Interesting Antler Development

[Ski]

This 2yr old buck last season could barely walk due to something being wrong with his left front hoof. I'm unsure when it happened but I suspect before or during antler growth because his right antler grew weird, forming a split beam rather than beam with tines. He hobbled around all season albeit awkwardly, and I was interested to see how his rack grew this year.

This season it appears his split beam turned into a split g2 with a long empty beam, and an extra drop sticker point protruding from the spur. His left antler is still normal, pretty much unchanged from last year except bigger.

I find this stuff interesting so figured id share. Odds aren't in his favor of surviving until next season but hopefully he does so I can see if the deformity continues or if it straightens out now that he is all healed up.

First pic is last season. Second pic is last month. Third pic is 2wks ago.

 

[RUGER]

Very cool.

 

[BSK]

Love to see this kind of stuff. Truly fascinating.

 

[BSK]

2019, many in my area were talking about the big EHD outbreak in my area (Hickman, Humphreys and Perry counties). I found no dead deer but have no stagnant water. However, most of the deer we have to hunt in November come up from surrounding bottomlands that have lots of swamps. The next year, I started to see a couple of bucks with limps. I originally thought they were hunting-related injuries, but after the number of limping deer grew and grew, I finally realized it was deer from the neighboring bottomlands that had survived EHD but had hoof sloughing problems. I killed one of those limping bucks in 2021 and here is his front hoof he was limping on:

 

[Ski]

2019, many in my area were talking about the big EHD outbreak in my area (Hickman, Humphreys and Perry counties). I found no dead deer but have no stagnant water. However, most of the deer we have to hunt in November come up from surrounding bottomlands that have lots of swamps. The next year, I started to see a couple of bucks with limps. I originally thought they were hunting-related injuries, but after the number of limping deer grew and grew, I finally realized it was deer from the neighboring bottomlands that had survived EHD but had hoof sloughing problems. I killed one of those limping bucks in 2021 and here is his front hoof he was limping on:

I have no idea what caused this buck's limping, but he obviously avoided touching that hoof. Could be the same thing???

 

[BSK]

I have no idea what caused this buck's limping, but he obviously avoided touching that hoof. Could be the same thing???

Could be. Hoof sloughing is very painful. It would be like having one of our fingernails/toenails ripped off.

 

[Ski]

Could be. Hoof sloughing is very painful. It would be like having one of our fingernails/toenails ripped off.

That's probably the likely scenario. I never did see any swelling or deformation, no obvious injury. He just carried his hoof off ground for several months.