We really keep track of our deer. We have a lot of money invested in trail cameras. A couple of my partners are now suggesting we put in some of the new “live feeds” that send back views 24/7 to your computer. We have log books that are fastidiously maintained recording buck antler growth from year one until the buck is harvested. When we have our preseason meeting every year the power point presentation determining what bucks are on the “hit list” rivals homicide investigations in many midsized cities in its scope and technical composition.
Yet every year during the season we will see or capture on film a buck that prior to that viewing was unknown to us. We attribute this phenomenon to bucks traveling distances during the rut. And we also are not so naive to think that “our bucks” do not travel outside the confines of our farm. We share information with two farms that adjoin our property and are used much in the same manner as our farm for whitetail hunting. They too have extensive trail cam locations and feeders under surveillance. We are constantly emailing files and jpeg’s back and forth identifying bucks.
I got the call that Sunday morning from Shrader. He was at the farm that weekend with his wife under the guise of a romantic weekend getaway. He was there scouting turkeys and he wasn’t fooling anyone with this romance charade, least of all his wife. But in his defense, his world considers ATV rides up and down hills and hollows and traversing rain swollen creek bottoms in the manner that other men consider a night out of dinner and dancing. His lovely wife knows this as they were married the summer after they both graduated from high school some forty-two years ago. Shrader is living testimony to the old adage that “if you take your wife hunting, your wife never has to go hunting for you.”
“We found him!” he said into my ear as my wife handed me the phone. For an instance I thought that Shrader was telling me that he was dead. “We found the right one” quickly put that fear to rest. I knew what he was talking about, it didn’t require further explanation. Shrader quickly told me how the kid and his lab found it and that the kid had followed our instructions perfectly and called Shrader on the cell phone we had given him to take with him. Shrader jumped on the ATV and drove to the area where the boy and his dog found the shed.
The kid didn’t bother to call on smaller sheds, we made it clear to him he didn’t need to. But we had stressed that if he ran across any big sheds to pay attention to where he or the dog picked it up and to call one of us so we could pinpoint the exact location. We were looking for one shed in particular. We were looking for the sheds of a deer that we called the “Phantom.”
Shrader took pictures of the shed and emailed it to the partners as well as to our friends on the two adjoining farms. Last year the right antler was found on the farm to our south. We have never found a left shed from the “Phantom.” And as unbelievable as it may sound, we have never seen him!
We have known the “Phantom” has existed for four years now. There is debate amongst the partners and our neighbors as to his age with some saying five but the majority concluding he is now six years old. Yet this buck that we know is alive and travels on our farm and the farms that adjoin us has never been seen by a hunter or recorded on any of the surveillance cameras. The “Phantom” has a very unique feature to his right antler and it would be impossible to confuse him with any other buck that we have seen or recorded. And yet this five or six year old buck has never visited one of our feeders or been recorded on any trail with the cuddebacks.
I am attaching two photographs of the “Phantom’s” right antler that we picked up three years ago. I put the beer bottle in the one photo in order for you to judge scale. He was either two or three years of age we believe when he cast this antler but most feel he was two. I am showing you this antler so you can see the early development of his “unusual” feature. I will not include subsequent photographs of the shed from this year or the year before. Please forgive me but I do not want to publicize this buck any more then I am doing right now. The pressure we have around our farm and our neighbor’s farms is intense enough.
How many “Phantom’s” are there where you hunt? If a deer like this is capable of eluding all contact with humans and their devices in a highly watched area for years, how many more like him are out there? I don’t know about you, but the thought of my “Phantom” some how seems to make those many hours spent in the tree stand just a mite more bearable.
You just never know what might walk under that stand. And if you’re not out there, you could miss that opportunity of a lifetime. Kind of makes it all worthwhile don’t you think?
