Red Deer    Punahirv      Cervus elaphus

.

Years are not twins – the year before last, the stags started shedding their antlers at the end of February (this is also confirmed by published data) and to Women’s Day most of them were already bald. This year the majority still wear a proud crown…

Large red deer stags weigh up to a couple of hundred kilos, the females (hinds) about a hundred kilos. The length of the trunk is a couple of meters,  shoulder height up to a meter twenty-five centimetres. The sexual dimorphism is visible to the eye.

The shedding of the antlers has just started this year; beginning with the mature adults with the most powerful antlers. The young ones can wear their pencil antlers even in April, and the development of antlers starts only in their second year.

The age of the deer stags cannot be decided from the number of antler tines because the development of the antlers depends on feeding conditions. On one antler of a mature and healthy stag there are five or more tines that weigh up to 5 kilo. The antlers of Hubert, our stag with the largest crown, that were found in the forest last year had twelve tines and the pair of antlers weighed, as I remember, a little less than ten kilos. On ageing a degeneration of the antlers starts, at some time after the stag’s tenth year.

When the old antlers have been shed new ones begin to grow immediately and do so “visibly” at a rate of up to a couple of centimetres in a 24-hour period