Trail Cam Tuesday - July 12, 2011

As the testing if my new camera rolls on, I am going to take a short break from current pictures and revisit a few from last season. The deer that I am going to re-introduce to everyone is "Little Brow" from the post "Number 1 on the Hit List." This was the tale of how a deer we had been chasing for two years was finally harvested, not by any of the guys we hunt with, but a friend of a landowner on another property. This TCT isn't to commiserate over that or speak of how I'm looking forward to this year because I know there's going to be even bigger and more deer on Foggy Mountain this year. No, I'm here to talk to everyone about shrinkage, not the George Costanza, "I was in the pool, I was in the pool!!!" kind of shrinkage and not even ground shrinkage.




I'm here to remind everyone that even though we are all getting great early season trail cam pictures of this magnificent heavy main beam deer, that it's only a matter of a month or two before the shrink begins. Some might not say that it effects it that much, but even five to ten inches can make a difference in estimating a buck in velevt in comparison to one that had shed their velvet.

Enter "Little Brow", not only was this the first time we saw this buck (since December of the previous year), but he was back and bigger than ever.For all those that haven't saw that bruiser on your camera yet, just wait he might just be a little camera shy as "LB" was. This is a very nice deer for the area and a great trophy for anyone, but for avid bow hunters, this was a shot at a Pope & Young (P&Y) deer. If once this buck shed his velvet he lost much of his girth on his antlers, this could put in qualifying for P&Y in jeopardy. So be careful with those early season estimations.

Here's "Little Brow", I know this isn't the best picture to judge his total inches, bit you can see he didn't lose that much girth after he shed his velvet, I was lucky. Now if I would have just been lucky enough to have had him walk under my stand, but that's just hunting. If you haven't got your trail cameras out in the woods yet, get out there and do it!! What are you waiting on? You are missing some of the best footage you'll get all year!