Unusual buck taken south of Fort Peck Dam

Chris Morrow has been hunting for a long time, but he had never seen anything like the mule deer buck he took late in the afternoon on Oct. 30. The buck was still in velvet and had a cluster of short growths where each antler should have been.

He has since learned that this anomaly is called a "cactus" buck, because of the appearance of its antlers, or a "stag."

Morrow and his girlfriend, Katie Busch, had been tracking a very big 4-by-5 mule deer in HD 650, below Tower Hill on the Missouri River Bottom, below the spillway.  It is a special hunting area that only allows traditional firearms. After two days of seeing the big buck but no shot, they decided to go to another area about 3 miles away that is known to have nice whitetail bucks and a few mule deer bucks. They went through the area on a country path and saw a lot of mule does, but no bucks.

They went to the east end of the area and parked. Morrow got out and went towards the river, about 500 yards away through thick diamond willow and Russian olive trees. He saw nothing down in the bottom and returned to the truck to get Busch. While at the truck, they spotted a group of six mule deer. One looked very big but they had no good view of antlers. They hiked in towards the group and got within 100 yards of them in the thick tree growth.

The group had the large-bodied mule deer buck, a small buck and four does. The big buck never gave them a good look at his antlers. They glassed him for over 30 minutes as the group went around them and then stopped. They finally saw that the large buck had one antler that appeared to be in velvet. Morrow set up for the shot, still with no idea that it was an unusual deer.

"After the deer was down, I went up to him and saw how unique it was," Morrow said. "I have been hunting for a long time and was not aware of the 'stag' buck. It was a great experience hunting and now learning about this unique buck. A great Montana hunt for 2009."

Morrow called taxidermist Kent Morehouse for advice on the handling of this deer. Because of the heat and the delicate velvet on the antlers, he suggested bringing the deer in right away for preservation.

A stag is a male (swine or bull, according to the dictionary) that is castrated after the sex organs are mature. In a wild animal, the castration is usually caused by some accident or fight. The buck's testosterone level is too low to cause it to shed the antlers or lose the velvet. Instead, it keeps adding new antlers each year. The antlers are very delicate like balsa wood and break very easily, Morrow said.