Trail Camera Captures Rare Footage of Deer Shaking Off Its Antlers
A Vermont resident recently lucked into some “spectacular and unique” footage on a trail camera near her home. The rare footage captured the exact moment when an 8-point buck shed its antlers: an annual occurrence, but something that is rarely caught on camera.
The video was captured in Northfield, Vermont by Ann Sivori, who shared it with Vermont Fish & Wildlife. The department posted the video on their Facebook page, where it’s gone viral, amassing over 320K views and 2.5K reactions. For reference, the page’s typical posts receive anywhere between 10 and 125 likes.
“Ann Sivori kindly shared her spectacular and unique trail camera video of an 8-point buck shedding both of its antlers in Northfield, Vermont,” reads the caption. “Watch closely – it happens fast.”
Sivori herself popped into the comments of the post a couple of times. In response to one poster who asked if the animal had been “baited” into standing in that spot, she wrote:
“No, absolutely not. There is a crabapple tree in that area and he was eating the apples that had fallen. I don’t hunt so I don’t bait and I don’t feed. I’m very aware of where the animals on our property frequent and have been using trail cameras since 2015.”
And in case you were wondering, yes, she did recover the antlers:
“I saw [them] immediately in the snow as I approached my camera!” she wrote on Facebook, posting a photo of the antlers. “I just stood there in amazement! They are on my mantel now.”
Of course, this isn’t the first rare camera trap footage we’ve seen. If you want to dive deeper down this rabbit hole, check out this footage of a mouse cleaning a man’s shed every night while he sleeps, or this unbelievable triptych of a golden eagle taking down a deer.
(via Time)
