Can Body Injuries Impact A whitetail Bucks Antler Growth?

This is a personal review of the adverse effects of a neck injury to a whitetail deer with regards to its overall health and antler growth.

As an avid sportsman I have managed habitat and harvest strategies on private property and hunting club leases for thirty-five years in North Florida. I enjoy this side of the hunting experience as much as the hunt itself. When necessary, I obtain professional assistance from topic experts.

I’ve studied abnormal antler traits of harvested bucks in search of evidence of a common issue. I sought hunters who killed bucks with “antler issues” to see the antlers and hear their stories of how they acquired them. I have scored several hundred sets of antlers just so I could get an opportunity to learn as much about them as possible.

Immediately I discovered most malformations were young bucks that never lived long enough to grow a mature set of antlers. Occasionally, supportive evidence of injury to the pedicle or skull resulting in antler oddities were discovered. This applied to a single side antler weakness. This type injury seemed to stay with the buck as he aged according to the hunter being questioned.

With limited research, anyone can locate case studies where a lower extremity injury will cause antler malformations. Research proves front leg injury impacts the same side antler and rear leg injury crosses over to impact the opposite side antler. Castration or testicular injury will cause a buck to never shed his antlers while growing additional antler over the existing one.

I’ve even discussed a situation with a deer grower and veterinarian who told me her story of a buck’s severe mouth/nose injury, requiring two surgeries to repair. This injury did not appear to have any impact on the antler growth.

Antler growth is a secondary body function and the primary function is overall health and survival. In my case study, the supporting evidence of this could not be clearer.

My case study involves an unfortunate situation I caused while shooting a buck in the neck Friday, November 18, 2016 during a morning hunt. This is not about shot placement or rifle caliber size. This information is about antler issues because of injury. Specifically, it is about a 9 point, 2 ½ year-old buck, at the time, with a unique crab claw antler feature on his left side antler.

He was chasing a big doe early that morning and ran into the opening. He turned to his left to continue chasing the doe and I shot him in the neck at 90 yards as he was standing still. My rifle was resting on sandbags and I was in a ground blind. The buck collapsed immediately where he was standing. I looked away for just a few seconds to gather my hunting items. When I looked back up, he was kicking severely and a cloud of dust was everywhere. I could not see through the dust to make a successful second shot and he ran off.

I looked for the buck the rest of that day and only found two tiny drops of blood. I verified the accuracy of the rifle on the range and it was perfectly sighted in. I reviewed an anatomy sketch of a whitetail deer and saw a two-inch area located under the Neck Vertebra in the Cervical Spine (C7) location and above the Carotid Artery that a bullet could pass through and not hit any vitals if the shot was not at an angle. Apparently, this area was where the bullet passed through his neck.

I searched for him after each morning hunt for the next seven days. I also looked-for buzzards in the area the rest of the week and did not ever see any. Three weeks later, I got a photo of him from my motion camera over 1 ½ miles away. I knew it was him because of the ugly exit wound on the left side of his neck.