It’s in Your Nature: Antler Sheds

The last place I would spend my waning years would be in a city.

Yes, it can offer spectacular entertainment, dining options galore, and so many social interactions, but it doesn’t offer me the constant opportunities to be “outdoors.”

Living in this Times News region, I can, within minutes, get out there and experience a plethora of outdoor nature interactions.

Summer offers the breeding birds, an explosion of wildflowers, and warm rains. Fall, with the influx of crisp weather, offers up wildlife at its fittest and a myriad animals preparing for winter survival or their escape from it. Winter, even with its dangers and cold, brings incomparable snowy landscapes, winter birds, and peaceful hikes in the snowy woods with few others to disturb the quiet.

But spring brings with it new life. New bird arrivals almost daily, spring flowers, quiet rains, new fresh leaves and vegetation and returning warmth. Deer hunters may now miss the chance to bag a deer, but many have found spring to offer a good excuse to hunt for something else: shed antlers.

In an earlier column I focused on how antlers grow and I reminded you that deer grow new headgear each year. By the time you read this article, almost every whitetail buck in this region has dropped last year’s antlers.

With the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s requirement of harvesting buck with a minimum number of “points,” more bucks are living longer, getting smarter and growing larger racks. Some of these buck now live two, three or more years, growing larger “racks.” Hunter or nonhunter, all you need is a woodlot close to home or the “big woods” nearby to take a few hikes. Use late March or early April before ferns and shrubs cover the forest floor impeding your search.

The male’s loss of testosterone after breeding season signals the eventual shedding. However, the exact timing of this is not a perfect science. As a youngster I remember the “old timers” claiming that the first bitter cold weather made them drop. Not necessarily so. Apparently, a deer’s food supply, genetics, winter stress and age all affect when the antlers will drop off. I have trail cam photos over the past 10 years that captured buck sporting antlers as late as March 7, or some buck showing the “antler scars” on their foreheads as early as late December. My nonscientific theory is that the last to shed were those well-fed but with smaller, lightweight antlers. The heavier antlers probably wobble more and loosen quicker.

Deer antlers are 20 percent calcium and 10 percent phosphorus, two elements that buck require to grow big racks and two elements that other animals crave. Antler sheds are quickly located by many animals, especially rodents, who will chew on the antlers to get those needed elements for themselves. If you wish to find drops, now is the time to walk along some deer trails or field edges where deer have frequented and find the antlers before squirrels, porcupines, mice or chipmunks beat you to them.

A good farmer friend of mine found a beautiful antler shed in a costly way. Half of a 13-point rack got embedded in a tractor tire, causing more than $1,000 in damage. Someone suggested he search nearby to find the other half, and within 80 yards, he found it. This may suggest to you that if you find one shed, search close by because it may have dropped the second shortly after.

Any nature enthusiast may search for antler sheds, and any activity that gets you outside will offer more opportunities to see what nature has to offer. So, get out there. …

Test your outdoor knowledge: The Allegheny wood rat, once quite common in the mountains of Pennsylvania, is now rare because of __________. A. rabies outbreaks, B. increased tick populations, C. the disappearance of the American chestnut, D. acid rain.

Last week’s trivia answer: The peregrine falcon was once called the duck hawk. It is our fastest flying bird.

Contact Barry Reed at breed71@gmail.com.