Mike: Why do some bucks have chocolate antlers and others white racks? Seems like dark antlers are slightly more common on bigger bucks, am I right?—Tim from MN Whitetail biologist Mickey Hellickson told me in an email one time: Antler coloration is determined by several things, including: (1) buck age (older, more dominant bucks make many more rubs on trees than younger bucks, therefore their antlers tend to be darker; (2) bark coloration of the predominant rubbing trees in a region; (3) genetics (some strains of bucks have light racks in their DNA while other have dark); (4) time of year (early in the fall “new” antlers are darker; later in the season antlers that have been exposed to sun and light [...]

Here are 4 facts about velvet antler growth I bet you didn’t know. I pulled them from Way of the Whitetail, a great reference book by Leonard Lee Rue III, a top deer researcher and photographer I’ve worked with some over the years: (1) Antlers are bone, consisting mostly of calcium, phosphorus, magnesium and other minerals. Although some of the minerals are taken from food, most of them are sucked from the buck’s skeleton, causing him to develop osteoporosis during the summer. (2) Because the velvet is rich with blood vessels, growing antlers are hot to touch. (3) Tiny hairs on the velvet stick straight out and make the antlers look bigger than they are. The hairs also act as [...]