The Zen of Shed Hunting

This is how it feels to find a beautiful shed. "Shed" is what country folks call dropped antlers. You start looking for them in December, and you keep looking for them, off and on, all year long.

This was my first in years. Decades.  Found Feb. 6, 2015. 

You're walking along, and there it is. That's my favorite thing about finding them. Your mind can be a million miles away and suddenly it's right there, buzzing, every cell focused on this gift on the ground before you.

Chet, come back here and see what Mether found.

If you will look at my pawdyprints in the photo above, you will see that I already found this. Would you like me to bury it for you? It is fresh and it needs buried.

Sheds are gifts from the deer. Imagine growing such a fine rack of bone on your head, and then having it just fall off. Maybe it feels wonderful to be free of it, once the blood supply ceases and the bone deteriorates. Maybe they walk off without a backward glance. But sometimes I wonder if they wish they had a means to carry them around.

The beauty of shed hunting is it gives me an excuse to get out and cover miles in the woods and fields at the time of year when the skies are low and weepy and I tend to be, too. There's nothing that will light up your day like finding a shed antler. Or "shed," as we who hunt and find them like to call them.

There are all kinds of places you can take shed hunting. I have friends who make a goal of finding BOTH antlers off the SAME buck. Now THAT is shed hunting. 

Fantastic as that would be, to me that's taking it a bit too far. It seems too much like hubris, to expect that you're going to be able to root around and find a matched set of antlers from the same buck. True, the hormonal and blood supply changes that cause antlers to drop tend to occur on both sides simultaneously, but what if he carries one around for another week before dropping it?

April 14, 2015. It was a good spring for shed hunting. This antler now hangs above my drawing table from a loop in a bit of monofilament. It's my back-scratcher. I use it many times a day as I'm working. I keep one in the bedroom, too, for those morning itches. Sorry if I just made your back itch. Had to reach for my antler and give myself a good scritching.

And one amongst the bluets!!~ I found two this blessed warm April afternoon. What could be more beautiful than polished bone in bluets? Ahh, April. Come she will.

You can carry shed hunting well into spring. You hope when you find them they still have that polished bone sheen that makes them a smooth delight to handle. Old weathered antlers are referred to as "chalks" and the weathered chalky surface means they aren't near as nice to hold. 

April 16, 2015. Just two days later, I came upon this magnificent antler partially buried in rubble beneath a barbed wire fence crossing. That makes sense, that it would fall off where the buck either leapt or struggled through wire. Sudden jolts, as in jumping, or impact with objects can jar them loose, help them fall. But only when they're ready to drop anyway. And that time is anywhere from January through April.

I took a four-mile hike yesterday down into Dean's Fork. I say "down into" because Dean's is a deep holler. When I began my walk at daybreak up top of the ridge, it was positively balmy. I was shooting without gloves! The snow was melting fast and I was seduced by the warmth and the gentle hints that there might be enough sun to go on a good hike. So I began my descent into the holler.

I had my long lens with me, which is a heavy habit I've picked up since surgery and shingles slowed me down in December and January. I figured if I couldn't go at a decent pace, I might as well lug the big rig and come back with some decent shots.

As I climbed down, the temperature dropped and dropped. It was easily 15-20 degrees colder down by the creek than it had been up top in the hayfields. Snow still adhered to everything. The cold air had just settled in the Fork and was lying there, waiting for me. Brr!! Well, I was committed to the hike and it was beautiful, and best of all the mud down there was still frozen, making for much nicer walking.

I put up two big deer and something in the heaviness of their thudding hooves and their build and overall darkness told me they were bucks, though there were no antlers to confirm that suspicion. 

This is where the camera tells me so much. If you click on this photo you can see his nuts. Aha!

Big as he was, he floated like a butterfly. I never tire of photographing deer on the fly.

Further invading his privacy as a certified cervid paparazzo, this  handstand shot revealed even more. Do click to enlarge the photo. 

But the best? Click on this one to see his fresh, still bloody pedicel scar, February 12, 2017. There's likely an antler or two in that black raspberry thicket somewhere, and chances are I'm never going to find it.

While we're admiring him, check out his barrel chest and muscular forequarters. That's something you won't see on a doe. I'm getting better at sexing antlerless deer from a distance, but there's always more to learn. This kind of knowing is where hunters have it all over most naturalists, and why I love talking with hunters. They know things that you can only know by doing a lot of naked-eye observation, by getting your hands on the animal and inside it, too. 

Falling far short of learning by killing, I absolutely love the things I'm learning about deer just by studying my own photographs. I could never put together their stories or understand what little I do of their natural history, their social bonds, and their behavior without my trusty Canon 7D.  These big, fascinating animals walk among us, and they've got stories to tell if only we will slow down, stop, watch and listen to what they're saying.

Speaking of seeing...a nice set of fresh bobcat tracks from the little cemetery just a mile down our road, February 10, 2017. The forepaw (right) is just under 2" across, and the span between fore and hind tracks is around 8".

And dead fresh tracks from Feb. 11, on my way down into Dean's. My gosh. I looked all around to see if the cat was still visible!

And last evening, I just couldn't come inside. I decided to stalk deer out in our meadow. And it occurred to me that it was a little more than a week early, but it was just the kind of night--60 degrees and loamy--that a woodcock might decide to fly. Nothing but silence and distant coy-wolves yipping, until at 6:27 pm, the weak sunset still illuminating the west, I heard the twitter-fall of a single woodcock, testing the evening air. No peents, just a brief liquid song and wing-twitter, as if he'd been flying over and just had to take a quick tumble over this likely spot.

February 11, 6:27 pm, Whipple Ohio--the first woodcock flies.

It was a Hey There! from heaven, straight to my leaping heart.

Tarrales Regulars

Many of the more cooperative birds in Guatemala were Neotropical migrants, like this least flycatcher. Well, they were cooperative about having their photos taken, but none of them would call for us, so we were left with trusting our instincts and the range maps in the field guide as to their identities. The tapered, elliptical eyering and overall grayness of this little Empid pointed to least flycatcher for me.

In blogging about Guatemalan birds, remember that I'm limited to writing about the ones for which I got decent pictures. They tend to be the commoner, easier to see birds. No matter: they're fabulous enough for nature-starved folks like you and me. Because I always had the blog in mind, getting pictures of even a fraction of the birds we were spotting became a neurotic quest for me. I came back with gobs of pictures that are no good at all, a few that are at least identifiable, and a tiny handful that are worth looking at twice. The white-winged tanager here is a good example. You can tell what it is, but even with sharpening and cropping, it doesn't come close to doing a terrific little bird justice. Overall, they're snapshots, just me trying to bring you something to look at, struggling against the nocturnal shadows and blinding sun of the tropical forest. In this modest quest, I felt well-matched to my camera rig, which is a Canon Digital Rebel XTi with 70-300 mm. zoom lens. It's fairly light and easy to carry, and ready to be swung up at a second's notice. I've developed a rudimentary understanding of what I have to do in difficult light conditions (and they all seem to be difficult in deep tropical forest). Picture me madly spinning dials, opening up f-stops and speeding up ISO. It's cool to get at least some souvenir of a memorable sighting. So let the parade of mediocre bird pictures begin!

Chachalacas make more of an aural impression on the landscape than a visual one. Drab brown, with a white vent (this is the white-bellied chachalaca, a nice regional endemic that lots of birders like to tick off their lists in Guatemala), the white-bellied chacha cuts the air with its grating chorus of cha-cha LAC! cha-cha-LAC!, given in groups of five to ten. It's very loud, a classic sound of the tropics. Chachas, as we liked to call them, are related to guans and currasows, and are generally quickly hunted out unless protected, as they are at Los Tarrales.An unfortunate shot, with the branch obscuring his nice red wattle. Oh well, you take what you get, and not all of it is National Geographic caliber. It's a chachalaca. The dark band on the breast is a branch shadow. Here, a chacha sings out the day as the tropical night falls like a cloth. He's the tiny fleck in the left center of the picture.One of the cutest little characters of mid-level tropical forest is the common tody-flycatcher. An Andy Gump chin, long, flat bill, staring white eye and gnatcatcher-like tail characterize him. The best thing he did I couldn't capture in a picture. When it's excited, the common tody-flycatcher raises its long thin tail up over its back and slowly swivels it in a circle, like he's waiting for a pitch. I found myself chanting, "Hey, batter batter Hey batter!" and talking to him as if he were a pet parakeet. He didn't seem to mind. The whole affair is maybe 4" long. Tiny, cute Todirostrum cinereum, we could use some of you up here in the Ohio woods.

Perhaps the most striking bird to inhabit Los Tarrales is the white-throated magpie jay, Calocitta formosa. Those of you who've done a bit of global birding know that any bird with "magpie" in its name is going to be well-endowed in the gee-whiz department. White-throated magpie jays do not disappoint. I will never forget the first time I laid eyes on one, in the Guanacaste province of Costa Rica. Lee-ord. It was like a giant blue jay that had gotten into the dress-up trunk in the attic. What's that they say about a picture being worth...This creature is loud, raucous, tame and inquisitive. It is also 18" long. It's about what you'd get if you scaled a blue jay up by 200% and gave him a good stiff mojito to remove his inhibitions.
Gotta love the hairdo. Just a little fillip to add to his general impressiveness. In flight, they're unmistakable, always breathtaking.Imagine living in a place where such sights are commonplace; not even giving an 18" long crazy beautiful magpie jay a second glance. We all take for granted that which is common. The jays seemed to enjoy being gasped at by the greenhorns draped in optics.

As I write, the first fox sparrow of spring is feeding on the greening lawn. And the woodcocks sang and danced last evening. Bill raced home to catch the end of their act, and we grilled lamb and asparagus in a welcome-spring, welcome-home celebration.