The bucks’ racks are growing fast; how much bigger will they get? In this blog, top whitetail scientist Dr. Grant Woods says: Bucks will have most of their beam length developed by this week. Most of their points will be showing by mid-June. Some bucks will have all points showing and some will add a few points…tine length is likely to be less than half developed at this time. Those are general rules, but Grant points out that the growth of individual racks can vary widely: Some bucks will show a lot of antler growth early, while others seem to add a bunch to their rack during July. About the picture: Luke Strommen photographed this Milk River buck one summer [...]

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 [...]