I had found this skull with antlers attached in our ramble of the northeast corner back in the winter. Nearby were other bones, which leads me to conclude that this was a natural death rather than one brought about by a hunter. Indeed, few hunters I know would leave a rack like this in the forest. It would be a trophy on the wall in a den somewhere if a hunter had bagged this deer.
So, being something of a collector of odd things, I picked up this skull and carried it about with me on the rest of my hike through the woods that day. Finally, I left it at our shelter (the one that isn't there anymore) and set it on a block. (It wouldn't look very good in our suburban home, and it did look pretty good in the shelter area.)
On subsequent visits, I would always find the skull knocked off of the block, and that wasn't surprising since at our older campsite, we'd hung a similar deer skull on a tree, and every time we returned to it, the skull was on the ground at the base of the tree.
The reason, of course, is all of the critters who want to gnaw on the antlers for the minerals they can get from them. The critters perfer the antlers, but we've come across plenty of gnawed bones in our woods too, so I guess when the antler minerals run out, the less savory bone minerals are fallen upon.
Here is how the skull and antlers looked on our most recent visit.
Notice how diminished the antlers are now. I fully expect them to be gone in a couple more months, and that's fine with me.
By the way, that's a cow leg bone on the left. We find these occasionally in our rambles about the woods. A free forest feast for my fabulous furry friends.
Don't Forget:
Consider making a submission to the
Festival of Trees.
Missouri calendar:
- Bobcat kittens are born through the month.
This entry was posted
on Friday, June 16th, 2006 at 1:01 am and is filed under Critters.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 16th, 2006 at 6:08 am
Say that three times real fast!
June 16th, 2006 at 8:33 am
“Bobcat kittens are born through the month.” is that some new kinda biology?
June 16th, 2006 at 10:29 am
Cool. It is amazing how rare we find bones in the woods.
January 19th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
[...] Eric: So I was in…I think it was Wakayama on this really really small gravel mountain road…exploring on my off-road little sports motorcycle… Mark: Chasing the buck… Eric: Well…and…aaah..I have come up along a lot of deer in the woods and they can really scramble up the mountain whenever they want…and they usually do quite quickly when you come up on …deer…most of the deer run away really quickly..… but anyway I came up on this humungous giant buck with the…. just the most beautiful antlers…just a huge animal… compared to most of the deer that you see. Mark: Wow! Eric: and aah…He didn’t try to run up or down the mountain. He just galloped along with me. Ahh he…you know…those deer can escape into the woods whenever they want to. Mark: How tall was he…like? Eric: Uh you know..I don’t know. But I have seen a lot of deer and he was a bigger one. He was quite a big… Mark: buck Eric: So anyway I followed him for at least two minutes maybe. He just galloped along and I just…you know…I did not try to catch up to him too much but I just kind of followed him at a…you know…kind of a cool pace Mark: Mmm Eric: And he just kept going for like two or three minutes and then finally maybe I guess he got tired of it and he finally darted off into the woods somewhere….you know… as he could have at any time… but anyway it was really cool….I got to just follow him for like two or three minutes… and just watch this beautiful huge buck …..you know…just gallop along…. it was..oh…. I wish I had had a camera on the bike. Anyway…that.. Mark: That is an incredible animal experience. Is that the most incredible animal experience that you have ever had? Eric: Mmm-Hm. Well I was on a mountain bike one time and I came across a whole family of raccoons within ..I would say about two meters at the most ….two adult raccoons and a litter….. maybe three juvenile raccoons…and aah…because…I guess… the mountain bike was so quiet.. Mark: In Japan? Eric: No, in Oklahoma of course! Raccoons. You know what raccoons are. Mark: Not the Japanese raccoon-dog?.. Eric: …but anyway I just zoom came down the trail and there was this family of raccoons there …just kind of looked up at me like… “Ooh a mountain bike just went by!†doing whatever they were doing but I really got to see ….you know…a whole family of raccoons….just kind of doing what they were doing… so that was pretty interesting. Mark: ..I was driving…..I was driving through a fire in Western Australia….like a fire on both sides of the road… it was a bit scarey.…and aah…at first there was a fire on one side….just a bit you know…it wasn’t too …too furious beside the road …and there was this big black bird…that had been hit by a car….or whatever….you know…and I thought I will kill it …because otherwise it would starve…..so I got out of the car …I had a machete there and I was going to cut its head off…. but although it couldn’t fly, it could still run…..and it got away….it ran off because it didn’t want to die….I had this intense experience then…you know…I guess that is my most incredible animal experience. Eric: Yeah, I had a similar experience with my friend, Roy. We went out to the lake as we often did on an afternoon just to go for a walk and we a….aah…saw some kind of large heron-type bird. Mark: Where is my wine?…aah here it is! Eric: Anyway it was really close to the aaah…it was really close to the beach and stayed there as we approached it…and we were trying to get a good look at it…and as we got closer and closer, we thought it was strange that this bird had let us approach it …so close…. and we discovered that it was hooked .. Mark: Wow! Eric: …on a fishing rod. …It had swallowed a hook and this fishing rod was stuck in the bank and was keeping it from…. Mark: I have a ..I have a friend…I just remembered another incredible animal story…animal experience…or whatever it is called…This friend…he has a big property back in Australia and he took me walking out in the back paddock…and somebody had left some strap or some rope or something from some machine or something… some equipment…and this stag…you call it a buck? Eric: Stag… buck… whatever…you know Mark: …it had got its antlers stuck…and it had either starved or been eaten…I don’t know…but the skeleton was all around and the head and the antlers were…the skull of this big animal just stuck there….it must have been a horrible death. Eric: Mmmm.………….Well that might explain why the buck did not run into the woods so quickly. Maybe with that huge rack he couldn’t dart through the woods…the same as…the other deer… Mark: Yeah, right, yeah…………. It must be hard to carry a set of antlers around…. [...]
March 1st, 2007 at 8:49 pm
chasing the buck………your on drugs