My wife and I and a hunting buddy recently visited the famous Terracotta Soldier pits in Xi’an, China.
The pits, which were discovered in 1974, contained the statues of 8,000 soliders, 520 horses, 150 cavalry horses and 130 chariots. The “Terracotta Army” is a form of funerary art that was buried with the First Emperor of Qin in about 210 BC.
Among the many wonders
there, something really caught my eye. There it was, mixed in with the thousands of clay soldiers and bronze weapons, and hundreds of pottery horses. Buried along with all this material honoring the greatest king China has ever known, was a deer antler. Remarkably similar to a whitetail antler, it was a main beam that appeared to be about 14 inches long, with the stub of a brow tine.
Modern hunters aren’t the only ones to highly esteem antlers!
— Dr. Phillip Bishop
ing protein) in the blood of the velvet comes in contact with the fresh, new antler. The hemoglobin in the blood oxidizes from contact with the air and, hence, stains the antlers.
Under this theory, bucks won’t get this staining effect if they wait to shed their velvet until the blood supply to the velvet has disappeared. To test this hypothesis, I asked forensics specialist Jason Hallman to conduct tests on two sets of antlers at both light and dark areas of the antlers.
The results? The tests
revealed blood stains on the light areas as well as the dark areas on each antler. Therefore, it seems that the blood shed during the antler-growing process can still be detected months later and has little to do with coloration.
D&DH’s contributing editor of deer behavior Charles Alsheimer predicted the results we saw in the blood-stain forensic tests.
Alsheimer said he believes coloration comes partly from genetics and
partly from tree sap. Genetics is a good explanation for most aspects of deer physiology, because genetics can control behavior as well as anatomy and biochemistry. With genetic differences among deer, animals in any given locale can display a variety of coloration. At the same time, it also accounts for consistencies of antler color within a particular region. I think Alsheimer’s genetics explanation is correct.
I’m a physiologist not a psychologist, so I’ll leave it to them to explain hunters’ fascination with antlers. It might be the look and the feel of this natural weaponry. Or perhaps its their miraculous appearance and disappearance. The turth is, I can’t even explain my own fascination with antlers — but I am happy to leave some aspects of deer hunters’ nature a mystery.
— D&DH Field Editor Dr. Phillip Bishop is a professor of exercise physiology at the University of Alabama.
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