It's that time of year when the whitetails are dropping their antlers again, and I have spent years in the bushes and woods and creek bottoms and never happened across them, or at least only on rare occasions.

Five days ago an unlikely event took place that had been set into motion at least a year ago at about this same time, and it's all because I stepped off the road into some bushes to avoid my least favorite neighbor.

Last August I took a brief stroll down the road, and right about the time I reached the small bridge to the south of our house I saw the truck come over the hill. We have one neighbor in particular that drives us both nuts: he is a nosy, pushy little weasel of a man and tends to be oblivious to the fact that I am not a single woman. So when I saw him in the distance heading my way I did what any coward would do--I took to the bushes. I'd rather battle the stinging nettle and mosquitoes than deal with this man! About twenty paces along I stopped and stared at what lay at my feet...the nicest antler shed I had ever seen in this area. It had some rodent damage to one tine, which would be expected since it had likely been lying there since at least February, but it was large enough and close enough to the road that, until the woods had thickened up in late spring, anyone would have been able to spot those big white tines while driving past in their car.I had been blindly coming and going past that impressive shed for nearly half a year and never knew it! I packed my find back up the road to the house after the neighbor was safely past and until five days ago that was the end of things.

I was riding my bike past the old bridge and had been noticing the bluebells just barely poking through the mud in the bottoms there when I spotted something white near the edge of the creek. It was a very large antler tine, and I knew it had to be impossible, even after I lay down the bike and stepped through the winter weeds to go pick it up. How is it that I would find the mate to such a large shed dropped from over a year ago, both less than 25 yards or so from the road and in both fairly easy view? What surprises me even further is the fact that the first half of this rack has a LOT more rodent damage and yet this recently found half, which has been right there for over a year, has only three very slight chew marks on it. Overall it is what we would call a non-typical 9 pointer with a spread somewhere close to 2 1/2 feet.

Maybe our neighbor is good for something after all...