Sitka Blacktail Deer Hunter Question
Mule Deer
I have been reading on this study on Sitka blacktails that I have posted. I was wondering if any hunters have come by deer with abnormal antler growth?
Uhhh, I didn't know there would be science. I am out.
Two of the four deer we shot had no nuts. One had nontypical growth. We did see one buck that looked like it had a cactus growing out of it's head. Looked like bosses on cape Buffalo covered the whole top of it's head.
I haven't personally been able to shoot one of these bucks on Kodiak, but have seen a lot of them killed off that island. They seem to be very prevelant in certain areas of the island.
The ones I've seen vary a lot in antler configuration from a very typical frame with a couple stickers, to bucks with just a giant spike and bases so immense they touch in the middle.
Strange critters and I hope some day I can arrow one!
I saw one huge 2x1 cactus buck and my buddy shot 2 nutless bucks this fall.
Four out of five bucks we shot this summer were nutless. I have a theory that there are more of them after a hard winter, proportionally, since they are basically deer steers and can handle the winter better than a rutting buck.
I doubt they will do it, but the island would benefit by bringing some new blood in, maybe from POW Island
Which one is nutless in the photos, the deer or nmwapiti? Sorry couldn't resist LOL
Can anyone translate that article to english? Any idea why there are so many nutless bucks there? Sold cold they freeze their nuts off?
Do these deer have no testicles or are they inside the abdomen (cryptorchids)?
From the article, it sounds like this phenomenon is concentrated on the Aliulik Peninsula. The authors describe a high concentration of unilateral and bilateral cryptorchid bucks, and suspect fetal exposure to some "endocrine disrupter" as a cause of abnormal pedicure formation.
Interesting that it seems to be so localized. I'm headed to Kodak in 8 days, and I got excited to go look for cryptorchid bucks with odd antlers, but I'm not headed to that part of the archipelago
The authors suspect estrogenic exposure during fetal life altered the decent of testes here, and they hypothesize several possible causes of that. So, it wasn't a matter of freezing their nuts off. They still had testicles, but had abnormalities of all four primordial cell types in the testicles. Interesting stuff. If you click on the article, skip to the conclusions. That might be more interesting and readable that descriptions of the microscopic views of the testes.
