As a male deer ages, he grows more spots on his antlers, or “grill.”
A stag is a male stag, and in hunting terminology, a stag’s spikes are the individual teeth on its antlers. In general, the more points a deer has, the more prestige the hunter who manages to kill it will have. Many hunters protect the horns of their prey as a trophy, especially valuing the large “racks,” as they are called. People who are not hunters can also discuss some points; biologists, for example, record information about the dots on the dollars they study.
A deer’s “points” are determined by the number of teeth on its antlers, so a male eight-pointed deer has eight distinct teeth.
Horns are very interesting and quite unique physical structures. In most deer species, they develop only in the male and shed every year after the mating season. As the antlers grow, they become covered with an extremely soft, living tissue known as velvet; as the velvet dies, the fawns rub it off, and eventually the antlers also come loose. The older the deer, the more branches develop on the antlers.
Many hunters look for horns with a large number of spikes.
There are several main parts to a horn. The main beam is the main branch of the horn, and the tip of the main beam is counted as one of the points. Near where the horn emerges from the head, it is common to see a browtooth, a small tooth that protrudes upwards, and is also treated as a point. Antlers also produce several branches called teeth, and a deer’s total points represent the sum of all these individual teeth on both antlers.
Hunters who successfully kill buck deer often hang the animal’s antlers on the wall as a trophy.
When horns are taken as a trophy, points are not the only consideration. Many hunters also look for very symmetrical horns with no broken or misshapen teeth. Hunters also tend to favor large sets of horns, looking at size as well as individual tips. People can also collect fallen antlers while deer are parting, although this is less mystical than hunting in many regions of the world. In certain cases the spots are especially noticeable; pocketing a 14-point dollar, for example, is considered quite an achievement for a hunter.
Male elk have webbed antlers, while other elk have a dendritic configuration, like that of deer.
Points are not only used to calculate the value of a trophy. In some areas, wildlife management agencies have instituted “point limits,” meaning that bucks must have a certain number of points to be withdrawn. These point limits generally refer to points on a single antler and are designed to keep deer populations strong. The sites are also investigated by some biologists who are intrigued by the antler formation process and the impact of various environmental changes on deer antlers.