ECOnnection
Antlers
by Karen Dusek

There is something magical about finding a treasure an animal has left behind, whether it is a feather, a shell or, yes, even a lump of dried scat replete with berry skins or tiny bones and bits of fur. For me, these remnants are a reminder that we share the earth with other living creatures both large and small, ferocious and meek. It is also an opportunity to physically connect with animals that are often elusive and seen only fleetingly, if at all.

And so, I have my little collection of feathers and seashells, slides of tracks in sand in snow, a few abandoned birds’ nests, a couple of empty turtle shells and a single deer antler, blanched and burnished like a lovely old piece of driftwood.

My son-in-law spotted the five-point antler when we were taking a walk together in the scrubland near Bishop, California, at the base of the rugged Central Sierra Mountains. I knew that he wanted to add it to the display in their front garden bed, but he hesitated for only a moment before he graciously handed it to me.

I tried to imagine how the antler had looked on the buck that carried it - covered in velvet, the stuff of royalty, held imperiously high, lowered in battle over a quivering doe. Then the velvet sloughing off, the bony antler dying and dropping to the ground where it would, over time, be scrubbed and scoured by wind and sand and rain and gnawed on by small animals until nothing remained except a scattering of mineral-laden dust enriching a tiny segment of earth - were it not for me and that magnetic pull to pick it up and take it home or suffer the consequences of a lost moment.

Looking at the antler objectively, I can see that it is nothing more than a dead bone. The deer that shed it would begin to grow two more much like it the following spring. With luck, there would be a good growing season with plenty of nutrient-rich forage that would enhance the health of the animals that fed on it and the size of the deer’s new antlers. They would continue to grow throughout the summer and early fall thanks to the fuzzy skin known as velvet, which supplies the living tissue it encases with blood and oxygen. They could be used as protection against predators, if necessary, and, come fall, as the weapon of choice in duels with other bucks for a favored doe.

Along about August or September, when a deer’s antlers are full grown, the velvet starts to die and flake off. The buck expedites the removal by rubbing its antlers against shrubs and trees, a process known as rubbing. This usually removes the bark, leaving behind an exposed section of bare wood known as a “rub.”

Around this same time, the bucks, which have been getting along together quite nicely as a group, venture out on their own, looking for does in estrus. Since the does are receptive to bucks for only a 24-hour period every four weeks from about October through January, competition among the males can be fierce. The does go back to their group after mating, but the bucks may mate more than once, following the does by the scent of pheromones and hormones their own bodies are producing.

According to Donald and Lillian Stokes in their nature guide Animal Tracking and Behavior, the rubs made in August and September are generally smaller than those made in October, suggesting that the rubbing activity in the earlier months may serve to remove the velvet, while the October rubs may be made to visually mark their presence.

“These rubs may also serve as scent marks,” the authors add, “for bucks develop enlarged scent glands on their foreheads in fall, which they rub against the tree when scraping it.”

Adding credence to the theory that the rubs have an olfactory function as well as a visual one is the discovery that aromatic tree species, such as pine, sumac, cherry and red cedar, are shown preference. The trees that are used for rubbing are generally not used more than once.

Other signals notifying does that eligible bucks are in the vicinity include scraping and rub-urinating. Scrapes are made by pawing the ground with the hooves and then urinating or defecating in the resulting depression. Rub-urinating, on the other hand, is a method of scent marking in which the deer squats to urinate, allowing urine to trickle down the inside of the legs to the metatarsal glands on the knees. By rubbing the knees together the urine mixes with gland secretions and bacteria, creating a powerful odor that does to does what over-priced aftershave lotion purports to do to women.

This mating period is known in the vernacular as the rut, a word that has its origins in the Latin rugitus, which means “a roaring.” (A rut in a road, on the other hand, stems from the Old French word route.) Rutting season in the northern United States is usually in November.

All of these highly visible signs that the bucks intentionally leave for the does are also highly visible to humans, making them vulnerable to hunters. Other atypical behaviors, such as venturing out during the day and wandering through uncharted territory in search of mates, add to their vulnerability.

In an on-line article The Achilles’ Heels of Rutting Bucks, Dan Kibler notes that, during the rutting season, bucks “change their schedules. Instead of being largely nocturnal, they’re just as likely to be out chasing girls at high noon as at dark midnight. That puts them out in the open a lot more when hunters are in the woods. Second, they leave the relative comfort of their safety zones, traveling far and wide in search of female companionship. That puts them in places with which they are not as familiar, and it opens them up to being seen by a lot more hunters than normal. And third, when a buck has does on the brain, he’s a lot more likely to make a mistake.”

Bucks that survive the rutting and hunting seasons return to their bachelor groups and shed their antlers, leaving them for people like me to find and speculate on their former existence as vital part of a living organism. If I had lived in an earlier time, I might have ground my antler into a powder, stirred in a few herbs and fed it to my husband as an antidote for impotency - or carved it into a knife handle or belt buckle.

At some point, I will return my antler to the place where it was dropped to nourish the earth and the tiny beings that rely on such seemingly unpalatable leavings for their survival. Until then, it holds a place of honor among my little collection of reminders that we humans are not alone on this planet - reminders to walk softly and carry an open mind and a grateful heart.

You may e-mail Karen at karen@lakeshoreguardian.com.