Sheds?!?!

[lucky_magic_stick]

Sunday Feburary 15th, my uncle and I went out to our favorite stomping ground in search to wack a couple willy coyotes, and possibly find a few sheds. The snow was still pretty deep and we walked for a few hours in search and also called and stuff. After getting back to the truck I spotted 2 moose off in the distance. After they wondered towards us more, we noticed one was a decent bull moose with horns still!! This came to a surprise to us cause we thought they would have shed them off by now. We drove up closer within 80 yards and we saw his horns were a really whitish color and about a 35-40 inch bull. Also we saw a number of different whitetails and a few mulies.. All without horns.

So my point of making this thread is to ask a few questions;
1) Do different stresses make them shed faster? (i.e. weather, people pressure stuff like that)
2) Do moose or deer generally drop their horns faster, bigger or smaller first?
3) Is there different signs that an animal with horns are close to dropping them?


I'm sorry for making this a boring thread that might have been discussed before, but it's been on my mind for the past few days.

[nube]

Moose are usually some of the first critters to drop them. I have found sheds while hunting in November from a bull. Actually had one cornered in a small bush and pushed him out to a buddy. No shots and wondered what the heck. I was followint the tracks and found that the bull ran between 2 trees and knocked both antlers off.
Mule deer keep them on longer for some reason and Elk keep them on the longest. I saw a few bulls while grizzly hunting towards the end of April. One a 6x6 and one a 5x5.
Animals health plays a bit into it as well but it is weird sometimes.

[blackmamba]

definatley agree with nube , mulies loose their horn later than whitetails . I useally dont start gettin mulie sheds till end of feb and the bginning of march .. I also have found whitetails shed in the second week of december , but i think that the smaller deer always shed later in the season vs the bigger bucks .. just my 2 cents!!

mamba