Colorado River Shed

[Chance]

Hey all,
I just noticed this forum. I'm usually watching the waterfowl forum. Maybe someone can provide some insight to a curious find from this January. I was hunting on the CRIT land along the colorado river. I usually hunt the AZ side of the river but had noticed a marshy area that the brids were piling into in the CA side. On January 3rd I drove over the the CA side to see if I get get into these birds. I ended up crawling and duckwalking through a tunnel of brush for about 1/2 mile and never did find a way to get the marsh. However as I was hunkering along I came across what I believed to be a fresh shed. It was a very heavy 4 point mule deer horn. It has a very natural coloration. There was no fading at all even where the horn was touching the ground. There is not a single chew mark on the horn. The thing about it is I thought January was the tail end of the rut for muleys so this seemed awfully early for this old boy to be giving up his horns. I continued to hunt the area for the next few weeks and saw several deer none had horns but none of the deer appeared to be bucks either. So are these desert muleys on a different schedule or what?

 

[135inchsingle]

Lot's of factors that contribute to shedding. My guess would be that he shed early because of stress. He could have been injured a week or so earlier and that would have been the cause. A couple years ago a friend hit a good buck with an arrow in the hip. From the way the deer acted it was broken. 2 weeks later I saw a buck that had shed, limping on the same side my buddy had hit the buck. I was in the same area and I beleive it was the same deer. This happened in late october. Things happen. Congrats on finding the shed!

 

[1SoCalHunter]

Chance and 135 welcome both to the best hunting web site on the internet, please feel right at home!