The antlers on the white-tailed deer have now grown to the point where I can tell a buck from a doe. It makes it way more interesting checking on those cell cam photos every morning to see how much the contenders gave grown but also to see if any new challengers have shown up. It’s amazing how trail cameras have changed the game.
Currently I have a couple of bucks who have seperated themselves from the pack. One buck is a nine pointer that appears to be pretty heavy as well. He’s easy to spot because the ninth point is sort of crab claw on his right beam. There is at least another month of antler growing season but this one is probably the top contender to win my coveted buck tag.
A close second in the Dave Beck buck tag competition is an eight pointer that doesn’t look like he’s gonna be very wide but he makes up for that with a heavy rack. If he’s gonna be a late bloomer he’ll receive a new ranking because the poll will be updated after the season starts.
There’s another buck worth mentioning more for his unique antelope type rack making him easy to identify. He’s actually a four pointer whose rack is growing more vertical. If harvested this year his antlers probably wouldn’t even make for a decent two hat rack. Maybe two or three years from now we’ll be talking about him again but for trophy reasons, not uniqueness.


The three examples mentioned are to make the point that there is a good inventory of bucks roaming our woods and with the help of trail cameras we can decide which ones we’d like to get a crack at this fall. When the hunting season rolls around we now have proof with footage of what the biggest buck in the woods looks like.

What did we do before cell trail cameras? We shined for deer where I grew up. In the same way that checking our trail cameras have become a hobby of sorts, so was shining deer. It was a whole lot of fun and everyone did it, at least in my generation and those before me.

Spotting a huge buck while out shining was something that we bragged about: “You should see the buck I saw on Hickory Ridge last night”. Today, by contrast, if someone has a trail cam photo of a huge buck on Hickory Ridge it’s a guarded secret that no one dares to talk about in public, let alone brag about.

Yes, there was a time when shining deer was accepted and mainstream. The spotlight was always in the truck, it made for plain old simple fun and nobody got hurt, including the deer. Today that activity is scoffed at and even illegal in a lot of counties including Buffalo County, the big buck capital of Wisconsin.

I admit that I am one of those guys who buys a gadget, like a trail camera, to make my life easier. Most of those things come with a hidden cost of a shortcut, robbing me of experiencing the journey. Yes, I admit that I miss shining deer.