Antler Growth ?

[Swampthing]

What could a guy expect to see right now on let,s say a 10 point 145 class deer .I would guess small 1 or 2 inch stumps don,t they really take off in the end of may.

[dan]

I have noticed the growth start and spurts really varies greatly in individual bucks... Last month you may have seen bucks still with head gear and others with 3 inch knobs... In June I start seeing some bucks with 75% developed headgear and others that just have the brows...
But they all seem to catch each other by September.
When a buck grows his antlers I have observed that they grow from the bases up. What I mean by that is the stump will grow up to the brow tines then the brow tines will start and the stump will move on to the beam...
Those brows will be fully developed before the rest of the tines.
So when you see a buck that just has 7 inch brows and short stumpy beams he will probably be a brute... But the next buck at this time of the year ( Maybe closer to June ) might have a rack but spindly and the brows are shorter but he has more headgear. Don't be fooled into thinking he will be bigger at the end of the growing period.
Hope that makes sense?
I have hours and hours of video footage I have shot of bucks during this growing period and there developing thru the summer its really fun to watch the differences between buck individuals.

[Liberty-Hunt]

Hey Dan,
Here for the Red Deer, the oldest loose them first and they rebuild it immediately after. So more time for big one for recovering them antlers...
Is It the same for Whitetail???

[dan]

Hey Dan,
Here for the Red Deer, the oldest loose them first and they rebuild it immediately after. So more time for big one for recovering them antlers...
Is It the same for Whitetail???

I have heard that same theory with whitetails, but I have seen some mature large racked bucks hold there antlers up to April and still grow tremendous racks the next year. So I have my doubts.

[Bird]

I was down turkey hunting with my dad 2 weeks ago and I saw a buck with about 5 inch stumps while in the blind, I went down last weekend turkey hunting and checked 1 of our camera's and we have a picture of a buck that has a big body, but only about 1 inch stumps. I agree with Dan in that I think it depends on the individual deer and maybe when they were born?

[Swampthing]

Thanks,Dan that does make sense now.I really wanted to nose around this weekend and mabey catch some early growth .I just got some new binoculars so wanta try them out .

[lungbuster]

3rd season turkey hunt we came up on 3 bucks in a bedding area, the two older bucks (looked like 3 or4 year olds) had 3-4" knobs not yet forked, the younger buck (looked like a 2 year old) had already forked and had about 7-9" of growth.

[dan]

I drove past the deer farm today and the mature bucks had about 4 to 8 inch beams and a couple were starting brows....