The soil is so deficient in the minerals the deer need to grow new sets of antlers, that the old antlers serve as a valuable nutrituve source. When this happens, both will starve to death.
Antlers begin as knobs covered in soft, thin skin called velvet.
Stages over 2 years old grow branching antlers called pricklets. New antlers take about 100 days to grow and are shed in April. The velvet dies in July and the stag will rub it off and eat it. It takes a few days for the velvet to disappear and for the antlers to become clean. An adult stag can have many branches on his antlers.