I ran across an old article in Texas Fish and Game magazine yesterday about deer injuries causing antler deformities.
After thinking about it, my best deer ever, a large 9 point had a cysted-over .22 slug in his backstrap. Now I' m wondering if that slug kept him from being a 10. His rack is perfectly symetrical except the lack of the tenth point. Anyone have any similar experiences? Just curious!

I don' t have any real life experience with this, but I' ve read about it before. I have seen an elk (spike) with one anler curved back around his face. It was pretty strange

if an animal is damaged or hurt on one side then the other side is affected on the horns.

I wouldn' t call missing one point a deformity due to injury

But you can milk that other point all you want

Usually, when an injury is severe enough to alter antler growth it does so in a significant way. It is disformed.

I got these 2 on film last week. One has a right antler and the other a left. The opposite antler is just a nub. I figured they were buttons last year and were injured during the hunting season. Although we do have a couple Non-typicals around here so maybe it is just the genes.

I agree with Rack-Attack. I don' t think that missing a point that exists on the opposite side is considered a deformity.

I' m not really saying that a buck with an odd number of points is deformed.
As I did say, the rack is very symetrical. Except for two things, the missing tenth point (the 3 inch " ninth point" adds up to 4.5 inches of over-all deducted BC points) and even though the rack is symetrical, the main beam on that side has a bend to it instead of a smooth curve.
Anyway, the irregularity may have been caused by the .22 slug, maybe the next year he might have been a ten, or maybe he would have never been a ten! All I know is that he has not grown any at all since I hung ' em on my wall!!!! HEHEHE!!!!

most of the time it is a leg injury that causes antler deformity.
I have a bunch of deformed antlers.I look for them.every one I have ,you can see the injury that caused the deformity,the back legs on all of them has scars,one hit by a car(looks like) all the others look like they were hung in a fence.

as soon as I can post some pic' s. I will.

I have cammed several with unusual antler make-up I think it is primarily the result of some type of accident to the opposite side of the antler deformity.Here are several -

woods




















You can see the scar on the bottom buck down his right side.

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