Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
Speaker 1: First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson. In today's episode is all about all of
Speaker 2: those bucks out there that are just starting to grow
Speaker 2: their new sets of antlers and how amazing that really is,
Speaker 2: and also why we just love antlers. I had two
Speaker 2: experiences with antlers recently that reminded me how cool they
Speaker 2: really are. One involved finding a shed from last season
Speaker 2: on a little property I own, which is the first
Speaker 2: antler I've ever found on any ground I've owned, which
Speaker 2: covers a fifteen year time span now. The other was
Speaker 2: a video of a young buck that already has a
Speaker 2: tar get on his back from one of my daughters.
Speaker 2: Antlers are just fascinating, and honestly, we kind of take
Speaker 2: it for granted how they come to be and what
Speaker 2: they really mean. That seems confusing, don't worry, because I'm
Speaker 2: gonna break it down right now. I'm at the stage
Speaker 2: of my hunting career where I'm just done with shoulder mounts.
Speaker 2: For a long time, you know, having a set of
Speaker 2: antlers on the wall meant a lot to me, and
Speaker 2: having a buck dead that was worthy of a trip
Speaker 2: to the tax at Ermis meant even more to me.
Speaker 2: But at some point, about five or six years ago,
Speaker 2: I just realized I don't need any more shoulder mounts.
Speaker 2: The truth about it is that I kind of realized
Speaker 2: no one really cares about them but me, and at
Speaker 2: some point I'll be dead and no one will care
Speaker 2: about them at all. I don't regret mounting deer in
Speaker 2: the past, and still have plenty of antlers around that
Speaker 2: remind me of some of my most exciting and rewarding
Speaker 2: times in the outdoors. I'm just at the point now
Speaker 2: where I'd rather take my tax at Army money and
Speaker 2: dump it into my retirement accounts or use it to
Speaker 2: take my daughter's fishing somewhere. I guess I'm more into
Speaker 2: like experiences now.
Speaker 3: That's just me.
Speaker 2: I am still wildly interested in antlers in general. I
Speaker 2: freaking love shed hunting, and I love hunting deer, and
Speaker 2: I've never been pissed, not once in my life, to
Speaker 2: see a buck of any size walking down the trail
Speaker 2: toward me. I'm guessing you feel the same way if
Speaker 2: you're devoting any of your time listening to me drone
Speaker 2: on and on about deer. But do you really know
Speaker 2: the story of antlers. It's pretty wild, and it starts
Speaker 2: somewhere around twenty to twenty five million years ago when
Speaker 2: the deer family Serve a Day appeared on the scene.
Speaker 2: This was a time when new mammals started to replace
Speaker 2: the ones that didn't quite survive the Oligasine epoch, and
Speaker 2: newcomers besides the deer, ancestors to hit the landscape include
Speaker 2: the first hyenas and the first weasels. It's pretty easy
Speaker 2: to understand how evolution would eventually settle on large canine teeth,
Speaker 2: for example, like you might find tucked inside of a
Speaker 2: lion's mouth. And it's not really a stretch to think
Speaker 2: about teeth becoming, you know, a bigigger and bigger weapon,
Speaker 2: as well as some sort of defensive signal, which means,
Speaker 2: you know, you can think about a walrus here.
Speaker 3: But antlers, it's kind of an unusual one.
Speaker 2: Luckily for us and the deer, some of the earliest
Speaker 2: critters in the lineage had bony skull outgrowths. This is
Speaker 2: important because evolution tends to work better when the only
Speaker 2: change it needs just involves a structure that already exists,
Speaker 2: instead of coming up with a whole new weapon system.
Speaker 2: Over time, birds and animals and probably fish and who
Speaker 2: knows what else often have ornamental appendages or plumages that
Speaker 2: help with mate selection. This seems to be the primary
Speaker 2: driver behind deer eventually growing larger and more branching sets
Speaker 2: of bone on their foreheads, but being strapped with the
Speaker 2: baddest weapons in the forest doesn't likely count as the
Speaker 2: sole reason modern antlers came to be. We all know
Speaker 2: males compete with other males for the ladies, and the
Speaker 2: winners of fights just generally get to pass along their
Speaker 2: genes more than the losers. That's evolution in a nutshell,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't tell the whole story of antlers. The
Speaker 2: bucks with big antlers, the one who meets the buck
Speaker 2: with small antlers might never have to risk his eyesight
Speaker 2: or his life to prove how bad as he is.
Speaker 2: Think about it, if you had to duel with someone
Speaker 2: you know, like an old timey duel. I don't know
Speaker 2: why you would want to, but bear with me here.
Speaker 2: If you were given a I don't know, let's say
Speaker 2: a single shot thirty two caliber pistol and the dude
Speaker 2: you were supposed to duel with was handed a semi
Speaker 2: ato twelve gage stuff to the gills with tungsten turkey loads,
Speaker 2: you might just decide to no show for the duel
Speaker 2: that day. This is the goal with almost all species
Speaker 2: out there, maybe all of them, you know, which is
Speaker 2: to pass on your jeans a lot while having to
Speaker 2: take on as little risk as possible. This has a
Speaker 2: further advantage which is tied to something called the handicap principle. Essentially,
Speaker 2: a big set of antlers comes with a large biological cost,
Speaker 2: and all of those doze out there looking at at
Speaker 2: Bucks all day to decide which ones to lock down with.
Speaker 2: They see that giant set of antlers and realize that
Speaker 2: that is a deer that has resources to spare. He's
Speaker 2: doing so well that he can devote extra resources to
Speaker 2: extravagant headgear. I mean, why do you think just about
Speaker 2: every one of us wants to make more money and
Speaker 2: a secretly kind of pissed when we meet someone who
Speaker 2: has a huge property and awesome vehicles in a giant
Speaker 2: house and seemingly unlimited funds. Or maybe a better way
Speaker 2: to put this is, you know, we as a society
Speaker 2: have kind of just decided all billionaires are evil, except
Speaker 2: I guess Taylor Swift. But we don't talk about how
Speaker 2: we'd all definitely not turned down a billion dollars if
Speaker 2: it was offered to us, and yes, our lives would
Speaker 2: change to resemble the upper class more than we'd care
Speaker 2: to admit, because when you have crazy amount of resources,
Speaker 2: we have a crazy amount of high value options in life. Now,
Speaker 2: you could say that the buck equivalent of having you know, say,
Speaker 2: one hundred billion dollars to your name, would be having
Speaker 2: six hundred inches a bone on top of your head.
Speaker 2: But those don't exist, and the closest we get are
Speaker 2: farm deer that are not what nature intended and never.
Speaker 3: Probably will be.
Speaker 2: But real bucks don't get to that size, and that's
Speaker 2: because natural selection and sexual selection pull in opposite directions.
Speaker 2: Maybe the does would choose that six hundred inch buck
Speaker 2: every time because well, maybe they're shallow and they can't
Speaker 2: see the good characteristics of your average spike buck with
Speaker 2: a great personality. But the truth is, evolution tends to
Speaker 2: settle where the survival costs aren't totally out of balance
Speaker 2: with reproductive benefits. In other words, at some point, antler's
Speaker 2: got big enough to do all of the jobs necessary,
Speaker 2: but not so big as to cause a higher likelihood
Speaker 2: of death to the owner. If you can't run through
Speaker 2: the woods or hold your head up for more than
Speaker 2: a few minutes at a time because you have two
Speaker 2: tree trunks sprouting from your noggin, the wolves and the
Speaker 2: coyotes and whoever else are going to figure that out
Speaker 2: real quickly, and they're going to eat you. Antlers are cool,
Speaker 2: way beyond on what I've talked about so far, though,
Speaker 2: as I mentioned in the intro, I recently found a
Speaker 2: shed off a two year old buck in northern Wisconsin.
Speaker 2: That part of the whole thing is fascinating too, and
Speaker 2: it's what differentiates antlers from horns, which don't fall off
Speaker 2: and regenerate every year. We all know that once the
Speaker 2: rut winds down and the whole deer fervor grinds nearly
Speaker 2: to a halt, that a buck's testosterone levels drop like
Speaker 2: the temperature. In response to this, they develop specialized cells
Speaker 2: that help dissolve the bone at the pedicle until both
Speaker 2: sides fall off. Why might you ask, Well, antlers are
Speaker 2: expensive to deer, a big buck, you know, run down
Speaker 2: from the rut, and who doesn't really need to display
Speaker 2: his male prowess any longer doesn't need to carry around
Speaker 2: a bunch of extra weight on his head. It's kind
Speaker 2: of as simple as that, and an easy way to
Speaker 2: understand it for any of us.
Speaker 3: Just carry around some extra weight. You don't have to
Speaker 3: strap a.
Speaker 2: Dumb belt to your forehead here to understand this, although
Speaker 2: if you do, please send me photos of your attempts. Really,
Speaker 2: just pick up something heavy and carry it around for
Speaker 2: a while, and then maybe, I don't know, climb a
Speaker 2: couple flights of stairs while carrying it, or go for
Speaker 2: a long walk, hell, maybe a swim, maybe a run.
Speaker 2: This is the thing that a lot of people don't
Speaker 2: seem to understand that today about weight loss and the
Speaker 2: general condition of our bodies, we think we all have
Speaker 2: a pretty sweet beach body, except for maybe a few
Speaker 2: extra stubborn pounds. But even fifteen extra pounds is a
Speaker 2: lot when you make the decision to carry it around voluntarily.
Speaker 2: And if you ever go to the gym and grab
Speaker 2: like a forty five pound plate carry that sucker around,
Speaker 2: you realize pretty quickly how much you don't want to
Speaker 2: carry that kind of weight around.
Speaker 3: When it's a part of your body.
Speaker 2: You're going to do a lot of extra work while
Speaker 2: doing the things you do every day, and that comes
Speaker 2: at a cost of having to rest more, eat more,
Speaker 2: and you know, just potential injury. It's really no different
Speaker 2: for deer. But this discussion doesn't end when the antlers
Speaker 2: hit the dirt, you know, and the turkeys start to gobble,
Speaker 2: because those bucks need a new set of antlers, and
Speaker 2: it doesn't take long before they start growing.
Speaker 3: And this part's truly wild.
Speaker 2: It all starts with the amount of daylight out there,
Speaker 2: just like so many transitions in nature, you know, as
Speaker 2: this sets off a hormonal shift in a buck's body,
Speaker 2: and the very first thing to happen, you know, include
Speaker 2: the formation of cartilage like tissue and blood vessels and
Speaker 2: then stem cells which rapidly divide. This all happens at
Speaker 2: the pedicles. What will eventually become bone doesn't start that way.
Speaker 2: It's living tissue as the very first beginnings of antlers grow.
Speaker 2: We all know they start out covered in velvet. But
Speaker 2: what is velvet besides a cool, hairy like covering on
Speaker 2: antlers that actually looks really sweet on a mount if
Speaker 2: you're lucky enough to shoot one, you know, in the
Speaker 2: earth season that hasn't stripped yet. Velvet is actually a
Speaker 2: specialized kind of skin which contains a highly dense network
Speaker 2: of blood vessels. It's covered in hair, and it's full
Speaker 2: of nerves. What velvet does is a lot for starters.
Speaker 2: It delivers oxygen to fuel all that rapid growth. It
Speaker 2: also supplies minerals like calcium, protein, magnesium, and phosphorus, which
Speaker 2: bucks get from crops forbes, lugumes, and well nearly any
Speaker 2: kind of fresh vegetation. That last one is important because,
Speaker 2: like I said, antlers are expensive to grow and the
Speaker 2: only season when the nutrients are easily available, while the
Speaker 2: opportunity to also be kind of lazy and not waste
Speaker 2: a bunch of energy happens in the late spring and
Speaker 2: throughout the summer. Velvet is essentially the supply line to
Speaker 2: the antlers when they are in the growth stage, and
Speaker 2: while most of us will never see it, velvet is
Speaker 2: absolutely full of blood. This is because antlers demand a
Speaker 2: lot and the delivery mechanism can't have any downtime. Researchers
Speaker 2: have measured antler growth of up to three centimeters per day,
Speaker 2: which might not sound like a lot, but it's pretty
Speaker 2: hard to find a mammal that can grow bone faster.
Speaker 2: The thing is, all of that summer growth happens just
Speaker 2: crazy fast, But so does the moment bucks go from
Speaker 2: velvet to truly hard antlered. I've hunted early season bucks
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of different states where you have a
Speaker 2: legitimate shot at killing a velvet deer, and it always
Speaker 2: blows my mind how I can watch a buck in
Speaker 2: the morning that is fully in velvet and then see
Speaker 2: him in the evening and he'll be totally stripped. The
Speaker 2: whole thing happens fast, and it basically involves the cartilage
Speaker 2: framework that allows blood vessels to invade deeper tissues, and
Speaker 2: then along the way, bone producing cells called osteoplasts deposit
Speaker 2: minerals throughout the antlers, which is when calcium and phosphorus
Speaker 2: harden the whole structure and dense bone replaces soft tissue.
Speaker 2: And when that's complete, which up here where I live,
Speaker 2: and very likely where you live. Happens in about the
Speaker 2: first ten days of September. The buck strip off their
Speaker 2: velvet and they revealed their new headgear. Now, that's perfect
Speaker 2: world stuff, which doesn't always exist in nature. Antler growth
Speaker 2: isn't always a resounding success, and it can vary a
Speaker 2: hell of a lot due to a variety of reasons.
Speaker 2: An injury to a deer's pedicle can cause this. Now
Speaker 2: you don't see this very often, but once in a
Speaker 2: while you'll see a buck that has an antler that just,
Speaker 2: you know, colors way outside the lines. I missed a
Speaker 2: buck like this one time on some public land here
Speaker 2: in the Twin Cities. He was a deer that had
Speaker 2: a nice four point side, but the other side his
Speaker 2: main beam drooped all the way down and kind of
Speaker 2: looped around his chin. Now, if you look at an
Speaker 2: old school NFL helmet, or you know, a more modern
Speaker 2: NFL Kickers helmet, you can kind of get the gist
Speaker 2: of what I mean. He wasn't a giant, but when
Speaker 2: he walked out and I saw what he was working with,
Speaker 2: I immediately shot right over his back. Antlers can also
Speaker 2: get pretty wonky if they get injured during the growth stage.
Speaker 2: I don't know if this is true, and it could
Speaker 2: be due to factors like heat or maybe bugs, but
Speaker 2: I often see bucks betting in the summer in grassy
Speaker 2: swales in places that you just don't really expect them.
Speaker 2: A lot of times I wonder if that's a protective
Speaker 2: measure when their antlers are particularly prone to injury. Now,
Speaker 2: hormonal abnormalities are another contributor to antlers not doing what
Speaker 2: we expect them to do. We forget this about animals
Speaker 2: in general, but a lot of the weird shit humans
Speaker 2: have wrong with them can also be found in nature too,
Speaker 2: we just aren't aware of it. This is also kind
Speaker 2: of tied to the idea that we can age dear
Speaker 2: on the hoof by just looking at them, which drives
Speaker 2: me crazy. We just don't consider the array of genetics
Speaker 2: responsible for body shape and size and really only think
Speaker 2: about genetics and how they relate to antlers. But deer
Speaker 2: bodies outside and inside are wildly variable, and sometimes those
Speaker 2: variables aren't great for signaling proper growth of new antlers.
Speaker 2: Nutritional stress is another one. Where I hunt in northern Wisconsin,
Speaker 2: the big bucks are as big as the big bucks
Speaker 2: get pretty much anywhere, but the young bucks are often
Speaker 2: a hell of a lot smaller than they are in
Speaker 2: southern Minnesota, or in Iowa, or in Illinois, or in Kansas.
Speaker 3: Or Missouri, or take your pick.
Speaker 2: Long winners, shorter growing seasons, less agriculture. All that stuff
Speaker 2: works in concert to produce smaller antlers and the deer
Speaker 2: that are least likely to have access to any of
Speaker 2: the good resources. I remember seeing one of my uncle's
Speaker 2: trophy rooms when I was growing up. It was just
Speaker 2: amazed that's how small a lot of the bucks were.
Speaker 2: But that was because I only had access to southern
Speaker 2: Minnesota deer and had never spent any real time around
Speaker 2: the deer that could have walked to Canada within a
Speaker 2: day or two and not hardly even stressed about it.
Speaker 2: A healthy deer is a deer with a variety of
Speaker 2: good nutritional options, and those are the deer that can
Speaker 2: devote more resources to growing headgear. It's one of the
Speaker 2: reasons so many of the big time TV hunters have
Speaker 2: really tightly managed its properties. It's not just to keep
Speaker 2: big bucks around and keep other people out, but to
Speaker 2: keep as many bucks around as long as possible and
Speaker 2: give them all as stress free of a life as possible.
Speaker 2: Stress just doesn't favor giant antlers, and if that stress
Speaker 2: involves not getting a whole lot to eat, it only
Speaker 2: gets worse. This is sort of an abstract concept because
Speaker 2: we can't see it happen in real time, kind of
Speaker 2: like evolution. But one thing that has been absolutely fascinating
Speaker 2: to me about where I live is that the last
Speaker 2: three winners have been very mild. Our turkeys have been
Speaker 2: consistently heavy the last couple springs, our baths seem to
Speaker 2: be heavier, and the deer seem to be doing just
Speaker 2: fine with antlers, even in the areas I hunt where
Speaker 2: I might run into more wolves than white tails.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I just think, honestly, antlers are cool, and we aren't
Speaker 2: the only people to believe that. For tens of thousands
Speaker 2: of years, humans have used antlers in architecture, art, rituals.
Speaker 2: Antlers have been involved in human culture for a long
Speaker 2: long time and have often been viewed as a status
Speaker 2: of hunting success or fertility, a connection to the spiritual world.
Speaker 2: They're sometimes used as a symbol of strengths. Headdresses with
Speaker 2: antlers on them have been found dating back to at
Speaker 2: least eleven thousand years ago. Cave art often depicts antlered
Speaker 2: animals with highly exaggerated headgear, and often part human part
Speaker 2: animal depictions where antlers are very prominent. Siberian and Eurasian
Speaker 2: cultures use them in ceremonies and shamanic traditions. Indigenous North
Speaker 2: American cultures use them as tools, decorative objects, and more.
Speaker 2: We've been displaying antlers and ogling over them for a
Speaker 2: long time and probably will for a hell of a
Speaker 2: lot longer. At least I hope we do, because I
Speaker 2: think that even though we've sort of fetishized Big Bucks
Speaker 2: to the point where it's gotten a little weird out there,
Speaker 2: the truth is that a lot of us are connected
Speaker 2: to antlers and the animals that grow them, not just
Speaker 2: because we like having something to do during a couple
Speaker 2: of week in DS in September and October, November December,
Speaker 2: but because they represent something pretty amazing in nature and
Speaker 2: are in some ways a tether from our modern selves
Speaker 2: to those that walk the land. Long before it would
Speaker 2: become a pastime to hunt, but was instead one of
Speaker 2: the primary ways to not only see another sunset, but
Speaker 2: to get the opportunity to pass on our genes as well.
Speaker 2: That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has
Speaker 2: been the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast. Thank you so
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