The antlers of one wild deer, as he aged. At 18 months he had three points, at age 2 1/2, he had four points. His third year, he sported five points on each antler. His fourth winter, he had larger antler beams than ever before but only three points on each antler.
It happens all the time. To my way of thinking, it is a horrible thing to make a trophy out of any wild creature, but hunters have never before been as they are becoming today, when nothing matters but the antlers.
Today, big antlers are downright common. It takes monster antlers to make the big money now.
Hunting conditions make it next to impossible to tell unless you use a good scope on your rifle, or binoculars. Too many hunters like me, who hunt with open sights in heavy woods, cannot count points on a moving buck they get a good look at for only 15 or 20 seconds. And no matter what else can be said about the four-point restriction, that is the thing which disturbs me most… the fact that some hunter who never had a shot at a nice buck before will find out that the heavy antlers he saw had only three points on each side. And yes, sometimes that set of antlers will have more points next year, and sometimes it will not.
There are many exceptions to the rule, and a buck that becomes 4 or 5 years old, will seldom have the antlers he had at 2 or 3 years of age. That’s why the deer-growers sell deer at 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 years old, rather than keeping them until they are 5 or 6. An aging buck may have heavier antlers with fewer points, or he may have small antlers his entire life.
The whole thing centers around money, and this tremendous ego which big antlers seem to stoke. Trophy antlers conceivably bring in more out-of-state hunters. Estimates are that this year, 18,000 non-resident hunters will come to hunt deer in Missouri, and the tags sell for $225 each. Multiply that! The MDC has a lot to gain if trophy hunters think they can find bigger antlers in the state each year. If 5,000 or so small bucks are killed and left in the woods, it isn’t considered to be a great number. The trophy hunter’s attitude about that is… who cares?
But you can count on this… the money factor is declining. Wild bucks will not produce the big-money-antlers in the future, unless you go to Manitoba to hunt. Once while goose-hunting in Manitoba in the 80s, I found the most unbelievable shed antler I have ever seen. Back in Missouri, a trophy-hunter nut said he would give me $1,000 for a set of antlers like that, if only I had found both.
But Bass Pro Shops and Cabelas can only buy so many racks for their walls, and they have about reached the maximum number they have room for. Those they bought 10 years ago aren’t much now compared to the ones being raised in pens. Today, there are people making synthetic deer antlers which you cannot tell from real ones. A $10,000 rack 10 years ago may not be worth $100 in another ten years.
And someday, that will put the quietus on trophy hunting…mounted deer head saturation. It then might thin out the numbers of the once-a-year hunters who stream out of the cities in their bright orange suits, and judge their worth according to the number and size of the deer heads they have hung on their office walls.
Right now, the four-point restriction means money. It was instigated for that reason. But we only have to put up with this nonsense for a couple of weeks in November, and then the circus is over. The woods I walk through in December and January will be empty. And you would be amazed at the deer carcasses I will find.
PITTSBURG —
