I love whitetail deer. They are beautiful animals. Their tale of survival and adaptation as a species is fascinating. They inhabit nearly every county in the US. They’ve adapted to humans and the changes humans have made to the environment and landscape.
Here’s a picture that I received recently of a magnificent Whitetail Buck snapped near Interstate 10 and Callahan road in San Antonio, Texas.
Just a little humor for a Friday afternoon.
I got this email froma friend. It’s a pretty neat story with a great photo.
For all of you deer hunters, this is a pretty rare thing:
Attached is a picture of my daughter, Morgen, who went deer hunting for the first time this last Saturday morning. Little did she know she would get a trophy that most people have only seen in magazines.
Morgen killed a 12 point buck whose rack was still locked with a 9
point buck. The 9 point buck was dead and little more than the bust and remnants of the hide were left. If you look closely at the picture, you’ll see the two bucks are literally cheek to cheek.This is extremely rare. Hunters will find two dead bucks whose
racks are locked together. To make a kill of a live buck is just
amazing. For Morgen this was a once in a lifetime event. The 12
point buck is a magnificent animal. We can only speculate that the
hide from the 9 point buck was all ripped and tattered from coyotes.We were hunting the 7D ranch north of San Angelo. Since this email is going quite literally all over the world I’ll explain that this
ranch is over 200 square miles in size.We would like to thank the Sugg family (Joel and Chris especially)
for inviting Morgen out to the ranch and being a part of a lifetime
memory. We got many many pictures. Needless to say, everyone else took a lot of pictures.The deer have been dropped off at a taxidermist but it will be 4-6
months before the mounting is finished. This is a story that will
be told over and over for many years to come.I’m really proud of Morgen and I just want the entire world to know.
Our best to you all and for sharing this little but of excitement
(even for those who are not hunters… thanks for understanding).Mark Priest
However, as rare as this is, I do have other posts of similar events:
Another Deer Locked Horn-to-Horn
Two Bull Elk Locked Horn-to-Horn
Here’s what can happen in the wild. A nice sized whitetail buck has gone to the local rub. The “rub” is a tree that bucks use to rub off their velvet.
OK, here’s how this works. Most bucks (males) will develop antlers. I say most as some do not and, some females will grow horns. See one of my first posts to this blog, Spike Dyke. The antlers usually start to grow near the end of the first year of life. Antlers are not “horns”. Antlers grow every year and horns are permanent. Antlers are dead bone. Horns are more like the skin material used for nails and hoofs. As antlers grow they are covered with a very hairy skin covering that is usually colored red or deep burgundy. This gives the appearance of felt or velvet covering. Near the end of summer the Buck’s horn growth stops and the velvet dies and starts to shed. To help this shedding bucks find a sapling or other soft shrub in order to rub it. The rubbing helps the buck shed the velvet.
What is interesting is that bucks will tend to favor a particular species of tree or sappling depending on which part of the country you are in. And, sometimes more than one buck will rub the same tree. They seem to prefer soft barked trees. I understand that the antlers are rather sensitive at this stage so rubbing a soft barked tree makes sense.
This poor fellow got his antlers stuck and probably starved to death.
These pictures came to me via email. They’re tagged with www.fouraranch.com. I checked their site but didn’t see the pictures posted there. Give them a visit for more spectacular photos of monster trophy whitetail bucks. They have a big protein feeder that helps the nutrition of the buck which inturn causes massive antler development. One photo shows 4 real nice bucks snacking at the feeder at one time.
Here’s a few photos of what can happen when you don’t pay attention to what your doing. This poor fellow forgot something when he was sighting in his new rifle. See if you can guess what it is?
