The treasures I've found over the past month.

[Jonesy]

I've been out 7 or 8 times for 2 to 4 hours a time. I've covered the inlaws ranch and about 2/3rds of the neighbors. I'm going to have to scramble to hit some more places before the grass gets too tall.

Found 74 deer sheds with 6 being muley and the rest whitetail, and 2 elk sheds I found a couple weeks ago on forest service land.

 

[Jonesy]

Also found 20 dead bucks, 2 half skulls with antler and one pronghorn. Some are pretty stinky yet.

 

[Jonesy]

Here's the last bit of treasures. Some turtle shells, a couple ram skulls and a complete coyote skull.

 

[Jonesy]

Today we found 11 sheds and two dead bucks. This is a buck my 13 year old daughter found this afternoon. She has found 12 sheds herself this year and my wife has found 7. So I haven't found everything myself.

 

[IowaShedHunter]

Thanks for sharing the pictures. That's a great group of finds.

Chris

 

[coyotebandit]

Holy Crap!

You have a nice collection of sheds and antlers for one season! I would be happy to have a collection like that after 10-15 years of looking!

How much land did you cover to find all of these??


Thanks for posting!

 

[WBPruett]

Jonesy & Home Team,

A very impressive family accomplishment. Is it normal to find that many dead bucks in your area? Thanks for the picture sharing. Congrats to all father, mother & daughter.

 

[Jonesy]

Ranches here compose of mostly open ranch land. The areas to check is the brushy draws, around hay fields and hay yards, and the treed areas on creek bottoms. It's hard to judge just how many acres I cover, everything is so stretched out. The inlaws have just shy of 14,000 acres, I might have covered 10% of it. The neighbor's is mostly river bottom, I would guess in the 5,000 to 6,000 acre range with about half being treed. I found most of this on the neighbors land. They don't let anyone hunt. With the cover and food, it's an absolute whitetail haven. I'm going out there tommorrow with my wife to cover the rest of it. I still have a dozen or more places to go, I just don't know if I can get to all of it before the grass get's too tall. But I'll get too as much as I can over the next few weeks, there is always next year too.

It's normal to find dead deer every spring, we can have some severe drought and winters. We have also had some recent years that EHD has hit the whitetails.

This is a typical creek bottom with Ash, Oak and Cottonwood trees. Outside the creek bottoms it is just open range. So the deer have a tendancy to bed in this cover. Follow the trails from the bedding areas to the feeding areas (hay yards, hay fields, other row crops, etc.), that's all I do to find them. I also do a lot of glassing with my binoculars, saves on footwork.

 

[younghunter]

WOW CONGRATS!!!

What is up with all the skulls though? Was the winter that bad that those mature bucks died??? That is a very unsual amount of winterkills for one year! Hope theres some bucks left for this fall

 

[Jonesy]

This is some of my family's property. Just check all the areas with trees and brush. I go slow and never stop scanning, close and far, and always look back to get another perspective.

 

[Jonesy]

Some of the skulls are recent, some are a year or more old. These are bucks from over 20,000 acres of area that has a pretty high concentration of deer. It really hasn't hurt the quality or buck count there. Today, we saw several hundred whitetail and 50 to 60 muleys in a couple mile stretch of creek bottom, so there is plenty. I find 2 to 3 doe carcasses to every buck.

I took this picture at the inlaws a couple weeks ago. They are all bucks, about half had their racks yet. Most are surviving, muley and whitetail both.

 

[WBPruett]

Jonesy,

You did a great job of showing folks your habitat. Do you hunt any of these deer? If yes, do you hunt with bow?

So has the snow gone and you are now trying to beat the green up.

Your habitat looks like excellent hunting. Bed to feed and feed to bed.

Thanks, you did more than share you did a good job showing.

 

[Jonesy]

Yes, I bow and rifle hunt. I had some bad luck 4 years ago when my shop burned down to the ground. I lost almost all my racks but a few I had in the house and all my sheds of 20 years of hunting. I have started to get a collection back again. These are some of my bow and rifle racks from the last 4 years, this pic is from last year. I have a couple more that has been added since.

 

[fossilman]

Thats some great stuff!!!!!! I hunt shedds in Montana and North Dakota,I have seen ram skulls and sheep skulls in Montana,but its illegal to take them from the wild or even have one in poccession without a tag.To bad...Again some nice finds....

 

[poorboy28]

Brother, that is impressive no matter where you're from. I'm sure you have most of these guys drooling, including myself! Your shed numbers seem about right but it looks like you're seeing an above average amount of dead bucks. Around here we may come across 1 or 2 a season, tops, if we're lucky! Is it that dry out there or is something else contributing?

Congrats on all your finds, and if you're ever interested in coming out east just let me know. I can definately hook you up with some of our "corn fed" boys out here.

Great pics and good luck to ya, not that you need it, LOL!

 

[Jonesy]

My wife and I went out for a couple hours and picked up another 13 sheds. We now have that ranch covered, now on to the next. We are now at 87 sheds, covering two ranches. The next ranches I will hunt sheds are not normally as good as the last two.

This is my wife and her pack. She is not real thrilled about me taking the picture. The wind today was awful. She is definitely a trooper, climbing up banks, wrestling through brush, crossing creeks and fighting mud.