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Show About Deer Antlers are usually considered the exclusive property of the male deer, but at times a female will be found with a small set. Antlers are shed and re-grown each year. Let's begin with the moment the antler falls off, usually in January or February. Feb-ruary. Bleeding begins from the pedicel, which clots very rapidly. Skin, which contains veins, nerves and hair, forms over the blood clot. The burr or warty substance forms first, this is caused by the overflow of blood. The antler establishes its full diameter di-ameter first and then begins to elongate. Antlers are supplied by two streams of blood, the stream which runs up through the pedicel and a second stream which feeds the velvet. The animal is very sensitive sen-sitive during the time of antler development. de-velopment. The beam, or main stem, grows until it flattens, then bification takes place, which forms tines. The blood vessels eventually are filled in and closed, beginning at the top. After the antlers take on their solid form, the outer skin, or velvet, becomes very itchy, and the buck will rub his antlers against branches until all the velvet is removed and the antler becomes shiny. This whole process of growing antlers takes approximately 100 to 120 days. A first year animal will usually produce a single beam or spike, with more tines being added along with each years set of antlers. The age can be guessed from the number num-ber of tines, but this is not accurate accu-rate due to possible malformation of the antlers which may be caused by: 1. Injury to the antler during growth, 2. Injury to the animal itself, it-self, which usually causes malformation mal-formation on the same side of the animal that was injured, or 3. Poor growth because of poor food. A A A Cover for wildlife corresponds to barns and sheds of domestic animals. ani-mals. It affords shelter from the elements, refuge from enemies, a place of comparative peace where resting periods may be spent in preparation for foraging, and other activities in the open. It should, therefore, be comfortable, safe and readily accessible. AAA About Grouse On the edges of the deep woods and in the dense thickets which are its favorite habitat, the ruffed grouse ("partridge" to most hunters) hunt-ers) can, and does, give sportsmen a mighty hard time. Hard, that is, from the standpoint of bringing hohie meat while a fellow's fel-low's learning the game but as good a time as he'll ever have. Grouse have the habit of seeming seem-ing very scarce until a man gets all tied up in the brush. Then, exploding explod-ing from cover right at his feet, they're apt to disappear before he can snap the safety off. Even when you're not tied up in brush, they're mighty adept at putting put-ting a couple of saplings between themselves and a charge of No. 8's. Every hunter has literally mown off the bushes as a bird disappeared unscathed, and undoubtedly also has had the experience of clubbing a tree with his gun-barrel while swinging on a "side-winder." Early-season trout fishermen enjoy en-joy the "drumming" of the males when the birds are abundant, and are saddened bv the lack of it when the birds are at a "low." Yes, in addition ad-dition to their tricky behavior in the brush during the hunting season, grouse have another habit which gives sportsmen and biologists alike a great deal of concern. They have a tendency to be very abundant for a few years, and then very scarce for a few. This cyclic behavior has received a lot of attention from hunters as well as from professional game men. Some want to cure grouse cycles, and some only cuss them, but we still have them, and whether thf.y can be cured or only cussed is a question not yet answered. Many observations have been advanced as explanations and have proven to be correlated with the cycles, but not necessarily the cause of them. Biologists Bi-ologists of the Conservation department's depart-ment's Pittman-Robertson grouse research project are looking for more correlations. Biologists believe their function today is to collect all the data they can, on all possible aspects of the rough grousa population, and to develop de-velop new approaches to the old problem. They are building the foundation on which grouse management, manage-ment, and consequently the sport of hunting, will rest in the future. AAA Don't Do It! Conservation-m inded fishermen used to believe confidently that they should "put the little fish back and give them a chance to grow." Fact-finding has shown that where fast-multiplying panfish are concerned, con-cerned, the well-meant old slogan is anti-conservation. The trouble is, In more cases than not those little tish won't grow. What they'll do, If put back in the water, is compete com-pete with countless little cousins tor a too-small food supply. |