The Kemper herald. (Scooba, Miss.) 1875-1908, 1907-08-29
ANTLERS OF THE WAPITI
KATURE's APPARENT ExTRAvA-
CANOES OF VITALITY AND :
NUTRIMENT.

CANOES OF VITALITY AND
NuTRIMENT.
How the king>of the Deer Family An
nually Sheds His Horns and Grows a
New Set-A Remarkable Head.
One of natures hardest puzzles
one of her apparent extravagances of
Vitality and nutriment-is her waste
fllness with the horns or antlers Of
the deer family. The hunter comes
home from the hills with a noble head,
bearing a towering structure of horn.
Yet had the hunter missed his shot,
that same magnificent hatrack whose
points he now counts with pride,
would have been cast away in the
spring. Immediately they grow again;
grow with a rate startlingly rapid, and
in six months are in their fullest
glory once more.
In no animal is the antler so grace
fully wicked-looking a weapon as in
the wapiti, which is commonly-and
wrongly-called in this country the
eek" EEK" is an old-world word, and
the old-world elk, some species of
which still exist in Europe, is an ami
NAL corresponding practically to u
moose. The wapiti is the largest OF
the true deer, corresponding to the
red deer of Europe. The family Is
called the "e%lephantine" family of
deer, it's members being the wapiti OF
Siberia, the German red deer and the
English red deer. The close relation.
between all the species is best shown
by the fact that If any two Of them
are crossed, the hybrid produced is
fertile. This argues a common fam
lily.
The most astonishing thing about
these antlers is not their design, ef-
fective and ornamental as that is, but
the manne and rate of their growth.
In the early days of April the new
antler begins to push outward, so fast
one might almost watch it grow. They
are flabby things of cartilage, blunt.
ended, tender, full of blood vessels and
covered with a down that Is called by
hunters velvet" In ten days they
grow a total of as many inches. They
branch, and each year they branch as
they did the year before, so that If
one could find the antlers of one n
NAL two years in succession, they
would be alike except for the addition
al point or branch of the second
season. By August the antlers are
full grown, and beginning to harden.
The wapiti rubs them against trees, to
get rid of the last Of the velvet"
and as the rutting season comes on,
grows conscious of his power and his
antlers together.
Through the fall and winter, while
his weapons are available, the full
grown wapiti is as ugly and ~ferocious
a beast as one can find. When the
spring opens, however, and the wapiti
no longer needs horns against rivals,
when his wives are occupied with the
cares Of maternity, nature pushes his
horns off his head. The new horn
replaces the old antler, exactly as
] second teeth replace milk teeth in
human kind. Off they go, though they
often weigh 100 pounds after they are
dry" and, of course, much more in
the living state. The loss is painless
and unless they are knocked off, blood.
lAs. The shedding is not an act of
itssslf, that happens at a given mo-
meat, but one horn may go first, and
several days later the other may fol.
low It.
Considering the vast numbers Of
wapiti that have roamed this country
for is area of distribution was origi-
nally fi2m the Atlantic to the Pacific
it woAd seem as if this annual she'd
ding habit must have carpeted the
country with antlers. And, indeed,
more or less of them are actually dug
up eveH year even now, especially
along tie southern shore of Lake Erie.
The SPECIES is extinct, practically, east
of thes Mississippi, and If the reports
of ting shocking p%ot-hunting of wapiti
in California are true, the wapiti will
| soon oe lost altogether. But his fame
enduses in misnomer; there is hardly
a stSte of his former range that has
not Dts ELK" county, or, elk" town.
ships
TIE wapiti's antlers vary widely be-
tween specimens, but are built on one
CEREBRAL plan. They nearly always
have a beam" or main stem, round
ana in some cases nearly as thick as a
mal's wrist. This main beam Of the
anger goes off from a knobby base
at CHE top of the forehead, in a most
graceful curve, outward and backward,
tnesl sweeping upright to its final
b~rasachings.
Immediately over the forehead, right
| at sSe base of the mighty beam, start
outs the two first prongs, almost at
rTget angles; they stand straight out
ovds the eyes and then curve upward
wits a wicked hook. Two others, par
allG to these and outside them, leave
the beam a few inches further out.
The four prongs make a row of points,
snap. white-tipped, u~p-curved, fit to
rip an enemy.
TIE other points" are really
brasches each one filming out" from
Its soot in the main beam, all of them
on Che forward side except the last
pai1s and all running down from the
rough barklike brown to the smooth.
slepkler. white, sharp tip.
Al of them curve inward until they
poirs straight forward, except the last
+u,oH u,h{ob poinf cfroiohf RI tho roar