvet off. To get velvet off they usually sort of swipe their antlers into branches and sometimes tall weeds to get the velvet off. Once that is off then you'll find them making the rubs that show up on the trees. It is an amazing thing.