Antlers begin growing in the spring of each year when the days begin getting longer. While growing, they are soft and tender and covered with a velvet material. The velvet loosens and the bucks rub it off on small trees and bushes. They keep the hard, white-colored antlers through the winter. Bucks may use antlers to leave visible rubs on trees or fight with other bucks to establish dominance.
Antlers get larger each year, as the buck grows older.
In late winter or early spring they fall off and mice and other rodents chew them for the minerals in them. Rubs are visible sign posts made in fall and winter by bucks rubbing their antlers on tree trunks. These rubs are a sign to other deer that the buck is in that area. Scrapes are circular, pawed areas on the ground made during fall and winter. Bucks usually make scrapes, but sometimes does or fawns may make them.