All manner of oddities during deer season
Variety is the spice of deer hunting.
By RAY SASSER
DALLAS MORNING NEWS
DALLAS -- One of the things that makes deer hunting so cool is the variety of things a hunter sees while sitting perfectly still in the woods. Jim Shulin of Bedford, Texas, was hunting in Burnet County last weekend when he spotted a very unusual deer.
"I was watching two small bucks and a fawn when another deer walked out of the brush," Shulin said. "I immediately knew the deer was a buck because its neck was swollen and it was walking stiff-legged toward the other bucks with its ears back, acting really aggressive."
No antlers
The funny thing about this buck is that it had no antlers. Shulin was hunting does (antlerless deer) and management bucks. An anterless buck fit both criteria. He cranked his high-powered scope up to 20-power, thinking the buck may have broken its antlers off.
Shulin could see no sign of an antler, though he verified it was buck. Shulin shot the deer. Sure enough, no antlers. Shulin rubbed around on the deer's head to see if he could locate the bony pedicels from which antlers grow. No pedicels.
Horace Gore, retired Texas Parks and Wildlife biologist and editor of Texas Trophy Hunters magazine, said he's seen all sorts of oddities in the whitetail world, but he's never heard of a buck that had no antler pedicels. Since the deer field-dressed 99 pounds, it was probably 2 or 3 years old. Deer are small in that part of Texas.
Shulin apparently has a new world record buck. Unfortunately, the record is for smallest Boone and Crockett antler score -- zero.
The same day I heard about the antlerless buck, a reader e-mailed me a story that ran recently in the Toledo Blade. An Ohio hunter shot an antlered doe that had nine points, a 22-inch spread and dressed 260 pounds.
Opposite of no antlers
Antlered does, said Gore, are the opposite of antlerless bucks, though they are much more common. Three antlered does were reported in Ohio last year. Ohio hunters killed just over 200,000 total deer. A Pennsylvania study concluded that one in 3,500 antlered deer in that state is a female.
Joe Drewitt of Benbrook, Texas, likewise, had an interesting opening day in his deer stand, though deer didn't play a major role. On opening day of last season, Drewitt watched a flock of Rio Grande turkeys and noticed that one of the birds had an unusual red beard.
Almost all turkey gobblers have black beards. Drewitt didn't want to shoot a turkey on opening day and he watched the odd bird wander away. Soon after, he heard three shots on the neighboring property. Since Drewitt never saw the red-bearded turkey again, he figured it wound up on somebody else's Thanksgiving table.
Wildlife rumble
Recently, Drewitt was back on the same Erath County hunting lease. During an afternoon hunt, he watched seven turkey gobblers come to eat corn at his deer feeder. The turkeys, a flock that Drewitt came to call the Drifters, hadn't been there long when a more powerful rival flock of 14 gobblers arrived and chased them away. The Drifters wandered over and hid behind a clump of trees.
Drewitt called the bigger flock of birds the Bushwhackers. After the Bushwhackers had cleaned up the corn, they wandered off and crossed paths with the Drifters, triggering a 21-turkey free-for-all.
"They were flapping their wings, jumping into the air, spurring each other and creating quite a commotion," said Drewitt, who videoed the wildlife rumble.
Once the turkeys separated, the Drifters wandered back past Drewitt's blind. It was only then that he noticed the red-bearded gobbler, surely the same bird he'd seen the previous year.
Since the turkey fight had alarmed any deer that might be close by, Drewitt shot the red-bearded gobbler, then shot a second gobbler that hesitated too long. Pay attention when you're deer hunting. You never know when an antlerless buck or a red-bearded turkey might show up.