Antler mass question

Daniel

Daniel

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Thunder Bay, ON
In whitetails, I've seen a lot of variation in how antlers get expressed. I've heard "tight antlers = swamp buck", "wide antlers=farm buck", etc... the old guys explaining how the world works.
What do you guys think? How do you explain short antlers with lots of mass? example: (my buddy shot an 8-point last year you could hardly get your hand arround the base) while my 7 point (with a bigger body and lots of fat) had dinky little pinky-sized tines. I recall watching some texan deer "hunt" one time where they said they enriched the feed with cobalt to enhance mass. Is it a mineral thing?

Getting horny to hunt :lol:
D
 
Antler mass and size is a two fold thing, sort of like the chicken and the egg.
You need good food and nutrients, such as cobalt pottasium, nitrogen, etc.
You also need a good gene pool.
To get a goos gene pool you need good food.

Buck - doe ratios are directly related to a good gene pool because if you have too many does, every dink in the herd is going to breed a doe, and you will have deer with antler- inferior genes.
Too few does and the big bucks will kill each other trying to breed and so the smaller ones will step in, and on, and on.
However, I am NOT in favor of baiting deer or putting ut nutrients to grow biggger antlers, nor amm I in favor of game farms domesticating and raising elk, white tailed deer or mule deer.

That is not why I hunt ........

Cat
 
i am not a biologist, but....

i believe (since i don't know as a fact), that antler mass is a combination of age, diet, and genetics.

i have to disagree with catnthehatt, genetics are only in a basic way related to food supply (ie: ability to process low quality food). the fact that i am 6 inches taller than my father is a result of diet, not genetics.

there are lots of other possibilities...... don't forget that the does, and their genes, are half the herd (unless of course the antler gene is on the Y chromosome, does anyone know? is ### determined in deer with an X and a Y?). what about the diet of the pregnant doe? if it is a hard winter and she is half starved, can her buck fawn ever become a big (antler wise) buck?

also there is bergmann's rule, basically that the colder the climate, the bigger a species will be. just look at the coues' deer vs the bucks in alberta, or the shiras moose vs the alaska-yukon.

lots more variables i am sure.
 
Sorry for the misunderstanding, Mig255, I didn't measn to imply that those were the omnly criteria or anything, but was just trying to shed some more light on the question! :mrgreen:
Toaly agree that there are many factors, but those are foremost that come to mind after reading stuff from Leonard Lee Rue, Dr. Valarius Geist, #### Noble,etc.....
Cat
 
Often those bucks with thick racks that may not be too tall or have as many points are older and in decline. It's just like most of us, we get thicker with age but are not quite as tall or upright.
 
good hunters ultimitaly detirmine antler size IE:
good coyote hunters help keep predtors down while good deer hunters maintain a healthy balance in the population so that the gene pool doesnt dilute the gene pool too much.
then you have the hunters that cultuivate food polts to help nourish the population
and then you have the hunters who let the nice big racked deer pass on by for me to adorn my wall later on down the road :lol:

but honestly i have i have no clue as to what makes an antler bigger or smaller just babbling for the sake of babbling :roll:
 
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