By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Every hunting season is different. With the deer seasons coming to a close at the end of the year, Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Manager Jason Wagner reflected on some of the things he and other hunters saw this season. One ongoing theme that made this year different: broken deer antlers.
"First thing they pointed out is we've had a lot of broken antlers this year," Wagner said. "There are a lot of bucks that have broken off points or half racks, or almost broke off all their antlers completely."
Wagner gave a few reasons why the bucks have broken antlers, and all are related. "The first of which is when we have a buck-to-doe ratio that's really close," Wagner said. "So for every buck, there's one doe. What happens in that scenario, the bucks are fighting a lot in order to win over the heart of the does."
Another cause could be the drought throughout Central Kansas. Deer grow their antlers through late July or early August. While the antlers have a hard exterior, the inside is more like a sponge, with blood carrying nutrients to harden the antlers. Typically, the bucks begin to use nutrients from other parts of the body, usually a rib, to harden the antlers. That may not have happened this year.
"If they're nutritionally stressed, which they would have been this year, all that calcium, phosphorus, vitamins, and minerals they take up, they commit more of that to preserving their body structure," said Wagner.
Finally, Wagner said an extended rut could be to blame. It is uncommon to see bucks fighting or breeding this late in the season, especially in the numbers Wagner has seen. The prolonged rut may have made some hunters happy, but it could have lasting impacts on the deer.
"What you want to see is a very close, like a two-week period, of intense rut," Wagner said. "What I've noticed this year, it was a very long, drawn-out rut, which isn't a good thing necessarily. That puts a lot of stress onto the bucks."
The extended rut could mean a longer birthing period of fawns, which puts the baby deer at greater risk of being grabbed by predators. A combination of poor grain quality, the cold snap, the extended rut, and the drought could all mean a higher mortality rate for bucks and smaller antlers for next year.