![]() ![]() Bucks have been found with a tine twisting out of the base of the pedicle and going down the side of the head.Ĭrazy as this sounds, you may also get an extra antler tine growing from another place on the skull. When this happens, a buck may end up with one antler growing down instead of in the normal position. You can get deformed antlers if the pedicle at the base of the antler is damaged during antler growth. What causes antler-point growth from random areas of the skull?Īntlers grow from the pedicle on the frontal bone of a buck’s skull. Evidently that wound healed and in 2003 he returned to his “normal” form and in future years he became even bigger. But his antlers showed the contralateral pattern: one antler was much smaller and deformed. With 162 inches of non-typical points, it was an amazing buck. The deer, wounded by a shotgun in the 2001 hunting season, had 38 points and scored 319½. In 2005, a 15-year-old boy shot the highest-scoring buck ever killed by any hunter during the Iowa muzzleloader season. ![]() If not, one antler will always be smaller and abnormal. If the injury heals, the buck will usually develop normal antlers the following year. In these case, the affected antler is on the same side as the injury.īucks hit by cars or bucks with leg damage caused by a bullet will exhibit this phenomenon. It can also happen with front leg injuries. If there is an injury to the back leg, then the opposite antler is affected. In this situation one antler looks normal, while the other is deformed in some way, usually smaller and non-typical in appearance. A prime example is the “contralateral effect.” For years we have known that body skeletal injury causes non-typical antler development. Truth is, and as science confirms, most aberrant antlers are not due to genetics. On occasion, the hunter comments that it’s good to get such bucks out of the gene pool before they pass on the poor-antler trait. Then there are the hunting shows where comments are made about harvested bucks with one side of the rack deformed. The hunter often notes that he “culled” it to remove bad genes from the herd. Hunting season brings on myriad Facebook posts featuring harvested bucks with weird deer antlers. ![]()
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