Antler Growth?

[Smokepoler63]

I got some photos of a bull on July 3. It surprised me to see his antlers fully developed that early in the summer. It seems that many bulls in my area will grow until about mid August. What are your thoughts? will this bull gain any time length, or is he about done growing?

[Huntrgathr]

I was going to start a thread asking the same thing. We saw some awesome bulls while scouting this past weekend and wondered the same thing. Picked up this hide scraper on the trip too ! Any Indian artifact buffs out there ? Pretty crude edges - thinking either it was a Shoshone making a tool hastily or maybe Paleo...?

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Stumbled into this mining cabin as well. Fairly modern 1960's or 70's... Pretty cool though.

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[Fridaythe13th]

I'm no expert on elk, but he looks to be done growing in my opinion.

[ElkNut1]

Generally they're not done growing as early as July 3rd, but the photo of the ones you've shown sure look to be 90%-95% done. I also have a few photos of trail cam bulls & I'm seeing the same here. They are very well developed very early on.

ElkNut1

[Stick]

I wonder if that will mean they rut early???? The reason I say that is our deer rut last year was extremely early. We wondered why but began seeing bucks without horns before Christmas which is wayyyy early for us.

Seemed to indicate that they matured into hard horns earlier and thus affected their rut time!

[Huntrgathr]

Seems like everything is earlier these days. Way less snowpack for the last few years and early melt off. Mushrooms and berries are all early by at least two weeks. Huckleberry season in Washington/Oregon will be half over before the season even opens...

[Smokepoler63]

I swapped out memory cards on Saturday and was pleasently surprised to see this bull again on a different wallow site. He has added some length to his fourths, fifths, and main beam. I'd like to see him under my tree stand come archery season! Fun to see him put on a few more inches. The first photos were on July 3. These latest photos are from July 29. Any guesses on score?

[GobbleFarmer]

Looks like his 2nd's are a lil bit longer too!

[Stick]

315-320 on that score. He's pretty narrow! Good looking bull!

[Huntrgathr]

Saw our first hard-horned bull of the season this weekend, a good sized 6x8. Must have just scraped off the velvet because his rack was pure white. He really stuck out among the other bulls still wearing their velvet. Some looked to be about done growing while others still had blunt antler tips...

We put up 7 cams so hopefully we'll have some good pics to share later but we don't plan on going back until a day before the season opener.