Why are antlers the color they are???

[poohdog]

I have been by the elk farm in north west Idaho a few times and the bulls have white horns. There is nothing for them to rub but fence.

[eastside boy]

Rubs!!

[Shootmoore]

Yep what they rub.  Thats how we could always tell when the mountain bucks came down to the sagebrush.  The local bucks have light colored horns and the mountain boys had chocalate.

Shootmoore

[boneaddict]

100% what they are rubbing on 0% genetics.  You'll get different colors from pine, fir, spruce, willows alders sage etc.   The regional differences you'll see will often only be because of vegetation.  It is my experience that pine leaves the reddish bone, and spruce the darkest.   Fir is somewhere in-between.   Piss fir or yellow fir leaves pretty dark bone.   Lodgepole(pine) is pretty chocolate with a hint of red.  Willow is almost white or very light.  Sage is tan to light.    Its pretty easy to spot an alpine bull versus a local versus say a firing center bull. 

[MtnMuley]

Can't believe you missed the larch, bone...   They leave a reddish orange color.

[boneaddict]

Yeah, good point and they love to rip them too.   

[Broken Arrow]

Hhile helping my buddy spot in the desert unit several weeks ago....we saw a very nice buck that was completly diffent looking both in color and horn color then all of the rest of the bucks we had seen. This was a very mature buck, not very wide but very, very tall. 99% of all the other deer we saw were gray with grayish antlers ( many mature bucks as well). This deer was extremely brown...stood out like a sore thumb, and had very reddish brown antlers, again stood out like a sore thumb.....I agree antler color has to do with what they are rubbing on, though this buck really made me question that.

[boneaddict]

Deer do get moved around and who knows where he came from.  Not sure what Russian Olive does to antlers.  There are also pine stands to the north around banks and stuff and in some of the other coulees out there.   He could ahve possibly been pushed in. 

[Broken Arrow]

good point...didnt really consider that....duh!

here is a nice link on antler colors:

http://www.bgdailynews.com/articles/2009/10/18/sports/sports6.txt

[CastleRocker]

Fir=dark brown, Alder=orange, Hemlock=black.  

I've got the racks from a set of twin bulls, that were killed one year apart, one is orange from the alders, and one is black from the hemlock.  Obviously genetics didn't have anything to do with it, didn't even make them want to rub the same trees.

And yes they were twins.  The local herd had one cow that had a white spot on her butt, and she threw twins almost every year.  They wintered in and around our pasture, so we were able to watch them for a couple days every two weeks for years and years, until their pattern changed.

[boneaddict]

Nice link but the guy is full of it.  Hes been watching too many disney films.

[ouchfoss]

A couple years ago when I was deer hunting I found an area where a buck would rub nothing but scotch broom. Makes me wonder what his horns would have looked like.

[buckskin]

I don't know maybe It was said already, but the real dark (black) horns often come from the burns.

[carpsniperg2]

here is what i have seen we have a large population of migratory deer that come down to our rach when the weather in the mountians gets to bad they are always dark horned our local deer that live there year round have more bleached horns from the sun and sage they rub on. the mountain bucks almost get a stain on them from the trees they rub on before coming down to the sage and oaks were they winter at.

[croix]

Every year at camp we see a scrape at one of the sign posts. Wonder what rubbin that post does for the color.