Sunday, August 27, 2006
Velvet Shedding Will Start Soon
One of the great wonders of this world, to me at least, is the growth of deer antlers. It begins in the spring, and the magic of growth can be seen almost on a daily basis.
I never fail to marvel how a bald-headed buck in late winter will begin to grow this years antlers. They seem to spring almost overnight from the pedicels on the deer’s skull, and soon thy will be furry knobs.
Before long, those fuzzy knobs grow higher and thicker in diameter, and then they begin to fork and new growths that will become antler tines begin growing off the main beam. By early to mid-August, most of the growth has occurred.
The next process is the blood-engorged velvet will begin to harden, and usually in early September, the antlers under the velvet harden, and the velvet begins to shed or be rubbed off.
Bucks often rub the velvet off on small trees, and hunters often see this rubs on trees and confuse them with rubs made prior to the rut. The rubs made by removing the velvet, mean very little. Rubs made by bucks with hard antlers as they strengthen neck muscles are an entirely different story.
The velvet is often seen hanging in strips off the antlers. It swishes back and forth as a deer raises and lowers its head to feed, and is eventually peeled or rubbed off.
Once the antlers are free of velvet, the hard bone is often streaked with blood but this soon disappears. A buck is capable of breeding a doe whenever he has hard antlers.
These white antlers may stay that way or they may darken. Big bucks often have darkened antlers, and in some case, a close-up view would reveal curlings of bark attached to the antlers. Some antlers will remain white until they fall off although some will be tan, brown or even a very dark brown color.
The removal of velvet usually starts in early September, and almost always is over by Oct. 1. Antlers are a status symbol of sorts for male deer. The larger the antler development, the more respect other deer give the larger buck.
Age and antler growth, usually a combination of the two, leads to a pecking order. The largest bucks will do most of the breeding, and fights among large bucks can be serious. On occasion, bucks will fight to the death over breeding rights.
There is nothing pretty about a fight between two evenly matched bucks. Neck muscles swell, bucks perform mock battles with trees, but when two big bucks square off over breeding rights, no one can predict the winner.
Often, battles are won by sheer strength but some are won with bucks with the greatest desire to breed does. It may be a slightly smaller buck, and in a few cases, I’ve seen some of the largest bucks run from a fight. Such fights often result in one or both deer being gored, and the loss of an eye is fairly common.
One year, during the winner, my two largest bucks, got to fighting on the ice of a pond, and both bucks were gored badly but one died on the ice after taking a pair of tine thrusts through the chest. It was too weak from the prolonged fight and blood loss to move, and it collapsed there.
The other buck, although not wounded as badly during the fight, was out of gas. The ice collapsed under the animal’s weight, and down it went. The ice froze around the deer that night and both animals died.
We walk our land in the spring just after the snow melts. We pick up every antler shed we find, and we probably miss more than we find. Sometimes we find both halves of the rack near each other, but it’s more common to find just one side at a time. Sometimes we find the other side some distance away, but unless it is a unique antler formation, we never know for certain if we have both halves or one antler from one deer and another antler from a different animal.
We’ll be home from Colorado in less than a week, and by that time, some bucks may be losing their velvet. This circle of antler growth and loss is a part of the whitetails world, and a big part of mine.—The Whitetail Wizard