Antler Points

Good Over the Long Run

This article appeared in Whitetail Times, 14(2):14-15 (1998).

Dr. Henry Mosby, famous professor of wildlife management used to tell wildlife and other students that they had to take geology to learn about time. Of course they thought they had to learn about rocks, dinosaurs, and minerals. That too, but the most important thing was time. Foresters know more about time than do the average person. Their frame of reference is about a hundred years. Construction workers and planners may think in terms of 30 to 50 years (since must buildings are replaced at that rate). Financial planners also work at about the 30-year frame because of the mysteries of interest rates and what they do to the value of a buck. Wildlife professionals are torn between short-term thinking about animals that rarely live very long and thought which will cast them back well before the Pleistocene, the last great ice age.

Most people do not realize that deer rarely reach age 20. The typical deer that crosses the checking station is about 3 years old. Few deer live beyond 6 to 8 years. This is not only because of hunting but also because of natural forces - accidents, disease, predators, general poor health, and the collapse of vital organs and functions. The wildlife professional or hunter thinking about a deer and its last 3 years is doing some pretty short-term thinking. At the same time, he or she needs to be thinking about all of the conditions that deer have faced over a million years, those since the cave men hiked into the eastern U.S., and those since settlement, a mere 500 years. These deer have to have been good over the long run. They have had to be able (as a population) to have met every challenge nature and people have thrown at them and still survive and prosper. They are good! Imagine surviving every storm, forest fire, tidal wave, volcanic cloud, drought, or peak in predators!

Because we are not long-term types of people, we may have drawn some wrong conclusions about the deer. Whether they need drinking water has been a question for managers and others. Some people claim that they can get all of the water they need from wet and juicy plants. Others claim that they have a need for ponds and streams. The analysis done should have been over (1) when, during the year, do deer need great amounts of water and (2) whether they can get to it with minimum energy expenditure or by taking minimum risks. Deer need water. They can get by in dry years without much. In such dry years they will abort or lose fawns already born. Oh yes, some will survive, but for a program of productive, stable, harvestable deer, managers need to assure the presence of drinking water, at least during the fawning season. In areas that have abundant streams that flow year around, it will be silly to put in waterholes. In such areas if streams go dry during the summer (even in one year out of four), then waterholes are needed. I remember the jokes I got about one such waterhole I built while I was with a wildlife agency. The small pond was next to a stream! I used the stream to fill the pond, and watched its level as the stream went dry the next year. The small amount of water in the pond was ample for deer to drink. Deer can move. Can they ever! But when managing populations within an area for maximum production and desired harvest levels, well-distributed water is good. It may not be needed every year; it may not be needed throughout the year. They do not drink much, so there is no need to create fishing ponds or swimming holes. Over the long run, good deer management involves paying attention to meeting the drinking water needs of the adult does, every year.

Antlers are a conspicuous part of the whitetail deer. Why do they have them; what are they good for? Having seen a deer wrestle with another deer or having seen one defend against a wild dog, it is pretty easy to jump to the conclusion that antlers are weapons. By taking the long-term view, can we see an alternative? How can a population afford so much energy to carry the weight of these things around? How can they be so valuable that they can justify pumping so much hard-to-get calcium and phosphorous into them each year. Perfectly equipped for flight, why should deer spend extra valuable resources on equipment for risky, damaging fights? What is the survival value for the long-term in big antlers? If they are so important for survival, why don't does have them?

Based on studies by many people and by my observations in India, I now think that the primary role of antlers in the whitetail is to cool the brain of the buck. Muscles can tolerate very high temperatures before any chemical changes occur; nerve tissue and sex organ tissue cannot. Both tissues are essential for survival and so deer over the eons has taken steps to cool the brain. The deer has an air-cooled brain. The antlers, when "in the velvet", display to all breezes and winds a blood supply under the skin over the antlers. Heat is pumped away from the body and cooler blood returned. This is occurring during the hot season. Females behave differently and use shade. They cannot afford the luxury of the antlers for all of that calcium and other minerals must be devoted to milk and fawn production. Body color also accounts for some of the difference between males and females as does body size and activity.

"Antlers are for defense and aggression" may be a principle that is too well set for anyone to give an alternative an extra thought. Antlers are used in many ways but the primary role for them, at least as I now see it, has been in energy management. They need to get rid of enormous quantities of body heat from metabolizing large amounts of juicy foods in the spring and summer while they are in the hot sun with a brown, heat-absorbing coat. These animals have developed some strategies and some structures that may seem peculiar but over the long run, especially in the extreme or crisis conditions, they serve them well. Perhaps that understanding is one equally as important for families, and society as for deer.