Deer tusks!!!?

[Lance]

My sons Coues deer spike he shot this Oct has tusks on his upper jaw! Like ivory on an elk or tusks on a pig. They are small and I don't think they were poking through the skin but when I boiled the skull there they were! They are defenitaly a tusk growing out of a tusk sheath and not like a tooth.

 

I asked Chris at Signature Taxidermy here in Flag if he had ever seen or heard of that before? Because I shure hadn't. He said he had seen it once before on a mule deer a long time ago.

 

Have any of you ever seen this? Or heard of this?

 

Lance

[coues4x4]

Never seen it but I sure would like to.Do you have any pics? Maybe it's a chupacabra? Congrats to your son for harvesting a buck.

[Lance]

I'll have Tines post some pictures on here for me some time in the next couple of days. Thanks. My son Ty is 10 and it was his first deer.

[CouesWhitetail]

Yes deer can have tusks (upper canine teeth). They are a remnant of their evolutionary past when deer had large tusks/canine teeth. They are uncommon and usually very small. And as you mentioned sometimes so small they don't poke through the gumline. This is yet another topic covered in Jim Heffelfinger's new book on deer of the southwest. You can order the book on www.deernut.com. Hopefully Jim will come and give more info on the research about deer tusks.

 

here are some pictures of a coues skull I took that had small tusks.

 

 

 

[GRONG]

I've seen it on a few muleys and a couple of coues deer in the past several years. Pretty crazy looking!! I found a muley doe skull this spring in CO that had them on both sides of her upper jaw, like elk ivories. Had the skull not been so old I woulda brought it back. I've got one big carp skull here at my house that has them. Pretty neat and pretty rare I believe. I remember Dan King showed me a coues skull one of his clients killed and they had them too. Way odd and I have no clue what causes it. Must be a genetic thing I guess.

[deernut]

I love this stuff. Anytime anyone finds a freak, they think of me. Not sure that was the legacy I was shooting for. However, I have been interested in odd things like this for a long time. I do have a picture (Fig. 18) in my book of these maxillary canines (not the one below).

 

 

On rare occasions deer can grow upper canine teeth. They certainly are an evolutionary hold-over from a time when deer ancestors had well-pronounced fangs (Like Dicrocerus and Stephanocemas here). Through evolutiuon, the tusks gradually got smaller as antlers became larger.

 

 

Maxillary canines have been found in white-tailed and mule deer throughout the country. They are usually very small and may not break through the gums. In populations where these teeth have been documented, 0.05 to 18% of the deer had upper canines (I think 18% is a gross over estimate). It has been theorized that the incidence of upper canines in whitetails increases as one travels south. If this is true, they may be more common in Coues whitetails than we know. Keep your eyes out for them. I ran a deer check station in 36ABC and started to check every single deer for maxillary canines this year. Checked 91 MD and WT and none had them.

 

JIM

[bullwidgeon]

That old 2 point buck I shot in New Mexico had little rounded off nubs protruding from there. I attributed it to his goofy chingered up New Mexico genes .

 

 

 

Pretty neat either way..

 

Bret M.

[Kilimanjaro]

I killed a buck in South TX back in '98 that had canines as well... seen a couple of others with them over the years.. neat to find an oddball every now and then.

congrats to your boy on the buck!!

[AZP&Y]

Always something new and interesting on CWT... I had no idea thank you for sharing (and educuating) me!

Congrats on his first buck!

 

 

AzP&Y

[billrquimby]

You don’t have to go back into pre-history or look for freaks to find tusks on deer today.

 

Almost one third of the world’s 40 deer species have tusks. All 12 are indigenous to Asia.

 

The five species of muntjacs found from India to southeast Asia have tusks as well as high, hairy pedicles and small antlers, as does the water deer of China.

 

Then there are three species of musk deer and three species of tufted deer, and all of these have tusks -- but no antlers.

 

You don’t have to go all the way to Asia to hunt free-ranging deer with “fangs,” either. Muntjacs and water deer that escaped from private collections years ago have become pests in some parts of England.

 

Bill Quimby

[billrquimby]

Ooops! I forgot that there are two species of deer called "huemals" in South America that have canine teeth. That means 14 -- or 35% of all the world's deer species -- have tusks.

 

Bill

[reddog]

Ooops! I forgot that there are two species of deer called "huemals" in South America that have canine teeth. That means 14 -- or 35% of all the world's deer species -- have tusks.

 

Bill

 

 

Bill, you are wealth of knowledge!!

 

I t is always great to read your posts!!

 

REDDOG

[billrquimby]

"Bill, you are wealth of knowledge!!"

 

RED DOG:

 

Thanks. Other hunters go gah-gah over sheep. Not me. Deer are my favorite all of the big game animals on this planet, and I've spent a half century reading as much as I can about them, and hunting as many species and subspecies as I could afford.

 

Bill Quimby

[Switchback]

I think the Javalina and deer are starting to breed!

[Rembrant]

INTERESTING!!!!

You mean THEORETICALLY these tusks are an "evolutionary hold-over."

"Through evolution the tusks gradually got smaller as the antlers got larger." Stephanocemas, and Dicrocerus were discovered in the Tung Gur formation of Mongolia; that being China. Funny isn't it, that Bill says there are still 12 species of deer in Asia that still have tusks? Looks like they forgot to evolve.

I think the theory of evolution is a fantastic concept. I like reading the Colbert papers. His taxonomic decipherings are incredible! But to tie them together to fit Darwins theory is a reach. Evolution is a theory. There's a reson for that. Darwin predicted that over time, all the transitional species fossils will be discovered. That was over 120 years ago. Some will argue that there have been no transitional fossils found. And debatable are the ones classified as such. To prove something scientifically, it must be recreated, observed and recorded - in comparrison to control models. Anybody got 16 billion years? It is unlikely that the theory of evolution will ever be proven, yet it is taught in all our schools, at all levels, as the SCIENTIFIC truth. Could it be, that somewhere in the genetic make-up of a North American deer, there is a rare possibility that canines will show up, and that it is not directly connected to the macro-evolutionary theory that has never been proven? I would be disrespecting the inteligence that God gave me to reason, if I were to swallow this ill-proven theory everytime, nope - sorry, anytime it shows up. Not pickin a fight with anybody, just pointing out that once again the word - theoretically - was left out of the conversation.

Mike