Nature & You: Have you ever wondered why white-tailed deer shed their antlers?

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

It's been drilled into us on many occasions that we all need to be less wasteful and to not throw away perfectly useful items after only one time.  

That being said, does it not strike you as being odd when male white-tailed deer grow a spectacular set of antlers, use them for sparring with a few rival bucks and then shed them at the end of the mating season? Doesn't that seem pretty wasteful?

I could be glib, and snarkily retort that the deer did not get the memo. The truth of the matter, however, is that Ma Nature has designed a unique strategy of self-preservation in which the discard of antlers plays a key role.

Male white-tailed deer do a very poor job of maintaining their health and vitality when they are actively engaged in butting heads with other bucks. After all of the courtship rituals are done, the male deer are famished. It would be downright foolhardy for the undernourished male deer to keep antlers on their heads when meat-eating animals such as coyotes and bobcats would be actively searching for those individual prey they could more easily pursue and capture. There is a decided advantage in having every deer look like healthy female deer.

One more reason for having the deer throw away the antlers is because being slick-headed makes it much easier to dive headlong into the brush and shrubs when danger threatens.

Ma Nature is pretty ingenious when it comes to the task of problem-solving.

Neil Garrison was the longtime naturalist at a central Oklahoma nature center. His email is atlatlgarrison@hotmail.com.