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Mark Freeman Commentary Antlers are `freak of nature' During the final minutes of his last day of fall deer hunting, 14-year-old Joe Schooler sat in an open Sams Valley meadow as glum as the overcast sky. "I didn't think I was going to get anything," Schooler says. "Even if I had seen a forked horn, I'd have jumped at him." Then out of the brush jumped a large blacktail buck deer that only later would reveal itself as a buck deemed abnormal only because it is so ... normal. The blacktail Schooler shot Nov. 9 in the Sams Creek area will land Schooler atop the list of juvenile blacktail hunters tallied in Oregon's official big-game record book. But the buck's most intriguing feature is that its two five-point antlers are near-spitting images of each other. Unlike most deer antlers that are fraught with variances, the tines and points and beams on both sides of this deer's head are either equal or extremely close in length. "I wouldn't say it's exact," says Dennis King, a Jacksonville taxidermist and official Boone and Crockett Club scorer who inspected Schooler's antlers. "It's a freak of nature." The freakishness actually lies in what nature has not done to this buck's antlers. Truly symmetrical antlers are somewhat rare now because so many environmental factors can disturb nature's true path for blacktail bucks: perfect antlers. "Asymmetrical antlers are certainly the norm, says Bonnie Yates, a mammalogy expert at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Laboratory in Ashland. "I think nature tries for symmetry, but it just doesn't hit the mark that often." Yates' most likely explanation for Schooler's buck lies in how nature intends antlers to form on deer and how environmental factors can keep that from occurring, Buck deer sprout their bone-like antlers when testosterone triggers germinal tissue in their heads to sprout. They continue to grow to different sizes and at different rates depending upon genetics, the age of the animal and the concentrations of such antler-growing minerals as calcium and phosphorus in the animal's feed. Yates believes that, if nature were left to its own devices, these various factors result in two symmetrical antlers each year. While a deer's genetic structure certainly wants the antlers to grow that way, Yates says, it doesn't seem to. Yates has not inspected Schooler's buck. But it is her experience that a deer's health, the health of its environment, and its ability to "exploit" its environment all determine just how capable a buck is to "express his genetic makeup," she says. But deer now are so exposed to other factors that normal growth is no longer normal. Schooler's buck, it seems, breaks that abnormal mold. The buck likely had a good summer of forage and weather, allowing it to stand out as perfect in a sea of asymmetry. "It's really doing what it's supposed to do," Yates says. "We're just not used to it. Nature still tries for symmetry, at its best." But on Nov. 9 in that Sams Valley meadow, Schooler was trying only not to get skunked in his first fall blacktail season. After hunting each weekend with his dad since Oct. 2, Schooler sat in his grandfather's pickup truck wondering if his first blacktail tag would ever leave his pocket. The boy talked his grandfather, 62-year-old Newell Schooler, to travel back into the Sams Creek area for one final look before heading home. "I was just thinking, this is it," he says. "I got nowhere to go the next day." The pair sat in the meadow just before dusk, and saw what appeared to be three deer rummaging around in the willows about 175 yards away. Then out popped a buck. It seemed like a forked horn from afar. "We were arguing about whether it was too late to shoot," the younger Schooler says. "I said, I think I'm going to shoot at him." Schooler shot once, and missed. The deer, unafraid, took a few more steps. Schooler's second shot was his last. When the Schoolers finally reached the fallen deer, they realized just how large a set of antlers it had. "When we really saw it up close, it was like, wow," Newell Schooler says. The grandfather took the deer's head and antlers to King for scoring. The antlers' symmetry quickly intrigued King. In Boone and Crockett Club scoring, specific antler measurements are added for a raw score, then the differences between the right and left antler measurements are deducted for a final score. Imperfections can commonly knock a set of blacktail antlers from 175 total points to about 150 points. The two main beams on Schooler's antlers were just a quarter-inch away from exact. The eye-guards and back tines were identical, and the front tine was just an inch from symmetrical. In all, the antlers' imperfections dropped their score only 3ths points for a total of 143ths. "It's pretty rare, when you don't have any deductions to speak of," King says. "He was a real pretty buck," King says. "I was impressed." (Staff writer Mark Freeman covers the outdoors for the Mail Tribune. Call him at 776-4470, or e-mail him at: [email protected] ) Outdoor Journal main page Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA