Antler VisionTV Is Fine, but Hunters Should See Beyond the Screen10ARKANSAS WILDLIFE NOVEMBER • DECEMBER 2011
ARTICLE by RANDY ZELLERSHunting <strong>and</strong> fishing are so engrainedin people’s lives that three major cablenetworks are devoted to these pursuits.Outdoors enthusiasts are barraged withimages of trophy bucks <strong>and</strong> hunterstalking in-depth about the massiveantlers of the trophy they just bagged onvideo.These programs are great to pass thetime <strong>and</strong> get a few pointers, but theycan make the average hunter dismiss ahunting area because a constant parade oftrophy whitetails isn’t beating a trail onopening day.Number CrunchNot everyone in the woods is goingto see a trophy buck before the firstcommercial break. Simply getting a deereach season is much harder than manyshows portray. In fact, it’s almost a coinflip.Roughly 300,000 hunters buy licenseswith deer tags in <strong>Arkansas</strong> each year.Last year’s harvest, one of the highest onrecord, was 186,168 deer. If each deerwas killed by a different person, morethan 113,000 hunters left the woodswith nothing more than good memoriesof deer camp. Some dedicated or luckyhunters kill a few deer each season, so thechance of a single person taking a deereach season is closer to 50 percent.Although most hunters are interestedin cracking the plus side of the deerharvest, the monster bucks of the mediahave created a sense of antler envy athunting clubs <strong>and</strong> public hunting areas in<strong>Arkansas</strong>. Good-quality deer sometimesare being ignored, <strong>and</strong> in some casesridiculed, because they don’t have theantlers of their famous family members.“I’m sure there are some scragglyracks <strong>and</strong> immature bucks on the privatel<strong>and</strong> you see on television, you just don’tsee that video,” said Dick Baxter, deerprogram coordinator for the <strong>Arkansas</strong><strong>Game</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Fish</strong> <strong>Commission</strong>. “Most ofthose hunts also take place on l<strong>and</strong> that isstrictly managed to keep the ratio of doesto bucks balanced <strong>and</strong> only harvest olderbucks.”Greener PasturesMany hunters often come home withstories of giant whitetails in states suchas Illinois <strong>and</strong> Iowa. AGFC biologistsoften are asked to manage <strong>Arkansas</strong>’sdeer herd identically to those northernstates, but no management plan can beadopted letter-for-letter to achieve thesame results.Baxter says there’s more to Iowa’s bigdeer than a season schedule. Habitat <strong>and</strong>climate play a key role in the size of deer<strong>and</strong> other animals throughout the U.S.,<strong>and</strong> those are largely out of man’s control.“As you move farther north, animalsof the same species will be larger thantheir southern cousins,” Baxter said.“Iowa’s deer simply grow larger thanthose in <strong>Arkansas</strong> because of theirsurroundings.”Baxter explained that the differencein size, called Bergmann’s Rule bybiologists, is the result of adapting to coldwinters. The extra size allows for more fatreserves <strong>and</strong> helps contain body heat.“On average, a deer from Minnesotawill look like a cow when you place itside-by-side with one from Florida, <strong>and</strong>an <strong>Arkansas</strong> deer will be somewherein between,” Baxter said. “It’s basicallyevolution at work.”What about Texas? Texas deer tendto be the same size or smaller than onesin <strong>Arkansas</strong>, so why do they support themassive racks we see on television <strong>and</strong>hear about from hunters traveling out ofstate?Aside from the television deer <strong>and</strong>those taken on strictly controlled areas,which are allowed to grow older beforeharvest, Texas deer are very similar to<strong>Arkansas</strong> deer, but they do have a littleadvantage when it comes to diet.“It’s a matter of minerals in the soils<strong>and</strong> the types of vegetation availableto those deer,” Baxter said. “Antlersare about 80 percent protein whilethey are growing. As they harden, thecomposition changes to somethingsimilar to that of bone. Calcium <strong>and</strong>phosphorus are the two most commonminerals in hardened antlers.”Texas soils tend to hold much morecalcium <strong>and</strong> phosphorus at the surfacethan soils in <strong>Arkansas</strong>. This is mostlybecause Texas gets less rain than doesBELOW: This buck has a good start on a high-quality rack at 3½ years old. Relatively few bucks in<strong>Arkansas</strong> make it to this age, much less 5½, when antler growth peaks. Photo by Mike Wintroath.LEFT: <strong>Arkansas</strong> is capable of producing buckslike this 194 2/8-inch 6½-year-old shot byBrooks Carson of Eads, Tenn., in 2010. Huntersshould realize trophies like this are rarer thanonce in a lifetime. Photo courtesy of BrooksCarson.NOVEMBER • DECEMBER 2011ARKANSAS WILDLIFE11
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