This lovely big buck, with his antlers all in summer velvet, was photographed in our back fields (in fact, that's one of the wings of a cross country jump in the background, so I can tell exactly where he was standing!)
Sheri, Bill, Alli and Zack have seen this chap at least twice. They are doing very well in the wildlife spotting department, having found a wild turkey feather, spotted the fox twice (on his way to the chicken coop, in fact), and tallied up a whole passle of deer.
For those unfamiliar with teh whitetail deer, the bucks will shed their antlers every winter, after the breeding season. It's very hard to find those lovely antlers -- mice and porcupines will chew them up very quickly. Come spring, the boys start to grow a handsome new set of antlers. To provide blood flow to these growing racks, the antlers are covered in a soft velvety skin The antlers themselves are soft at this point, and can be damaged, resulting in a crooked antler.
In the autumn, as the antlers begin to harden, the velvet dries up and drops off. Bucks will polish that ragged velvet remnant off their handsome antlers by thrashing the antlers against small pliable trees -- we have several around the resort property that show the signs of this antler polishing behaviour. Once they are all polished up, the antlers are ready to be presented to the does -- nothing like that to impress the ladies -- and also to provide a caution to the young bucks who might challenge the big guns for those same ladies.
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