Watch Them Grow

Antlers are one of the most fascinating things to watch grow on camera traps.  Each week, the deciduous growths on white-tailed deer bucks get bigger and bigger, sometimes growing more points as the summer goes on.

My buddy Peter and I have been using camera traps recently to do a bit of a deer survey on his property in Loudoun County.  We'll be counting deer for at least the next few weeks, and hopefully we will capture a coyote or two on camera as well.

The antlers almost never look the same in spring as they do the following winter.  They just grow so fast, in all sorts of shapes and directions.  I'm fascinated by that.

Peter was really excited to get this buck on camera, as he is both an avid conservationist and a hunter.  If we keep recapturing the same individual, I hope to put a video compilation together of all the images, showing the growth of the antlers throughout the summer.

That's a bit far in advance though, and completely depends on this buck coming up at least once a week, but you never know what could happen.

We also captured a fawn (baby white-tailed deer) on camera a few times, though it has only been photogenic once or twice during the day.

Antler Shedding

It's that time of year again for our white-tailed deer.  The bucks are starting to shed their antlers and they are available for mice to chew on, for dogs to play with, and for some of us to collect.

So why do antlers drop in January, February, and March?  Well, to answer that question, we've got to think back to the previous year.

In late October, most of November, and early December the deer here are in rut.  This means that they capable of mating with females.  Antlers are used to display dominance and to fight off other bucks that may provide competition to the mating "rights" of a group of does.

The rut ends before the New Year starts and the antlers become less of a necessity for bucks.  Since they take extra energy to grow and walk around with, deer shed or drop their antlers to save energy and because they really aren't needed any more.

New antlers begin to grow and the process is repeated, year after year.

It's legal in Virginia to collect them and possess them (as long as you have landowner permission to do so), so I always like to find a few to collect.  Maybe I'll even make some new knife handles again this year

There is an importance to leave some for the animals though.  Mice, squirrels, and other rodents chew on antlers to sharpen their teeth and to gain important vitamins and minerals that can become extremely scarce in the winter from their regular food sources.

One Antlered Deer

Here's an interesting white-tailed deer missing one of his antlers.

It's early for bucks to be losing their deciduous antlers.  Really early.  In most cases around here, they drop their antlers during the last week of January to the last week of March.  It's interesting, for sure, but stranger things have happened in the outdoors.