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Mark Freeman Commentary Cracking the case of offbeat antlers With my wing tips glued to the desktop, a glass of bad hooch in my hand and a stack of unpaid bills boiled in red ink on the floor, Tuesday began like any other day for a wildlife private-eye in search of a case to keep alive his dream of being a real animal detective. I�d always thought I could scratch out a living by solving the mysteries of creatures of the backwoods and waters. Somebody needs to answer those imponderables like when do fish sleep, or how can a jackalope hop with those big horns stapled to its head. That somebody could be me, but first I need to break just one case and make a name for myself. If not, I�ll become just another spawned-out carcass floating belly-up in the eddy of life. My mentor, Mike Hammer, always had some troubled dame with a wad of cash stroll through his door about now. And me, I can�t even scare up a simple doe deer who wants me to track her buck to see if he�s getting a little blacktail on the side. Then I see a fresh note with the eight words and one telephone number that could change my life. "Deer with four antlers seen at Black Bird." This might be my last chance. I punch in the number and get David Morris, a snitch of mine who publishes the Oregon Record Book of Big Game Animals. And he�s got the skinny on the funky-antlered deer. It�s a buck, he says, with seemingly two sets of antlers growing out of its head. A guy brought it in to Black Bird in Medford while Morris was there schlepping his record book, and Morris says he saw it for himself. This one has a set of regular-sized antlers, then another set of smaller antlers growing around the first ones. "It�s different, all right," Morris says. "We�ve measured over 5,000 deer antlers, and it�s the only one like it that I�ve seen." He gives me a telephone number. I dial, and reach Doug Johannson, a 51-year-old civil engineer from Medford who breaks the caper wide open. It seems 50 years ago, his grandfather, Everett Corey, had 15 acres of pears at the corner of Kershaw and Corey roads near what is now the Jackson County Sports Park. And Grandpa Corey had a problem with deer eating his pear buds. He got an agricultural permit to kill the offending deer. Then yada-yada-yada, he shot a buck that turned out to have an extra set of antlers. Twenty years later, Grandpa passes down the antlers to Johannson. Grandpa tells Johannson all the yada-yada-yada stuff about how he got the deer, but really nothing else. "He didn�t know anything about them," Johannson says. "He just thought they were relatively unique." So the antlers sat in various Johannson closets over the years until a couple months ago, when he hauled them down to Black Bird for Morris to see. By now, I�m so excited you could braid the hair on my shoulder blades, and I wouldn�t notice. But I play it cool, like Hammer. I tell Johannson to come clean. Show me the antlers. He does, and it�s a sight that would sucker a dime even out of P.T. Barnum. There�s a standard set of 4-by-3 point antlers seemingly growing straight out of the middle of another set of antlers. They�re all hard, like normal deer antlers, but that�s the only thing normal about them. It doesn�t take a wildlife detective�s badge to know that buck deer grow antlers each year. The antlers die and shed in the winter to make room for the next year�s set. But these are true freaks of deer-dom. It�s like someone took a set of deformed antlers, drilled out the center, then jammed in another set of antlers in the hole. But there�s been no drilling, no jamming � just antler tines pointed all over the place. Now, if I can just solve how this happened, maybe I can make a big name for myself in the big-game whatizit world. And I know just the who to tell me how. I call Bonnie Yates, a mammalogist at the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Lab in Ashland. She�s one of those big-brained people who has more right answers than Regis Philbin, but is not as snappy a dresser. I call Bonnie, and give her the 4-1-1. She�s intrigued. Enough to overlook that silly little restraining order of hers and meet me, Johannson and the funky antlers at her office. 2:30 p.m. Sharp. Johannson�s there at 2:20 p.m., and Bonnie�s already up to her elbows in the antlers when I arrive. At first glance, she says, the antlers appear to be a hoax. Nothing could be that weird. But she pores over them, intrigued, even X-rays them to verify that, no, these are not fakes. No one nailed two sets of antlers into one deer skull. They�re the real McCoy. They�re an aberration," Yates says. "I�ve never seen any like it." Yates says the antlers appear to be from a mature buck past its prime and likely suffering from imbalanced nutrition, hormones or both. First, it grew the regular set of antlers, she says. The imbalances, however, likely kept the buck from shedding the antlers in winter. But whatever sickness caused the deformity didn�t kill the buck, Yates says, or stunt its ability to grow new antlers. When the next round of antler growth came that next spring, Yates theorizes, the new antlers simply grew around the old set. So I got the how. But I need motive. I need the why. Maybe the deer ingested enough agricultural chemicals from Grandpa Corey�s pear trees to cause the sickness, she says, kind of like what may be happening with tree frogs growing extra legs in Oregon and Minnesota. Or it could be that the animal was kicked in the testicles, which can cause antler deformities. I wince. Johannson smiles. "I always wanted to put a plaque here with these antlers, but nobody could tell me what to put on it," Johannson says. "Now, I can say something about what they are, other than "non-typical." I call it: Case solved. Old Bucky licked a few too many buds, or took a swift kick to the groin and came away with a wacky rack before he met his maker in Grandpa Corey�s orchard. If all my hours as a wildlife private eye has taught me anything, it�s this � no matter how special or different you are, don�t ever mess with a man�s pears. (Staff writer Mark Freeman covers the outdoors for the Mail Tribune. Call him at 776-4470, or e-mail him at: [email protected] ) Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.