Trying to teach myself some whitetail anatomy
I hunt these guys, so when we get one I play around with the joints and get pictures of all the wonky angles to understand the way their bodies move more intimately. It seems weird but it's honestly been so helpful
Ughhh the pacing and quality I'm sobbing ✨️anyway✨️ a doe and buck fawn just doin some little hops :)
I did a really weird eye roll one too just cause
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Visitor in my driveway tonight. Perk of living in the woods. Earlier there was a big raccoon.
I wonder. When I moved in here about five years ago, I saw a doe with two small fawns still with spots. The next year they were back and now they were yearlings and still with mom. I saw the bumps (buttons) of future antlers on one. All three were back again the next year but now he was a spike buck (2 points). The following year he had forks (4 points). And now as you can see he has 6 points. Of course I can't be positive it is the same deer but that's okay. I just hope he keeps coming back and I can see his antlers grow.
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flickr
248A6293-whitetail-buck by Chuck Starr
Via Flickr:
'hoar frost' in early morning image......
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“Charles, you said you’d ride with me.”
“I did, Arthur. Always.”
© Partial background belongs to Rockstar Games
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Had the weirdest experience prepping a euro mount today.
The deer was completely missing an eye!
TW: mild descriptive gore
There was absolutely no indication that it was gone, or what happened to it. There wasn’t any damage to the skin or the skull/socket itself, and there was no sign of parasites or insect activity. I didn’t even notice the eye was missing until I was skinning it!
But there also wasn’t any blood or scar tissue inside the socket to indicate either a new or old injury.
It was a completely clean socket, save for exposed veins that feed blood to the eye that should’ve been there.
It saves me some work, but it is a head scratcher.
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Some customer deer skulls. One has an interesting pathology - tooth abscess, perhaps?
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The second rut
If you look closely, you can see the two young bucks that were sparring outside my kitchen windown Saturday morning. The young doe they were trying to impress stands nervously just outside the camera's frame.
But, wait a minute .... Didn't the "rut" (the whitetail breeding period) end weeks ago ...?
The main one, yes, but there is a controversial "second rut" - controversial, that is, among hunters.
Wildlife biologists will tell you there is a spike in breeding activity that occurs about 28 days after the main rut, when unbred does cycle back into estrus.
Some hunters argue that there is no such thing - that the second rut is merely a choppy continuation of the second rut.
I don't think so. Observation. year after year, from my front-row seat, tells me that in late November the chasing and sparring stop, then resume just about now.
The deer don't debate it; they just participate.
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