Antlers are bone, grown and discarded every single year, and among the fastest-growing tissue of any mammal. Learn the vocabulary and you can describe any head accurately to anyone.
- Beam
- The main shaft running up from the skull. Everything else branches off it.
- Brow tine
- First point off the beam, low down near the base, angled forward over the face.
- Trez tine
- The next significant point above the brow. On fallow it sits below where the palm begins.
- Palmation
- The flattened, webbed spread at the top. This is the fallow signature. Width and depth of palm is what people mean by a good head. A mature buck can span 60 to 70cm across.
- Spellers
- The small points running off the trailing edge of the palm.
- In velvet
- Growing antler, wrapped in blood-rich, nerve-fed skin. Warm to touch and genuinely sensitive. Bucks in velvet avoid contact and behave carefully.
- Hard antler
- Fully grown and mineralised, velvet stripped. Now a weapon, and used like one.
- Cast
- Shed naturally, typically October into November. Not a sign of ill health. It happens every year.
- Fraying
- Thrashing scrub and saplings to strip velvet, mark territory and build neck muscle. The stripped bark left behind is called a fray tree and is prime sign.
- Pricket
- A young buck in his second year carrying simple unbranched spikes. No palm yet.
Reading age in the field
Antlers are a rough guide, not a reliable one. Body shape tells you more: an old buck has a deep chest, a heavy sagging belly line, a short thick neck outside the rut and a distinctly Roman-nosed profile. A young buck looks leggy and light in the front end. Teeth confirm it after the fact, since molars wear flat with age, but by then the decision is already made.