Weird Roebuck

Lakey

Well-Known Member
Hi All,

About three years ago I was stalking with a continental client who was relatively inexperienced,It was August,mid rut and we were reaching the end of the morning stalk when we spotted a couple of deer feeding in a bracken filled glade. The bracken was pretty tall, so we only got occasional glimpses of these two deer feeding around 50m from our position.
Up went the bino's ,and straight away I recognised one of the deer to be a roe doe. I glassed the other one, and after some time was still uncertain what I was looking at. I could see what looked like chewed toffee's on the deer's head, but no definite antlers. I was finally going to tell the client that I was certained that we were looking at an antlered doe, when the deer turned its head to the side so as I noticed the rake of the nose, and then it walked into a clear patch where it turned tail end on, showing its testicles. So it was a buck....... But nothing like any buck I had ever seen before.
The client was after a mature large six pointer ( aren't they all?) so he was reluctant to fire. Eventually I talked him into it, and he finally took the shot at around 25m.

The animal was mature to old, with quite noticable tooth wear. It was in good condition, and despite being around the area a lot I had never seen it before. Has anyone else seen anything quite like it? My theory is that early damage in velvet may have produced the head? The coronets & pedicles were larger than average, so should have been more than capable of supporting a good head. The deer density is not great, and there is alwas good feeding to be had most of the year.

What do you think?

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Thanks for looking......



Lakey
 
Never seen anything like that, but it's a great trophy! I'm envious! ;)
It shows great variety of malforms in roe deer.

Greg
 
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The smaller of the two heads shown here was very similar,but a young deer.Neither of the deer in the picture had coronets.

Never found the cause it was put down as being ONE OF THEM :lol:

NELL
 
A very interesting head and I hope the client appreciated the rarity value, much better than a big 6 pointer!
I think because the malformation is so consisted across both antlers damage in velvet is less likely and maybe some hormonal imbalance could be the reason. I have seen shot (but not photgraphed sorry) a small corkscrew headed roebuck that only had one testicle so it's not just perruques that can be affected in that way.
 
I was going to ask if it had any balls when you turned it over!

Very interesting though - one for Morena to have a look at too!

T
 
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