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Friday, December 16, 2011

Early Surprise in the Field



My son and I take a walk everyday in the field outside the trailer we rent on a ranch in Alberta. One day we decided to walk all three fields with me pulling him on a sleigh. I went out to try identifying the various animal tracks in the snow. One other thing I did was check the animal poop to see how big these animals were. I seen many from deer and some from quite a large moose. Near some of the deer tracks I noticed a bit of what looked like a small bit of blood in the snow and I went to investigate. At first I thought that it was possibly a dead rabbit buried in the snow but it wasn't. I started kicking away the snow from around it and found a fresh antler shed. The part that looked like blood was from where it was attached to the head of the deer. Then my son found the other antler in the snow beside him.
The antlers are fairly thick which indicates that it's from an older deer. The shape of it shows us that it's from a white tail deer. They normally don't shed their antlers this early in the season but obviously is does happen. They shed them to grow back new ones that are thicker and bigger than the ones before.