VELVET ANTLER PRESERVATION by Rick Carter

EARLY SEASON BIG GAME HUNTS, IN SOME STATES, offer the possibility of harvesting animals bearing velvet antlers. Usually, velvet antlers do not present any substantial field-care problems. In most cases, a hunter is located a short distance from a local taxidermist or has access to a freezer.

Hunts requiring travel or shipping, however, may pose some obvious problems and require special attention in the field. Caribou hunts in Canada are conducted during the active stages of antler development. The problems occur when neither the hunter nor the guide knows what to do to preserve the velvet. Many guides even suggest soaking the velvet antlers in the river and scraping all of the velvet off with a knife! Once the natural velvet is removed in this fashion, it is gone forever. Velvet-stripped antlers are typically very pale-white because they did not go through the natural shedding process.

Normally, the blood underneath the velvet and the tree sap from rubbing become major factors in staining hard antlers. Stripped antlers leave the taxidermist with three possible solutions. The first and worst option would be to...

...Continued in the Spring 2003 Issue of Breakthrough.

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