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52 °F Forecast | Road Cams Sunday, October 10, 2004 Today's News | Classifieds | Autos | Homes | Jobs | Tempo | Health | Community | Home Delivery SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics Tempo AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map SPECIAL SECTIONS Since We Asked Outdoor Journal Menu Guide How To Guide Wellness Connection Readers' Choice Real Estate Showcase Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Wedding Guide Rogue Valley's Finest EXTRA Newspaper in Education Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People MARKETPLACE Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Classifieds Place an ad eSouthernOregon Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar CUSTOMER SERVICE Frequent Questions Advertising Information Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Network Affiliate Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend October 7, 2004 Strange start to Oregon’s deer hunting rifle season By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune Landy Ray spied a big mule deer buck two miles away Saturday morning, then he put on a long sneak to within 60 yards of where the animal bedded down in the high desert sagebrush near Paisley. When Ray startled the animal, it jumped up. The veteran deer hunter then fired. And here is where the mystery began. Ray’s big buck sported a string of odd-ball characteristics that make it look more like a midget, cross-dressing elk than a trophy mule deer that science can only try to explain. The deer was tiny, body-wise, by mule deer standards. It had thin skin, strangely fine hair and virtually no fat. Advertisement The antlers’ bases were extremely long and thick, like those of a standard elk. Plus, the antlers were still in full velvet and still growing, even though the vast majority of deer have hardened antlers by October. And when Ray field-dressed the deer, he found no testicles. Was this a doe named Buck or just another rare, big-antlered mule deer that could never deliver on its grunted promises during the rut? "I don’t know how he got this way, but he’s an odd-ball one, all right," says Ray, 50, a former Medford resident now living in Roseburg. "Who knows how he lost his testicles, but that’s the way it was." The life and times of Mr. Velvet, as Ray has called him, certainly was the strangest story to come out of the field from the weekend start of Oregon’s deer season for rifle hunters. But there is some reason to this rhyme, and the answer lies in the complex world of how bucks grow antlers. Typically, a dose of testosterone triggers antlers to sprout. They grow as minerals like calcium are digested from forbs and are shuttled into the antlers by active arteries. Their relative size depends on genetics as well as mineral digestion, and they remain encased in velvet as they grow. The antlers continue to grow until changes in the amount of daylight in late summer trigger the release of hormones that constrict blood flow to the antlers. The velvet is shed, the antlers harden and they eventually fall off in late winter in a process called "casting." Any variation can bring deformities. Studies show that an injury to the left testicle can trigger deformities in the right antler. The mere presence of testicles doesn’t mean a deer will grow antlers, but not finding them where they are supposed to be doesn’t necessarily matter, either. "We see these every now and then," says Dennis King, a veteran Jacksonville taxidermist mounting Ray’s buck. "My dad used to call them he-she’s." Even deer like Ray’s buck can have tiny testicles inside the body cavity that don’t descend to their rightful spot. And, apparently, size doesn’t matter. "You can be surprised just how much testosterone can be put out by a small gland," says Bonnie Yates, a mammologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Forensics Laboratory in Ashland. Exactly what went wrong with Ray’s buck is tough to tell. The most likely explanation is that it pumped out just enough testosterone to allow the antler growth. A combination of good genes and good minerals from foraging in the High Desert flats of the Wagontire Unit allowed the antlers to grow. But they never stopped growing, because the shot of hormones that cause antlers to harden mysteriously never appeared. "Maybe it was stuck in a growth phase because there was no chemical mechanism to shut them down," Yates says. "There’s a whole cocktail of hormones that goes into antler growth." King, who estimated Ray’s buck to be 5 or 6 years old, says these antlers likely grew over the past two years or more. "If you found him in July, April or in February, he’d still look like this," says King, who has seen fewer than a dozen of these kinds of antlers in 30 years of taxidermy. In most cases, the constant flow of minerals into the antlers causes deformities, King says. These hormonally challenged deer also always sprout thin, fine, rabbit-like hair on their skulls, King says. Usually, the perpetual growth results in bulging knots sprouting at the antler bases until the deer eventually dies, King says. For some reason, this buck’s antlers had only a few knots and grew into the shape of standard four-points, only larger. "These things are massive, but they still resemble antlers," King says. "It looks like a really big buck in velvet." Ray will never really know exactly how Mr. Velvet came to be. But Ray, who manages Western Beverage Co. in Roseburg, knows these mounted antlers will remain a springboard for telling tales about minerals and hormones and testicles that weren’t where they were supposed to be. "Whatever it is, it’s an interesting deer, for sure," Ray says. Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2004 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. 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