It’s that time of year again. Male white-tailed deer, known as a buck, are growing a set of new antlers that are looking very velvety and bulbous.
For the last several days I have spotted have a half-a-dozen bucks with antlers that have grown almost full size. It’s a good sign our local deer population are healthy. Developing antlers every year is a stressful and demanding activity that would be difficult to carry out if males were sick or skinny.
The growth of antlers is such a taxing and unique phenomenon that is only done by members of the deer family, classified as Cervidae. Members of this family include moose, elk, key deer, and white-tailed deer.
Antlers are not horns. Sheep, cattle, goats, and bison have horns that are permanently established on the animal’s head. Antlers, on the other hand, are the only mammalian appendages that annually replace themselves.
For male white-tailed deer around New York Harbor, it all begins in April or May with increasing amount of daylight. This causes changes in growth hormones in their pituitary gland, which stimulates antler growth. Buds start to sprout out on the buck’s brow.
By the end of June or early July, nearly all the primary points will have started to grow and the soft growing antler is covered with hairy skin, called "velvet.” When antlers are in the velvet stage they are full of blood vessels, cartilage and nervous tissue.
Usually by the end of July, rising testosterone levels will harden antlers and the velvet will begin to dry and fall off. A buck will help take velvet off by rubbing his antlers on trees, shrubs and saplings.
The size of the antler is not determined by age, but by nutrition. A poor diet will produce spikes or forkhorns, but a well-nourished buck will grow an average of two to four points on each antler. As a rule, only male deer grow antlers. But one female (doe) in several thousand will grow antlers because of a hormone imbalance.
By September a male deer is ready again to seek out a female to breed by showing off his antlers. No two sets are ever strictly identical, which adds to the whitetail’s individuality, the most common hoofed wild animal around New York Harbor.
STOP THE WILLIAMS FRACKED GAS PIPELINE THROUGH NY HARBOR!
MY TOP 5 FAVORITE BOOKS ABOUT NY HARBOR
1. Field Guide to the Neighborhood Birds of New York City by Leslie Day
2.Heartbeats in the Muck by John Waldman
3. The Fisheries of Raritan Bay by Clyde L. MacKenzie Jr.
4. Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan by Phillip Lopate
5. The Bottom of the Harbor by Joseph Mitchell