Antlers with strange twists remain mysterious

If you hunt white-tailed deer, you probably hope to someday bag a buck with huge antlers sporting 10 or 12 lofty points and thick main beams that sweep wide and high.

Bucks sporting such headgear are not only wary, but also extremely rare.

But even more rare, and perhaps more interesting, are bucks that for one reason or another grow non-typical antlers, sometimes displaying configurations so outlandish they defy nature.

I'll never forget the buck that ghosted past me one foggy October morning in the pre-dawn. As usual, the big deer seemed to appear from nowhere. It spotted me about the same time I saw it and we eyed each other for a moment. Its right antler had four or five points and appeared quite normal. But its left antler was a grotesque, tangled jumble of bone growing not up and out as usual, but downward alongside the buck's face reaching below its jaw.

Why do some bucks grow such odd antlers? Does it result from injury? Is heredity a factor? Deer biologists agree on some effects and disagree on others.

A deer's antlers originate from a plate on the skull called a pedicel. An injury to the pedicel usually produces antlers that protrude from the skull at peculiar angles. The deformity is permanent and antler growth in subsequent years will show the same characteristics.

An injury to a buck's body can and often does cause antler deformities, usually to the antler on the opposite side of the body where the injury occurred. This phenomenon is known as the "contralateral effect."

Years ago I shot a young whitetail buck that sported a normal forked antler on its right side. The left antler, however, was just a stunted spike. At the time I figured the buck must have suffered an injury somewhere to its body. Later, while butchering the buck, my suspicions were confirmed. The buck's right rear knee was blown out, perhaps from being hit by an automobile. It might have stepped in a hole or slipped on ice, I could only guess. Since there was no external scarring, it didn't appear to be a hunting-related injury. Whatever the cause, the lower and upper leg bone no longer meshed when the leg was flexed. All that held the bones in place at the knee was a huge mass of scar tissue. Why such injuries affect antler growth isn't known.

Perhaps the most common cause of antler deformity is an injury to the antlers themselves during the summer growth period. While antlers are in velvet a bump to the soft antlers can cause deformities to develop, such as extra points. It's interesting to note the antler seems to "remember" the injury, for the anomaly often develops again the following year.

Extremely freakish antlers can originate from severe damage during the velvet stage. Instead of an odd point here or there, severely damaged antlers often have a "melted" appearance. And palmation sometimes occurs, resulting in antlers resembling those of a bull moose. For reasons unknown, some of the odd points, especially drop tines, often take on a bulbous appearance and the bone material is rather porous. Often, strips of velvet will remain.

Some regions of the nation produce a proportionately higher numbers of bucks with non-typical antlers. Kansas and Nebraska are a good example. Four of the top 10 non-typical bucks in the Pope and Young record book were shot in Kansas, and for many years - 38 to be exact - the all-time non-typical buck came from Nebraska. That deer finally was knocked from the top of the records in 2000 by a monster non-typical from Ohio.

That would point to heredity as being a factor for bucks in certain regions of the nation, and research appears to substantiate that. Drop tines - antler points growing downward off the main beams - is another antler trait that suggests genetics is sometimes involved in antler oddities.

As a whitetail buck matures it often develops odd tines here and there, but especially near the antler bases. Those non-typical points will grow in following years. Again, the reason for the odd points is unknown, but "clean" antlers containing no odd points are most often carried by bucks not fully mature.

It's hard to believe, but each fall a few antlered does are bagged by hunters in Minnesota. When a doe grows antlers they're usually, but not always, small spikes that remain velvet covered. In most cases the doe remains fertile. Antler growth on female deer isn't fully understood, but it's thought that a short-term boost of the male hormone testosterone is produced in the ovaries of certain females.

Whatever the reasons, off-the-wall antlers have intrigued humans since we first chiseled spearheads from stone. Perhaps it's best that some things in nature defy even modern-day explanation.