Deer horns

[Lee]

What cause a buck to grow a nice rack on one side and a spike on the other. I shot a nice buck two weeks ago with this, then on monday afternoon I shot another buck with the same rack and spike, only it was bigger.

[GaryL]

split personality I would Seriously I don't really know

[Woody Williams]

Genetics or an injury to the opposite side will cause deformed or non-typical racks on one side while the other side ifs OK.

[GaryM]

Sometimes an injury to the deers body will cause problems with the antlers. Interestingly, an injury to the left side of the deer can cause a retarded antler on the right side. A deer that grows a strange antler because of an injury will grow it that way year after year.
By the way, deer have antlers, not horns. Antlers are pure bone. Horn is a type of modified hair.

[GaryL]

So what yer saying Gary M. is that a one eyed, one horned flying purple people eater had a bad hair day

[Lee]

sorry I said horns and not antlers, but both deer show no signs of been injured. They would have been two nice eight points, but left side on both deer are typical and the right side is just a spike.

[GaryL]

Nothing to be sorry about Lee, I have called them horns also. I also learned something from your question from Gary M. I did not know horn was modified hair.

[JD Jones]

A horn being modified hair, I take it a Rhino is the result of neglected nose hair trimming.
JD

[FlyingAce]

Back in 1998-99, a friend took me hunting to fill my first tag after being in a wheelchair. In Washington, and able-bodied person can be a "designated" shooter for a disabled person. Anyway, we were out road hunting when my buddy Brandon saw a 4 point, here on the West Coast of the United States we only count one side of a bucks rack, so I told him to take a shot. The deer expired and he trotted down to start the dirty work. The next thing I know he is laughing his butt off dragging this 115# whitetail by one of its antlers. He holds up the head and said, "Look man, you made me shoot a freak.

This whitetail only had antlers on one side of its head, and on the other there was absolutely nothing, not even a socket. It was a fully intact male. We just passed in off as an identity crisis...

I also asked around some of the veterinary universities here in the states, and a number of biologists had no idea what was going on. However, they did mention that inbreeding could be the cause.

[GaryL]

Gary M. what kind of horn is of Modified hair I found a lot of information on horns, car horns, Aoogah horns, saddle horns, bull horns, and Unicorn's horns. Narwhal horn (tusk/tooth) found some air horns but no hair horns

[Fluffy Little Kittey]

Topic: Wild Animals

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Expert:Jonathan Wright
Date:8/24/2004
Subject:Content of rhino horn

Question
Exactly what is the horn made of--I know it is keratin, but is it real hair or strands of keratin or hair and strands of keratin. Could you find information to clarify?

Answer
Dear Jean

Thanks for your question. The main problem is that there is a lot of confusion between keratin and hair. In fact, according to the books I used in my research, keratin fibres are basically modified hairs. The individual rods of keratin are not coated with an individual protective layer, as is real hair. They adhere densely together in layers, so they do not resemble the hair nor the horn of a cow, but rather the material of the hoof. This gives the rhinoceros horn a stiffness and quality similar to a cow's horn with a pith.

Rhinoceros horns are derived from the dermis of the skin. They are solid and are composed of an aggregation of thousands of incredibly strong, tightly packed, compressed keratin fibres. The horns are perched on a roughened bump on the skin, over the nasal bone, and do not have a bony core down the middle.

The horn may unravel in places, so that it resembles a growth of hair. If it tears, only a lightly bleeding area remains on the nose and a new nose begins to grow soon. Young animals may replace the horn completely.

I hope that this answers your question.

[GaryL]

Thanks now I can get some

[rigbymi]

We had a buck on the property for a few years that had only 3 legs and year after year the anteler on the opposite side of the injury looked like a deformed twig while the other was normal.
Riggs

[Vladymere]

Here are a couple of articles on whitetail deer antler groth.

http://www.whitetaildeer.com/about/ant.asp
http://www.whitetaildeer.com/about/velvet.asp

Vlad

[mdcrossbow]

We have a group of deer with a genic defect with one side being a spike and the other normal, when they come into bow range their taken out no question. There was a hung non typical 10 running the property that was hit by a car years ago and his oppisit side always grew different. You see this kind of development all the time in my area from bucks that have been wounded or hit by cars. With as many deer as we have you see alot of this. It is almost always the oppisit side of the injery that the antlers will develop different.