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Hunting News Latest Hunting News This buck is a doe!
Hunting News Latest Hunting News This buck is a doe! 
| This buck is a doe! |
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| Written by Bill Miller | |
| Saturday, 02 February 2008 | |
 SOMETHING AMISS: Cliff Smallwood shot this antlered doe, a phenomenon that occurs a few times each year in Texas. The “Frankenstein Deer” is what Cliff Smallwood now calls the McCulloch County whitetail he shot in late November. That’s because the unusual deer has grown into a sensation for whitetail fans across the nation, courtesy of the Internet. But maybe Smallwood, a Longview businessman, should start calling it the “Bride of Frankenstein Deer,” because this seven-pointer was actually a doe. An antlered doe is rare, state biologists said, because they are equipped with female reproductive organs and, yes, a set of horns. Smallwood said he didn’t plan to shoot a deer on the day he encountered the strange doe, but he had his .270 along for hogs. Accompanying him was a very credible eyewitness — his hunting partner, Jeff Cox, who is a Texas game warden assigned to McCulloch County. “Jeff spotted the deer and was pointing at it,” Smallwood recalled. “I looked up and I saw horns sticking up. “The deer started quartering away so I made a mew sound and it stopped.” Smallwood’s shot was true. As he and Cox approached the downed deer, they saw it had bloody tines; if two of them hadn’t been broken, they would have brought the total points to nine. “I saw that and thought, ‘Man, this deer has been fighting hard,’’’ Smallwood said. “Then I saw that the (leg) glands, which are normally red, were snow white.” Cox soon realized that this was a rare antlered doe. They tagged it as a buck, however, because the definition of buck is not just a male deer.  The (leg) glands, which are normally red, were snow white. Mitch Lockwood, a whitetail expert for Texas Parks and Wildlife, said an antlered doe probably gets its headgear from an overload of the hormone testosterone. He explained that there are usually two to three reports of antlered females among the approximately 430,000 deer harvested each year in Texas. Such deer, however, are not hermaphrodites, which are animals or plants having both male and female reproductive organs. Lockwood said there are hermaphrodite deer, but they are even more rare than an antlered doe. He noted another doe with antlers was reported in January in San Saba County. “Apparently some folks had been watching her for five years,” he said. “They’ve seen her raise fawns.” Smallwood, who has ordered a shoulder mount made of his deer, also had Cox takes some pictures, and he attached the images to two e-mails. He regrets, however, not removing his phone number from the text before clicking “send.” The information was instantly forwarded to hundreds of other people, most of them strangers. “Within 48 hours I was getting phone calls and e-mails and they were nonstop for weeks on end,” he said. “Half the people didn’t believe it, but I said, ‘Well, we have a video and my friend is the game warden, and he took pictures.’” |
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| Last Updated ( Sunday, 03 February 2008 ) |
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