This whole adventure started because Julie chose to walk rather than drive her car over to the neighbours; the drive would have taken about four minutes while the walking trail needs about 10 minutes to traverse.
But that additional six minutes takes one through a field and a forest, areas that are filled with signs of wildlife, so the time passes quickly.
Upon arriving back home a few hours later, she mentioned, almost too casually, that there was a deer carcass laying across the trail. My barrage of questions (Fresh? Intact? Precise location? Buck? Doe?) made her re-don her jacket and boots and lead me to the scene just as the sun was setting.
Sure enough, sprawled across the trail was the spine, rib cage, pelvis and a leg of a deer, all very well chewed and stripped of any meat. As there was no fur to be seen anywhere close by, it was obvious this fast food take-out had been relocated to here by the coyotes. And now it was dark, so home we went.
Word of this discovery spread quickly through the family and the next morning, before I could find myself free and clear to return, our daughters (both in their mid-thirties now, oh how time flies) headed up the hill to see the ‘crime scene’ for themselves. They came back with exciting news.
“We looked at the direction of the trailing leg so that indicated where it had been dragged from. So we fanned out and looked for other clues. We found lots of fur spread all around the cedar forest but no more bones.”
At one point they regrouped while standing within the heavy shadows of the cedars, unsuccessful in their ‘crime scene’ investigation. Shannon happened to notice a weird branch on the ground behind Erin. “Um, is that an antler?” Sure enough, more evidence!
Now we come the point in the story where dad comes in to play: dragging the skull and antlers home. Why drag it home, you may ask? Because that’s what you do when such a find is found, isn’t it? I mean really, why would you even ask?
The next couple of days finds me in the carport with a large pot of hot water that barely contains the skull. I am trying to clean all the meat, fat and gristle off to prepare the bone material for a bleaching soak. The end result, which I have done a couple of other times in the past, will be an artifact that can be used for education purposes, which I have also done several times in the past.
This cleaning process takes hours of meticulous scraping and cleaning, so it gives one time to think and mull things over. Like, what happened to this animal that it became a cafeteria for other wildlife of the valley.
The bones had been picked almost clean, the result of several mid-night visits by the local coyote family. But earlier trail camera videos taken nearby have shown that a variety of other critters regaled in such easy pickings: fisher, ravens, crows, chickadees, and even red squirrels will do a dine-and-dash when such a glorious opportunity presents itself.
So how did it get here? Brought down by coyotes? Wounded by a hunter? Smacked by a car? Caught in a wire fence? All of these are options, but I have found most dead deer found strangely deceased in a woodlot have been the victim of a vehicle collision. It is astounding how far and fast a deer with broken legs can travel.
While it may have been "finished off" by coyotes, I feel that our local wild canine family is too small in size to take on a full-size and healthy buck deer. They need leverage, such as a severely wounded animal.
The bones that we found are somewhat fresh, with any remaining meat dried and tough although still red in colour. This gives it a time-frame of a few weeks ago, at most. The weather has been near freezing for a week so like any refrigerated meat, decomposition is slowed considerably.
However, it is the antlers that give supporting evidence to the time frame.
The antlers are firmly attached to the skull. Every year a male deer will naturally shed its antlers, usually around mid-winter. This is accomplished by an amazing process of the bones separating and scarring over at the base of the antler, much like a maple leaf separates from its branch. A bump or two and the antlers simply fall off.
And so the firmly attached antlers confirm what our wall calendar says, that this is early December. Pretty obvious you may say, but to me it confirms the animal was still healthy prior to its demise.
The other thing about the antlers is that they are clean as a whistle, no velvet attached anywhere. As the deer grows its antlers each year, they are covered in a skin that is soft and full of nutrients to assist the antler material to grow and grow.
In September the antler growth stops and the covering skin, called velvet, is rubbed off. The bucks will vigorously rub young trees to scrape off the drying velvet and reveal their magnificent antlers just in time for the fall mating season in early November. “Oh yeah lady-deer, feast your eyes on these shiny antlers!”
Back to the antlers at hand, which had been rubbed completely clean of any velvet remnants. So time of death is after October and pre early December.
Well, I find it interesting.
Next is determining the age of the deceased. This is done by looking at the development and wear of the teeth. A deer less than two years old has ‘baby teeth’ that appear as a tri-cusp pre-molar; this is shed in year three and a bi-cusp tooth replaces it. This guy has bi-cusp premolars.
Tooth wear is also a big factor in determining age, with the sharpness of the teeth diminishing with age. These teeth are only slightly worn, so I am guessing the age to be around four years old.
So here we have a four-year old healthy male deer, found dead in the woods. Or at least parts of it were found. Hence my deduction that is was incapacitated by a vehicle and finished off by a predator finding an easy meal. Few, if any, wild animals die of old age.
The next time Julie goes for a walk, I may tag along in the first place ... it may save time later on.
