There’s a farm in Essex, Massachusetts, where I used to board my horses. Many kinds of wildlife roam the fields and woods, including deer. There are also coyotes, and sometimes the two meet, with dire consequences for the deer.
Every year, the family who own the farm hold a New Year’s Day party. Weather permitting, the highlight of the party is a tramp about the fields and woods. This New Year’s, the day was misty but not frigid, and there was no snow to make walking impossible. I’d dressed for wet-field-slogging and bushwhacking, and happily joined those hardy souls who set out for the annual exploration. We were led by Noah, teenage son of the family, with their shorthaired pointer, Nike, on a leash.
We were following a deer track through underbrush-choked woods when Nike began straining at her leash (even more than usual, that is) in excitement. She led us to the remains of a kill – part of a deer hide and scattered bones. A little farther on, we came to the deer’s skull. It still had a few vertebrae attached.
What a prize! (Stop gagging, you in the back.) We had a bucket we’d found dumped in the woods, and put the deer skull in it to carry back with us. After the party, Noah removed the vertebrae (to clean and dry separately) and put the skull out to be cleaned by insects and weather-cure. To keep the skull from being destroyed by scavenging animals, he found a totemic solution. Yes, that is a cap of hide remaining between the antlers.
Nice find! The antlers really make the difference. I tend to find a number of skulls in my travels through the woods (deer skulls, that is). Never found any with antlers though. Nice Pics!
Neat! I’ve got on my desk at home a nice little possum skull. I found it while I was hunting this fall, but it still had too much possum attached to it. Early this spring, I was out looking for shed antlers, and I found it again, mostly clean, so I took it home to share with the kids.
I love stuff like that; my mom was always pretty tolerant about that sort of thing when we were kids. We had our share of stinky cow skulls and things like that. My hunting partner found a four point (that’d be eight point for y’all back east) deer skull while he was boating last summer. It’s bigger than anything we’ve hunted locally, so it was real exciting to find.
I have the lower jaw of what I presume is a white tailed deer. I found it by a road along the shore of Lake Huron near St. Ignace, Michigan. I left the top part of the skull behind because there was still some flesh attached and I didn’t think my mother or my sister, who were with me at the time, would be very happy if I brought something with decaying flesh on it into the car.
My mother saw the lower jawbone and asked if it was from a muskrat. I told her I’d hate to meet a muskrat that large.
Then again, I live in Texas, where the skulls of large ungulates are considered knickknacks, decor accessories, accents for home and office, and nifty grille decorations for one’s vehicle.
In fact, this past week, while at the feed store (only place in town you can buy No-Pest Strips), I was amused to note that they have plastic ones, just in case you don’t have any real dead cows on hand…
That’s pretty neat. What are they planning on doing with it once it’s clean?
I once found a box turtle shell that was completely empty. The thing was wholly intact, but the turtle was gone. I assume a bird killed it and picked it out, and insects took care of the rest. I kept that thing in my room for the longest time, until I lost it in a move.
I haven’t asked Noah what he plans to do with the deer skull. I go to the farm every morning to take care of a horse there, and occasionally I’ll see the position of the skull changed. Sometimes it gazes at the barn, sometimes out over the fields it once roamed.
From a walk amid the dunes of Crane’s Beach, many years ago, I have a rib and a vertebra from a deer. From another woods walk, I have a tiny skull of some small carnivore. I haven’t been able to identify it, but wonder if it might be a fox cub’s – it’s the right size for that. It has carnivore teeth, and it’s too small to be a cat’s.
Wang-Ka, some of those plastic cow skulls are roping dummy heads. Do they have spikes on the back to stick in a bale of hay? There’s also roping strap-ons, for cattle without their own horns.
I’m jumping on the bone wagon kind of late here, but just wanted to add that on Sunday while walking in the woods, I came across the remains of a wild pony. I brought home a verterbra that looks like of like an iris (flower) and a rib that is shaped like a sword. Somebody had already taken the skull.
I found one of our local vagrants dead in the gully behind my grandfather’s house last summer. I’m anxious to see what’s left to scavenge now that the snow is gone. I’d like to mount the skull on a pole at the end of our driveway but, unfortunately, it would quickly get stolen.
The vagrant was a man, BTW. So it’s not our city’s famed “Bag Lady” who, as legend has it, was either a high-school teacher driven insane by her students, or is an undercover operative for Canada’s secret service (obviously involved in a very long-term assignment).
No joke, what a prize. If I had that skull with those great antlers, I would incorporate it into my standard Halloween costume. Every kid that came to my door would leave a trail of shit behind them as they ran screeching away from my door.
I wouldn’t have to fertilize the lawn, ever again. Wanna sell it?
