Really bizzare rack

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gamestalker

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As soon as I can get my Son to help me post pics I have a few good ones to show ya all. But in the mean time I'll tell you about the most recent one his friend took last week end. It is a couse white tail here in S.W. Az. and it has one normal 4 point side, but the other side is 3 very large bulbs of mass. It looks like 3 extra large soft balls on his head, no beams or tines at all on that side.

I also have a cople other non typicals, as well as other odd incidental racks I've been trying to have my Son post pics of for ya all to see as well.

GS
 
Whitetails do occasionally have some really weird racks. Back maybe forty years ago, one of our guys killed a big buck. The left antler was nice, with six points. The right antler was a 12" spike, thick at the base, and surrounded by a half-dozen two-inch spikes.

Old wives tale? Some folks believe that if a deer is injured on one side of his body, but heals okay, the opposite antler will come in as deformed. Anybody heard of this?
 
I've heard it and have reason the believe its true. For whatever reason, the half and half normal and funky deer I've seen usually have evidence of some previous injury. I helped butcher a big 5pt x palmated club thing whitetail that had a slug in the pelvis of the opposite side from a season past and another buck that had some kind of rear hoof injury or deformity.
 
Art,I took a young whitetail in central Florida years back with a strange rack.One side had a normal spike about ten inches long.The other side came up about an inch and flattened out.From the sides several short sections sprouted in different directions.When we skinned the deer,the shoulder opposite of the odd antler had damage to the blade which was healed over.Apparently,the buck had been injured early in the year while his antlers were developing.
 
Az. and it has one normal 4 point side, but the other side is 3 very large bulbs of mass. It looks like 3 extra large soft balls on his head, no beams or tines at all on that side.

This is the deer I shot January 5th...not exactly as you described but similar


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Deer antlers are some of the fastest growing tissue in the animal kingdom....they have special cells which grow them. Experiments have shown wherever those cells are placed, antlers may grow...even on the legs. If those cells, or the pedicals on which they grow are damaged, you can get odd racks.
 
Deer antlers are some of the fastest growing tissue in the animal kingdom....they have special cells which grow them. Experiments have shown wherever those cells are placed, antlers may grow...even on the legs. If those cells, or the pedicals on which they grow are damaged, you can get odd racks.
Wonder what would happen if you implanted those cells on a human. :rolleyes:
 
Wonder what would happen if you implanted those cells on a human. :rolleyes:

Well, the reason they are experimenting with them is to figure out how to harness their rapid growth to help heal humans.


Word on the net is that Ray Lewis was using "deer antler spray" to help heal his injured arm....one of those "old time remedies" believed to help heal people because of the rapid growth of deer antlers.

Ignoring the above "homeopathic" use, the real medical community is actually experimenting with the cells and trying to find the genes responsible for the rapid growth.
 
i have a 1950s or early 60s copy of boone and crockett back at my parents house, it shows a deer with no main beam. all of the points came directly up from the skull skyward. the illustration stated that the deer had been castrated by a cactus (iirc) and they believed that the changes in testostrone caused the irregular rack.
similar to this
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thats not the explaination for all non typicals. many its pure genetics
 
I shot a 4x something a few years ago. The left side was normal, but nothing spectacular. The other side was a bulbous mass of antler. In the early stage of development antlers and the velvet can be damaged. This damage can happen to the growth tips (similar to plants). When it does, the antler grows in girth and forms an irregular shape rather than lengthening and splitting off into points.

As others mentioned, opposite side trauma can also cause strange racks. The same year I shot mine with a normal right side, my brother shot the mirror. A deer with a normal left side and a small irregular antler on the other that was pretty small. His had lost part of it's front leg on the opposite side to an injury.
 
Art, I've seen some trail cam pictures and heard accounts on some hunting forums that would seem to support that theory. Some pics show deer that have sustained injuries to a leg or lost a leg to motor vehicle accidents. Many of those deer survive and the rack is deformed or much smaller on the opposite side of the body from the injury.
 
Here's one I took earlier this fall.....boiled out the skull and found the bone had deformities, maybe hit by car.

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Several years ago I shot a deer that had about 10 inch spikes and each side had several small points that came off at right angles on the spikes that were from 1/2 to 1 inch long all along the length of the spikes. I've also seen several deer with acorn like tips on their antlers that are (I'm told) due to damage while the antlers were growing.
 
I managed to get this one a few years back. For all practical purposes the only thing he has for a main beam is just what goes up to the first split after the brow tines, then it is simply a mess. He has 13 points but there is no way to get them all in one picture due to how they stick out here and there. The sad part is he had broken off a substantial portion of the left side so I can't imagine how many he might have started off with.

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On the property where I got this one we have seen some others with great character or weird depending on how you call it. Just something about hunting mineral rich river bottom country, you never know just exactly what might step out next.
 
One on the left, I shot in 2006, my 11yr old now going on 16 shot the Monster(260lbs) shot the other one in 2008. HOOfan1, he shot a 200lb'er like yours this year. Will post pic later.
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one year during bow season i jumped a buck that was limping bad on his right side.i followed him for maybe a mile in the woods just never could get close enuf to him for a shot.looked like he had been hit by a car.

the next year i shot a buck about the same antler size maybe a bit bigger who had a perfect antler on one side and a bulb with sprouts on the right side.same place i jumped him last year.
 
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