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Antler growth and drought

C

crietveld

Active Member
Just wondering what peoples opinion on how the drought in south central Iowa affected antler growth this year. I live in a pretty good area for trophy bucks and this year has been a real disappointment.

I have only seen one buck over 160 and none of the neighbors are getting pictures of anything good either. A lot of the bucks I've seen have good frames but really short tines this year.

I picked up a set of sheds this spring off a 135 in 3.5 yr old ten point that a neighbor killed this fall. He only grew 7 inches.
 
The buck that my son shot this year was 185" as a 5 year old, while last year at 4 years he was 174". Although we are still super grateful to get him, we really thought he was going to be at least 10"-15" bigger this year than he was...mainly based on his jumps the previous 3 years. This year was his smallest growth in terms of gross antler AND the deer in our neighborhood had a super easy winter last year AND the quality food supply was outstanding...up until the drought turned everything that should be green to brown this summer, that is. So they should have been primed to "max out" this past summer, but that is not what we saw.

I think, but cannot prove, the severe drought we had this year held him back and he bumped up only about 50% of what he would have done in a normal year. We have had other similar observations over the years with a variety of bucks that seem to support this theory too, FWIW.
 
100% crippled gains on average. Huge impact. Agree with daver too. Bucks I thought would be “xyz” based on years of experience - didn’t make the jumps they should have. Absolutely had impact on rack size
On other front im happy about: I found ZERO ehd bucks SO FAR....
 
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