I found this very unusual malfomed buckView attachment 5038 View attachment 5039View attachment 5040last weekend and it has a bit of a story with it.
I moved to a new house a year ago and now have a four acre field with a couple of rough corners and across the road there is about 30 acres of willow planted for bio-fuel, in March last year i started seeing the odd roe on the edges of the willows, i tried stalking them a couple of times with a camera, as the willows were part of a estate with a pheasant shoot on, that never bothered to much about the roe, but the buck was good and i never managed any decent pictures.At this point i saw him in velvet and thought he looked unusual but never got a proper look at him.
Then in May at the far corner of my field i saw a buck chasing another buck, he chased the smaller buck out of the rough patch and across a huge field and only when the smaller buck had made it into a wood about a kilometer away did he give up and started back down the field towards my house, i saw him at about 40m and saw that he had quite a malformed head and as i watched him go across the field, noticed he was a bit lame, obviously accounting for the malformed head.
I had a couple of brief glances of him another couple of times and as my field was left to hay had expected to see him in it early mornings, my intention was to try and call him into my field during the rut and try and shoot him but i i never got round to it.
I then heard that the estate had a stalker on shooting the roe as there had never been much roe on, but after planting the willows they had increased dramatically, i thought there goes my buck, i was hoping to bump into the stalker to see if he had shot anything in that patch of willows more to see what the bucks head was like.
Then last week i had a walk through the willows with the dog and found the skeleton of what must be the buck i had been seeing through the summer.
Done a bit CSI on skeleton and he does'nt look as if hes been clipped and lost, no obvious broken bones from a bullet strike, and has been dead before all the hard weather we had, as there is no signs of demarcation of the bone around the pedicle for casting.
I reckon he must have died around August/September ( also all the hair was summer coat) maybe fighting with another buck, as he didn't seem to old going by his teeth,maybe four or fiveView attachment 5041View attachment 5042
I also found the cause of his lameness and malformed head,both what i think are his lower fore legs have some sort of growths, possibly caused by trauma at some point, or some sort of bone cancer, a guess, as the bone with the larger View attachment 5046growth is hollow with holes in it and areas like pearling on antler. I have seen broken and healed bones before but they have been more solid and smoothView attachment 5043View attachment 5044View attachment 5045This may have been the cause of the bucks death. If any of the vets or others, on hear can give a diagnosis or shed any light on the apperance of the bone it would appreciated.
The head weighs 480 grams,View attachment 5047 i will take it and see if it will be measured, don,t know if it is too malformed, even though i didn,t shoot it i still think it deserves to be cleaned up and put on the wall.
Moose
I moved to a new house a year ago and now have a four acre field with a couple of rough corners and across the road there is about 30 acres of willow planted for bio-fuel, in March last year i started seeing the odd roe on the edges of the willows, i tried stalking them a couple of times with a camera, as the willows were part of a estate with a pheasant shoot on, that never bothered to much about the roe, but the buck was good and i never managed any decent pictures.At this point i saw him in velvet and thought he looked unusual but never got a proper look at him.
Then in May at the far corner of my field i saw a buck chasing another buck, he chased the smaller buck out of the rough patch and across a huge field and only when the smaller buck had made it into a wood about a kilometer away did he give up and started back down the field towards my house, i saw him at about 40m and saw that he had quite a malformed head and as i watched him go across the field, noticed he was a bit lame, obviously accounting for the malformed head.
I had a couple of brief glances of him another couple of times and as my field was left to hay had expected to see him in it early mornings, my intention was to try and call him into my field during the rut and try and shoot him but i i never got round to it.
I then heard that the estate had a stalker on shooting the roe as there had never been much roe on, but after planting the willows they had increased dramatically, i thought there goes my buck, i was hoping to bump into the stalker to see if he had shot anything in that patch of willows more to see what the bucks head was like.
Then last week i had a walk through the willows with the dog and found the skeleton of what must be the buck i had been seeing through the summer.
Done a bit CSI on skeleton and he does'nt look as if hes been clipped and lost, no obvious broken bones from a bullet strike, and has been dead before all the hard weather we had, as there is no signs of demarcation of the bone around the pedicle for casting.
I reckon he must have died around August/September ( also all the hair was summer coat) maybe fighting with another buck, as he didn't seem to old going by his teeth,maybe four or fiveView attachment 5041View attachment 5042
I also found the cause of his lameness and malformed head,both what i think are his lower fore legs have some sort of growths, possibly caused by trauma at some point, or some sort of bone cancer, a guess, as the bone with the larger View attachment 5046growth is hollow with holes in it and areas like pearling on antler. I have seen broken and healed bones before but they have been more solid and smoothView attachment 5043View attachment 5044View attachment 5045This may have been the cause of the bucks death. If any of the vets or others, on hear can give a diagnosis or shed any light on the apperance of the bone it would appreciated.
The head weighs 480 grams,View attachment 5047 i will take it and see if it will be measured, don,t know if it is too malformed, even though i didn,t shoot it i still think it deserves to be cleaned up and put on the wall.
Moose