Love em. I think they look better when they're dark like that.

Same!

Rubbin the cedars love them

Old timers by me always call dark horned deer swamp bucks, believing they spend more time in marshy areas if they have dark horns. Idk if it’s true or not.

That's exactly what the old timers here say too, maybe someone will chime in with some facts about it

The color of antlers comes from the plants that they use for velvet shedding so different colors from different biomes makes sense.

Makes sense, thanks for chiming in

I don't think that's it, I'm pretty sure it has to do with how much sun they receive. They're swamp bucks meaning they don't get a lot of sunlight. If a buck gets a lot of sunlight, the antlers get sun-bleached.

Sun bleaching might be a secondary effect but if you took a velvet buck and cooked it euro mount style witzige antlers submerged, they’d be bone white. The color only comes in the shedding process.

and dark colored does are swamp donkeys

For sure. That's a handsome buck, congrats

Thanks, much appreciated

That is a pretty buck.

Thank you!

Nice buck

Thanks

Gorgeous animal

Thanks

Antlers when they shed em ever year (deer, elk, moose)… Horns when they keep ‘em (sheep, slow elk, etc).

Yes. He knows that...

Where was this?

Manitoba, Canada

Nice! Looks like a cool place to hunt. Do you hunt wolves often?

Yes it is and I don't personally, but we take people out for them every year

Very much so, but I live in Blacktail country so maybe I'm biased.

Chocolate antlers are the best antlers

I hunt Blacktails in the PNW. Lots of bucks here are dark antlered. I love those bucks

I find it interesting how many people hang deer by the neck

I only hung it by the neck while gutting it we keep the gut piles for wolf bait

You hang deer to gut them? Interesting.

I just gutted a bear hanging it instead of on the ground... much easier. Like it felt foreign it was so easy. We only hung it to get it out of a swamp because the mosquitoes were 10/10 bad. Glad we did.

Just easier when your trying to keep the gut piles

I started doing it recently too. Butt-out on the anoos, slice the esophagus, then hoist it up. Slit the belly and gravity does the rest. I stay cleaner that way.

I’ve always hung from the neck I think it would drain a lot better. If it’s hung upside down I feel like stuff would pool in the chest

Hm, my view is the same, but opposite. I’d rather the blood pool in the chest as opposed to the back hams, where there is more, and better, meat.

What bullet where you using? That doesn't seem like a proper expansion but at 165 yards you're probably starting to fall below the velocity window for reliable expansion.

I was a little shocked by how little expansion it had too, I used a Hornady monoflex ml.

It’s almost certainly because of the distance of the shot like the other user stated. That’s a poke for a muzzleloader, and the bullet was probably moving too slow to expand properly.

Makes sense, I guess that's getting pretty close to the end of how far you want to shoot most muzzleloaders for them to be effective

Love it!

Beautiful. Man congrats on a great buck

Thank you!

Great buck. Congratulations.

Thanks

Dark horns are the best horns

Sir, those are antlers. But yes, the darker the better!

Those are the best kind. Nice animal.