I usually don't get too excited about shed hunting much before Christmas so I was really surprised to find this one yesterday. It's not uncommon to find sheds from the previous year but they're normally chewed on and bleached out. Looks like it was dropped this week but it wasn't. Darkest chocolate color antler I've ever found and in pristine condition. As it lay.

That's a dandy for sure.

Very nice I have a few I found in Ontario nothing that nice congrats

Very cool, I’ll find one someday. Week after Thanksgiving is the earliest I’ve found deer sheds.

I want one

I've never found a matched set but it might be worth an hour of my time to go look for the other side. I'm guessing he would have been a 50-52 incher when he was wearing them.

Awesome!
I just can't seem to find one.

Nice

Very Nice!!!

Look at the base and see if there's a waxy substance. That usually means they are only days old.

Are those apples or walnuts?

They usually show blood if they're fresh, this one didn't. Those are apples.

Those dark ones are really nice!

Moosetrot

These are "volunteer" apple trees that have spread from trees planted on farmsteads 150-200 years ago. Deer, bear and grouse help move the seeds around. The apple trees are here by the thousands.

How is your antler stock holding up?

Gonna be needing some in a while!

Moosetrot

Well I can't speak from much experience with moose sheds because I have only found two, but with whitetail sheds I often find the wax ring and no blood on fresh ones. That one's definitely from this season not the last one.

I agree with BernieB. That’s a fresh shed. It’s not common but I found one last November as well and had pictures of the moose a short time before with his antler attached. I believe they shed them early when they are wounded or if they get in a bad enough fight to break at the pedestal.

That would be two full months ahead of schedule but anything is possible. As I mentioned, sheds show fresh blood when they're cast. No evidence of that here.

Well, like everything else in life, if there's an group of people interested in something, there's a FB page covering it.
I went on "Maine Shed Hunters" and posted a pic of this antler and asked if anyone had ever found a fresh shed so early in the year. Several people said they had. I was quite surprised by it.

Early cold will make early drops much more likely. One of the best days I've had for sheds was while Marten trapping Prior to Thanksgiving.

Another thing that makes it obvious that it's fresh is look at the grass.

Update. Found the other antler. I wanted to invest a little more time in the search before we got our first heavy snow. I was hoping it might be close to the area where I found the first antler. I pulled on my boots and it took about three minutes into a casual stroll to stumble on to it. Rodents nibbled on it a bit but nothing severe. I think I'll have a taxidermist mount them. As it lay.

Sheds are dropping here in Alaska.

In western interior Alaska, I always tried to finish aerial moose surveys before Thanksgiving, as the larger bulls were often shed out by then, and classifying bulls as to antler spread was impossible. Over the years, I looked at hundreds of bull moose that had one or both antlers dropped before Thanksgiving. Posco, I would guess that's a very recent drop; not last year's.

Jack

I think you're correct, Jack. I've never seen them drop so early and it really took me by surprise. I posted a pic above of the antlerless bull. I'm assuming it's a bull judging by the size of its bell.

I love the wide palms.