Freaky looking Muley

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yukonmike

Guest
Hello gentlemen, I'm new to the board here, so let me introduce myself. My name is Mike Prawdzik and I live in Whitehorse, YT. I grew up in MB hunting whitetails so Mule deer are relatively new to me. There are only about 10 permits given out to harvest a deer in the Yukon each year, and my son was lucky enough to draw one last year. He ended up taking this interesting looking fella and its a bit of a mystery.

His teeth were really worn off down to points for molars, but he was pretty fat and in good condition. Mac shot him in late Aug I believe, so he was in velvet but I peeled and colored the rack. There is no weight to the antlers and they are brittle and easy to damage. When I boiled up the skull to clean it it disintegrated in the washing soda and water mixture. I was lucky to keep the skull cap intact to mount.

Anyone know anything about this condition?

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LAST EDITED ON Apr-07-14 AT 10:13PM (MST)[p]Whitetail antlers weigh more than mule deer per cubic inch....or whatever measurement you guys use in the Yukon.
But, when you say no weight and the scull fell apart it makes me think possibly some kind of mineral deficiency.
Other than that your guess is as good as mine.
Nice buck! Congratulations to your son. Well done!
Zeke
Maybe the real experts can shed light.
Yes, like ICMDEER said, old bugger!
 
That's a really cool buck. Congrats to both of you and welcome to MM. I agree that there's either a mineral deficiency or imbalance. And I also agree that the buck was an old bugger.

Great looking country. I hunted mule deer near Manning in Alberta, but you are quite a bit farther north. Someday, I'd like to go there.
 
Thanks for the welcome guys. I'm sure someone will have seen something like this one before.

I've been tracking deer and finding sheds here for almost 20 years now and the one thing I've noticed is that freaky antlers are more common than typical in the last decade. Several years ago big robust typical bucks were more common, then there was a die off and now it seems like there's a bunch of inbreds running around. That's kind of a cool genetics experiment actually.

The other thing that seems to be a trait of our isolated population is they drop their antlers later than down south. The first ones of the year usually drop around March 10th, and I just picked up a set from an old tusker tonight that wasn't there a couple of days ago. I got a picture of him on a trail cam back in Feb and he was still scrapping. The set I found tonight was from the buck on the right.

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This one I've been looking for, but no luck so far.

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I found a set that dropped around March 11th that are the mirror of this one - three on the driver's side and four on the passenger side.


Our elk are late droppers too; I saw 4 bulls on Sunday that all had their gear on still. Many of our elk don't live long enough to be really big but a friend of mine took a dandy a few years back. Google Al Klassen Elk if you want to have a look. That was an exceptional bull.

I'm a little bit obsessed with Mule deer and elk, so its nice to find a place like this!

Mike
 
Mike,
Is this the same Al Klassen who guides at ARRO?
If it is him then it truely is a small world. I met Al in July 2012 but hunted with Kent Robertson.
Zeke
 
I'm sure it is. As far as I know Al has been guiding for Arctic Red, and other outfits, for a long time.

Were you hunting up there Zeke? Where are you from?

Mike
 
Yes Mike,
I was hunting with Arctic Red River and enjoyed my conversations with Al.
My first trip to ARRO was back in 1981. The outfitter and all the guides were different, of course. Some of the current guides and helpers were not even born when I made my first trip. I made a second trip with my brother a few years after that. It's quite a place!
I'm a Utah guy.
Zeke
 
Thanks again for the welcomes guys. Zeke, it is a small world for sure. The West is a small communtity, and The North is like a cul de sac in that neighborhood. The whole Yukon is still only around 30,000 people and 25,000 of them live in one town. If we rounded up all the hard core sheep hunters around here we could fit them all on one school bus I bet!

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I know I said no one had seen that buck before, but I was going through a bunch of trail cam picks from 2012 just for fun, and I found this one. Just the one. None of my pictures were great that year as I was figuring out a new camera, but this buck has some striking similarities to the one Mac took a year later. The frame is very close. If it is the same buck, then he wasn't a freak in 2012, but something happened in 2013. Interesting.

Mike
 

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