12/8/2023 0 Comments Small spike buck![]() MOUNT - When hunters set a pair of antlers or full head on their wall or in some other position, they call it a mount. HORNS - It’s important to remember that antlers are not technically horns, but many hunters call them such as slang. The size of the antlers increases as the buck gets older until he reaches five or six years old. When the rut is over, the antlers fall off.Īntlers are the fastest growing bone among all mammals, with healthy mature bucks sometimes growing up to an inch per day. The antlers also serve as a symbol of health and dominance that attracts the female deer, or does. The antlers begin growing in the spring along with the buck’s hormonal cycle and are ready for combat in the fall. Male whitetails, called bucks, grow antlers on a yearly basis which they can use to fight other bucks for territory and mates during the autumn mating season, called the rut. While other animals have similar growths like horns, antlers are special in that they regrow and fall out every year.Īll deer species but one grow antlers, and with the sole exception of reindeer, only the males grow them. DEC must develop additional methods for monitoring deer populations to manage effectively with ARs.Deer antlers are a unique physical feature of animals in the deer family, also known as cervids. Deer management population indices were compromised by ARs.A majority of hunters in the pilot AR units prefer that the program continue.Hunter expectations for the pilot AR program were largely unmet.A majority of hunters reported being dissatisfied with (1) the number of antlered bucks compared to antlerless deer seen, (2) the number of older, larger-antlered bucks seen, (3) their opportunity to shoot larger-antlered bucks, and (4) the number of older bucks compared to the number of young bucks seen. More hunters reported being satisfied than dissatisfied with the level of protection afforded to young bucks and with the level of safety they felt in the pilot area. Similar increases in buck-hunting satisfaction were observed in the surrounding region as occurred within the pilot area. Satisfaction with buck-hunting was generally higher in the pilot AR units than the surrounding region. The impact of ARs on hunter satisfaction was mixed.Overall participation by non-local hunters appeared to decline because of ARs. ARs had no effect on hunter participation for the majority of hunters.A similar shift was observed in neighboring units without ARs. A shift in sex ratios of deer observed in the pilot AR units was apparent.Hunters also indicated that ARs had little influence on their willingness to harvest antlerless deer. ARs did not noticeably impact harvest of antlerless deer.WMU 3H was the only unit where buck take returned to the level immediately prior to AR. The increase did not fully compensate for the reduction in yearling harvest, and total buck take generally remained >20% below pre-AR levels. ![]()
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