Interesting
Deer
Antlers Facts
• Whitetail deer antlers begin to grow in the early spring (usually
March or April). By late summer a whitetail's antlers are fully-grown.
• Whitetail deer antlers are one of the fastest growing tissues
known to man.
• The growth of a deer's antlers usually starts to grow out of the
deer's head toward the back of the deer and then changes direction
and grows toward the front of the deer's head.
• Deer antlers have been known to grow as fast as ½ inch per day
• Bucks don't grow their fist set of antlers until they are ten months
old. Most younger deer have smaller antlers because much of their
nutrition goes to support their growing body.
• At 2.5 years old a whitetail buck has still only grown around 25-35
percent of his potential antler mass. However most bucks only reach
3 to 4 years old due to hunting pressure.
• When a mature deer is injured or has poor nutrition it's antlers will
often be smaller then a healthy animal of the same age.
• Whitetail does don't typically grow antlers but under rare circumstances some does have grown antlers. This is believed to be due
to a hormone imbalance and is a very rare occurrence in whitetails.
The only female deer that regularly grow antlers are reindeer.
• Pedicles are the part of the buck's skull where antlers grow from.
Buck fawns have pedicles but unless very close to the deer it is hard
to distinguish a buck fawn from a buck doe by the pedicles.
• A buck fawn has no antlers and is often referred to as a button
buck.
• Deer antlers are often referred to by hunters as horns. However
antlers are not technically horns. Deer antlers once fully formed
are dead tissue and fall off and then are re-grow every year. Horns
continue to grow for the life of an animal.
• While a whitetail's antlers are growing they are covered with velvet. Velvet is a living tissue that supplies blood to the antlers allowing them to grow. While a deer's antlers are covered in velvet they
are very sensitive to touch and easily broken.
• Many hunters believe that you can tell how old a whitetail deer is
by the size of it's rack. This is not true. A bucks antler mass peaks
around 5 to 8 years of age but the bigger determining factor for
antler size is genetics and nutrition of the deer. The only reliable way
to age a deer is the teeth.
• Once the deer's antlers are fully grown they will become hard and
the velvet will begin to fall off. Bucks will rub their antlers against
trees and saplings to rub off the dead velvet material.
• Studies have shown that only around 10 percent of a whitetail
buck's potential antler development is reached by the age 1.5 years
• Even though a buck doesn't grow antlers the first year, good nutrition is very important for buck fawns. During the first year of life the
young bucks grow pedicles (The future base for the antlers.) and as
the buck matures, the larger the pedical the better the chances that
the bucks will have a bigger rack in the future.
• Whitetails bucks that are taken with bow and arrow are scored by
Pope and Young. Rack scoring by Pope and Young or Boone And
Crockett (for gun harvests) use a formula to measure the antlers
that allows hunters to compare bucks’ racks in a fair way.
• Most deer scoring systems break deer antlers into two distinct
classes based on the "style" of the rack. These two scoring classes
are typical and non-typical racks. Both typical and non typical racks
are measured exactly the same way except for the fact that for typical racks you subtract for abnormal points and Non-Typical racks
you add abnormal points on the rack.
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