bull behavior after shedding?

[ridgerunner]

This morning I watched a group of 3 bulls come out of the timber, one bull had shed, the other two had not. the bald bull was running quite a bit, shaking his head some, while the other two bulls engaged in quite a few horn locking shoving matches, with one bull acting like he wanted to keep the other bull away from the bald one(reminded me of a bull keeping another bull away from his cow). These were probably about 4-5 year old bulls. I haven't really observed bulls right after they shed but do you think the bald bull had just shed? I was hoping with all the running and fighting that the antlers from the other two bulls would have dropped but no luck. What do you think or what have you observed right after a bull sheds its antlers?

 

[muleycrazy23]

Not sure, but the few videos I have seen of bulls that have just shed they seem to go a little nuts. I would say go take a look just in case cuz it sounds like he may have just shed in the trees. Could you tell if the holes on his head had fresh blood or not?

 

[whiteshadow]

i actually just watched a bull yesterday that came walking up out of a draw shaking his head and flipping it.... not really running or freaking out too bad and 4 other bulls where with him. he lead the pack and after about 3 min he was fine but i could see the blood shining ontop of his head so after they left i went over and found his set side by side... pretty neat. he is only a 4x5 he should have been a 6x5 but never grew his 2nds and picked up a lot of mass for being a 3 year old bull. go back and check in the trees. they could have just been excited or he could have dropped recently

 

[ridgerunner]

Yeah I'm going to go and check and see, do bulls commonly spar before shedding, I thought it was really odd behavior for this time of year.

 

[whiteshadow]

ive seen them spar year round. last year i actually saw one that was bald try to spar with a six point who seemed to be really confused. and i saw a bull try sparing a shed antler on the ground.

 

[DRT]

I was just thinking about this yesterday. I went out on a hike and found a bunch of bulls, 3 of the 12 had shed and were acting differently from the others. One of the shed bulls actually reared up on his hind legs kicking the antlered bull away, and the three shed bulls kind of went off on their own. I saw the same herd again a few hours later and they were all together again like normal. I saw all the other antlered bulls sparring with one another, got me wondering if they know when they are ready to shed, but it does seem like normal activity. Also saw another herd of 11, where one bull had shed and he stayed about 50 yds behind the rest of them, just feeding, never got closer than about 50 yds though. Another couple of weeks and they should all be shed around here, looking forward to it.