MikeHanback.com

527 Shed Antlers (and other good stuff from this week)

Awesome week on the blog, to recap:

I added up all your shed comments and emails, and the BIG DEER bloggers have found 527 bones so far. Chris in Iowa found this 6-point beauty. Can you say 12-point monster typical this fall? Chris reports that he is excited :)

Velvet bucks were out in force across the nation, guys were spotting records numbers in places. Wonder if the full moon on June 18th and/or the Summer Solstice (20th) had anything to do with it? Always looking for deer-movement theories, man. Antler growth seems to be good to great in most areas.

SCOTUS did the right thing and affirmed our INDIVIDUAL right to own guns for self-defense and hunting. The whining, sniveling antis on TV keep pointing out that Justice Scalia is a hunter--right on!

I was most impressed with the archery advice you guys passed on to Delvin as he searches for a new bow. I must warn you that Delvin will soon be in discussions with Luke Strommen about traditional gear. Luke is, well, a traditional nut. He grew up hunting Milk River bucks with recurves, longbows and wooden arrows--that is all his dad, Eliot, and his brothers shoot to this day. As a kid (hell, he's still a kid, look at the picture) he even hung with the Wensel brothers for some years. When Luke is done with him there is a good shot Delvin will be hunting with a recurve this October. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Have a good weekend, thanks as always for your support.

90 Antlers & a New Shed-Hunting Dog

Robert, a.k.a. SHEDHEAD, sent this great report from northwest Missouri:

Howdy Mike: This year’s shed season turned out to be pretty good. I found a total of 90 sheds, 18 dead antlered bucks and 3 dead shed bucks (love those shed buck skulls).

The season was one of the oddest I've ever encountered. It started off slowly. We saw many antlered deer well into March. I really didn't start finding any until mid-March. By March 1 last year I had 77 sheds (this year only 20 by that date). We never found anything of any real size (big for us is a 70" plus shed) but we did find several in the mid to upper 60s.

Last August we got a Labrador pup and I started working with her and a shed antler. First we would just play fetch. Then I started hiding them and let her find them. Then I would take about 7 sheds into the pasture near the house, hide them and let them lay for several days to get my scent off them. I would tell her to "hunt 'em up" and she would start bird-dogging till she found one. She’d bring it back and then go looking again.

The training definitely worked. She found 19 sheds unassisted this spring. The ones I found, I had her find “assisted.” There's no better feeling than seeing your dog pop out in front of you with an antler in her mouth.

She also found 3 dead bucks but would not retrieve them. She would stand or sit by them till I came over and acknowledged her. I think she wouldn't retrieve because once I scolded her for chewing on a dead deer. She’s a house dog and doesn’t smell too good after eating rotten deer :)

Keep up the awesome work, always look forward to your blog. Robert

I doubt many of you found 90, but tell us how many sheds you did find and in what state. It will be interesting to see how many total antlers the BIG DEER bloggers picked up—300, 500, 1,000, more? And run across any dead antlered bucks? The 18 that Robert found sounds like a lot.

Anybody else got a shed-hunting dog? How cool is that.

Biggest NT Elk Sheds Ever?

Got this picture w/the message: What do 550" plus---maybe 560, 570---non-typical American elk sheds look like? Check these out. I am 5' 10" and 200 lbs., not a elf. These things were heavy and BIG. Absolute minimum 550". Found a couple miles from my shop, LOL.

I don't know a lot about scoring elk antlers, but those are huge. BTW for reference, the top NT American elk antlers in the B&C book score 465.

6-Year Hunt for a Ghost Buck (Giant 8)

Great story behind these giant sheds, which are darn near as big as Chaeli is. Thanks to dad, Cliff, for the guest blog, I've posted it pretty much verbatim. I admire the way Cliff and his brother think and hunt:

This buck was hunted by Cliff and Mike, brothers.
No one else knew of this deer and we weren't talking.
We hunted the big 8 for 6 1/2 years with bow, rifle and muzzleloader.
Scouting was non-stop.
He had 2 core areas, depending on crop rotation.
He was seen maybe a dozen times in 6 1/2 years, always alone.
He never did the same thing twice.
He was never seen rutting.
He had one thing on his mind and he was good at it--SURVIVAL!!
If deer are smart, he was a genius.
He was last seen in December 2005.
Score estimated to be mid to upper 180s.
He had great mass and 18” G2 and G3s at times.
He was never harvested and no other sheds were found.
The last set of sheds we found, he was 4 1/2 years old in 2003. These are the sheds Chaeli is holding. The G2s and G3s on those sheds are 15”.
He was truly a world-class 4 X 4; Mike and I feel very fortunate to have hunted him.
The memories of this deer are long and plentiful, but the dream was short.
To us he will always live in the sheds he was kind enough to let us find.
Thanks, Chaeli's dad, Cliff. 

How Bucks Fight (after they've dropped antlers)

Got this 10 minutes ago from Jim and thought it was cool:

Mike: Ever wonder how deer fight and box once they have lost their antlers? Check these out! They are both young bucks; the does fight like this also. Sometimes they really go at it this time of year!

Shed-Hunting: 3 Big Pick-Ups

Can never post too many big racks on the blog, right? Got these 3 pick-ups in my inbox:

Hey Mike: Nice blog!  I found this buck (left) while mushroom hunting in southern Indiana in 2005. He scored 170. Thanks, David B.

Jeff sent me this one, found by a guy in New Jersey 2005 (good pick-up year). Shows the potential of Jersey…crazy drop tine, LOL!

Steve saw this pic of Lee Lakosky on the Gettin Close website. Lee found that set a few weeks ago…the G-2 monster is one of the coolest shed finds of the year so far.

But more big and gnarly racks are out there, please email me more.   

Cool Winter Coyote Hunt

Scott Geurink wrote and said he was going out to try to thump a few coyotes in Illinois. I wrote back, “Sounds fun, send me story/pics.” He did:

Hi Mike: First day stared out great, got stuck in a ditch and pulled out by a school bus, LOL. We hunted 2 days, saw 21 coyotes and killed 2. A lot of them were off our property, but all the action was nice! We called in one that my buddy, John, shot (first picture); he used a Tikka .223 with Black Hills 52-grain V-Max ammo.

The 12" plus crunchy snow was loud and hard for walking, but it was fun. I finally got into position and shot one at 400 plus, a great memory for me. We had to trail the coyote through the snow and up and down steep ridges. I thought I was going to die by the time we found him! I should be in better shape from all the hard trailing :)

BTW, I was shooting a New England Firearms .223 single shot (second picture) with Black Hills 52-grain match hollow-point ammo. It’s a cheaper gun than most, but man can it pound nails! I've shot a 5-shot group at 120 yards and covered it up with a quarter. Not bad for a $200 dollar gun. Thanks, Scott

A few of observations:

You know you are in a good place with our kind of people when a school bus driver pulls hunters out the ditch. In a lot of places these days they’d leave us stranded. 

We’ve got a lot of guys Scott’s and John’s age on the blog—great to see ya’ll obsessed with guns and hunting, we need more of that in America.

You can fell as much game (more) with a $200 gun as with a $2,000 rifle if it is one of the good ones; you use accurate ammo and a good scope; and shoot a lot.

We all need to kill more coyotes (black bears, cougars, wolves too). To hell with the antis and greenies, gun hunting is the only way to control predators. Good job Scott and John for taking out 2.

Iowa Shed Hunt: Boy Schools Dad, 200" to 0

Thanks to Chris Ellis for this awesome story:

Usually a trip in the Iowa woods with my youngest son, Aaron, consists of stick throwing, snowballs and plain old goofing off. I didn’t know if the boy would ever take shed hunting as serious as Dad does.

Last Friday I picked up a 4-point with junk that went 76”. I’d spent the week watching 8 bucks. Four of them had shed out, 2 still sported both sides and 2 were half racks; the 4-point I had found was off one of those bucks.

The other night after work I took a quick walk to see if I could find the other side. Aaron and I split up. I told him to check a hillside full of deer beds; I would circle around and meet him. When I got 300 yards away Aaron yelled, “Dad, I found one!” Then he yelled, “Dad, I’ve got another one and I think it’s the match!”

When I got over there, he was holding up a dandy match. Aaron’s first unassisted find was a 150-plus set! After a little celebrating we headed to another area. I got a kick out of him telling me, “Now I know what to look for Dad.”

We split up and worked some heavy trails in the snow. Aaron started yelling—he had found another big one and man was he was excited! Dad was too! I think he is hooked now. We can't wait to get back out in the woods!

Final tally: Aaron 3, Dad 0. I’ve been schooled before on shed hunts, but never 200 inches to 0 :) Thanks, Chris Ellis, proud dad!

Oklahoma: Locked 150" Bucks in Tank!

Jake sent this: A guy named Mike found 2 big bucks with locked horns, a 12- a 14-point, drowned in a stock tank on a Oklahoma ranch. Look at the colors of the bucks, pink and black, they were submerged for a while. I suppose they got in a fight near the pond (probably back in Nov. rut), shoved each other into the water, lost their hoofing, fell and thrashed about until they drowned. Dang, another cruel way to go. We've found bucks in a well pit, hooked on a wire fence and now in a stock pond. What's next?

Shed-Hunting Find: 5 Drop Tines!

Mike: This rack was reportedly found in Indiana recently and it was supposed the deer died from EHD. I thought you might like to see it :) BTW, supposedly grosses 220, and I would have to agree. Thanks, Chad

Nice find right there, 5 drops baby! Been out there awhile in the woods, wonder how many people walked right by it? You have got to walk slow and look staight down at the ground, not too far out front or you'll miss a lot of skulls and esp. single antlers.

Have a good weekend, send me pictures and info of big sheds/cool stuff you find.