# Doe with Antlers



## tigerdog (Jan 24, 2008)

I didn't witness the deer myself, but I think I can trust the man's testimony. A hunter shot what he believed was a decent 4x4 buck. When he and his dad were going to gut it, they noticed the deer lacked nuts, etc. Instead, it had the female plumbing. I've heard of little spikes on some older does, but I had never heard of a nice rack on a doe. How much of a rarity is it? 
If I had shot it, I think I'd have had it verified to see if it's a record. I'd be curious to learn if that's more common than I think.


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## NDTerminator (Aug 20, 2003)

I've personally seen two in roughly 40 years of deer hunting. One was a nice 4 point that proved to be a doe, in Sheridan County in 1982, the other a mule deer taken near Sun Dance Wy in about 89 or so, if I remember correctly. That muley had a weird little gnarly rack and was huge, the biggest bodied deer I have ever seen to this day. I suspected a buck that had damaged his nards, but a check revealed it was in fact, a doe...

I suspect this is why ND licenses that specify say antlerless or antlered, so as to address the rare instances this happens. That way the weirdo deer can be legally tagged, and the shooter can't come back to NDGF expecting another tag...


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## Ref (Jul 21, 2003)

About 4 years ago, I pushed a doe and two fawns to a friend who had a doe permit. He shot the doe. We walked up to the doe together only to notice it had velvet covered spikes. We rolled it over and it indeed had female plumbing.

In a totally different location while bow hunting this fall, my son and I witnessed another velvet spike with a fawn. The fawn stayed close to the "Spike" all of the time. We didn't harvest the "spike" so we really don't know if it was a doe with horns or not.


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## njsimonson (Sep 24, 2002)

I did a story in 2003 of a 15-point doe taken by a guy I went to school with from VC.

*Our Outdoors: D'oh! Buck turns out to be female. (1/17/03)*
By Nick Simonson

For Trevor Bjerke, the deer hunting season ended on an interesting note. While bow hunting in his deerstand prior to a snow squall, Bjerke simply wanted to fill his tag before the weather got bad. What he got was a three hour tour that ended up with an exciting and androgynous conclusion.

"I watched this buck come into view," Bjerke said, stating that he couldn't pass up a shot at the large-racked deer.

Bjerke released his arrow, and it stuck in the deer, leaving very little blood to form a trail to help him track the animal. Finally, with the aid of his friend Neil Peterson of Valley City, Bjerke located the animal.

"We searched for three hours, finally Neil found it in some cattails," Bjerke stated. The pair was just in time too, as a coyote had been tracking the wounded animal sa well, looking for an easy meal. After chasing off the scavenging coyote, Bjerke prepared to gut and clean the deer. That was when he got the biggest surprise of the day: the 8x7 buck that he had shot and searched for turned out to be a doe!

"I didn't realize it until I went to gut the deer. I looked under it, and it didn't have the parts of a buck," Bjerke exclaimed. Though the doe possessed the antlers of a buck, Bjerke stated that they were different compared to most antlers found on whitetail bucks.

"The base of each antler is three or four inches in diameter, and they are knife-shaped, not round like most antlers," Bjerke stated regarding the puzzling creature's headgear.

Whitetail does with antlers are rare throughout the entire population range of the animal. The odds of coming across a doe with such a condition ranges from one in 50,000 to one in 200,000, but those odds are just an educated guess according to Bill Jensen, Big Game Biologist for the North Dakota Game and Fish Department. In the relation to the appearance of antlered deer not posessing the sex organs that normal mature bucks do, Jensen stated there are several reasons why this may occur.

First, there are rare situations where the testicles did not develop as the young male deer reached maturity, but antlers still formed on the head. These deer are sterile but are capable of producing antlers each year. The odds of this occurring in the wild are one in several thousand, according to Jensen.

Some does develop small pedicles or antlers but the rack never reaches any significant size. These antlered does are called freemartin and result from sharing a womb with a male sibling or from some sort of genetic disorder. The odds of these small-antlered does occurring naturally is around 1 in 1,000. Such does have been produced by experimentally injecting testosterone into the female animal in the spring.

Finally there are the rare instances where adult does develop significant racks. The number of such deer in the wild are anyone's guess according to Jensen

"These animals are rare, and these animals may or may not be sterile," stated Jensen on the genetic status of antlered does.

North Dakota does not issue deer licenses based on animal sex, rather they are based on whether the deer is "antlered" or "antlerless." Thus, a hunter who takes an antlered doe, so long as he is in posession of an antlered deer tag, is not in violation of state hunting regulations.

In total, Bjerke harvested two whitetails this fall. One, a 4x4 buck (he was certain of this one's sex) which he took with his rifle, and the 8x7 doe he took with his bow. He plans to have the doe rack preserved by a taxidermist. It will certainly give him an interesting conversation piece to place above his mantle, and a long lasting memory made&#8230;in our outdoors.


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