DENVER — As a boy, Terry Reach used to walk the land around his Pinedale, Wyo., home, searching for antlers shed by deer and elk.
It was a solitary pastime; he never saw anyone else, and he always found plenty of antlers, which he would drag home and pile in the yard.
But now, each winter, western Wyoming is thick with people intent on snatching up as many antlers as they can find. They follow the bucks, waiting for them to shed their headgear. Sometimes people chase the animals on all-terrain vehicles or snowmobiles, believing the exertion will force them to drop their antlers.
“They run the wildlife off,” Reach said.
Such tactics, say Wyoming officials, can be destructive for deer and elk struggling to survive the lean winter months. Already starving, they might use up their reserves pushing through deep snow to avoid humans.
Now Wyoming is considering a ban on the popular activity from January through April, the months when the herds are most vulnerable.
“What it boils down to is harassment of wildlife at a real critical time for them to survive,” said Mark Gocke, a spokesman for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. “We want to afford them as much protection as we can.”
The harassment of wildlife is a “huge” problem, said Walt Gasson, executive director of the Wyoming Wildlife Federation, which endorses the ban.
But some Wyomingites have taken umbrage at the proposal, which would apply to collecting antlers on public lands west of the Continental Divide.
“Leave it alone. Leave it like it is,” said Mary Stager, 70, of Big Piney, Wyo., who has hunted antlers on horseback for decades.
Although she disapproves of those who harm the animals, she shares the view that the state’s approach will penalize those who will abide by the law while unethical hunters continue to take the antlers.
“The only people who won’t hunt are people who won’t violate the law anyway,” Reach said. (Although antler aficionados often use “hunt” and “hunting” to describe what they do, hobbyists don’t kill the animals; they just pick up fallen horns.)
For residents such as Reach and Stager, antler hunting is a way to earn income by selling the horns to furniture makers. Many of the antlers also end up in Asia, where they are considered an aphrodisiac.
Prices depend on size and quality, but elk antlers generally go for $5 a pound, while those from deer fetch $5 to $7 a pound, said Don Schaufler, a Montana antler dealer who buys horns from a number of Western states, including Wyoming.
As collecting them has grown lucrative, it also has grown more competitive, Gocke said.
“And ethics go out the window. I don’t see that trend changing, at least not for the better,” he said.
Neighboring states have grappled with the issue in recent years.
In Colorado, wildlife officials found so many antler hunters disturbing herds near Gunnison two years ago that they enacted restrictions, banning the activity from Jan. 1 to March 14. The ban has helped ease the problem, said Colorado Division of Wildlife spokesman Tyler Baskfield.
Utah tried a similar — and short-lived — approach in the northern part of the state, then switched last year to a strategy of permitting antler hunting but requiring participants to take an online course aimed at educating them about the effects of their behavior.
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