ShawneeDispatch.com

Shawnee — Nick Bratkovic

nbratkovic@theworldco.info

Rex Covell of Shawnee was hunting alone last month when he harvested a deer that he can't stop thinking about.

The type of deer that hunters don't forget and whose pictures get e-mailed around the Internet with people wondering what exactly it is they are looking at.

Covell said he still doesn't know for sure.

On Oct. 23, he shot the deer with a bow and arrow from about 20 yards in rural Paola. He watched the deer run for another 40 yards and then fall to the ground.

Alone at the time, Covell went and got a friend to help him find the deer.

When the pair found the deer, it looked as if the deer had a third antler growing out of its eye, Covell said.

"I have never seen anything like that," he said. "I have seen other animals with a condition similar to that, but never a deer."

The taxidermist who examined the deer wasn't sure what caused the growth.

Covell took the deer to the Johnson County Department of Wildlife Parks office. Officials there were unsure what caused the growth.

They forwarded pictures of the deer to Lloyd Fox, big game coordinator at the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks.

The pictures make it difficult to tell what it is, Fox said.

He would have to examine the deer skull in person to know what it is. It is either an antler stuck in the deer, or a case where the skull has grown a third antler.

"Until you look at the structure, you aren't sure what you are looking at," Fox said. "If I had the deer in hand I would look to see if there was something like a pedicle on the edge of the eye to cause it. At first, I thought the deer had an antler shoved into its head."

Sometimes deer can get antlers stuck in them while fighting another deer. If not removed, then the antlers can grow skin around them.

It also is tough to make any definitive statements based on a photo, because electronic imaging technology allows pictures to be manipulated, Fox said.

"Until you look at the bone structure you don't know what is causing it," Fox said.

Covell said he has been offered money for the deer skull, but just wants to figure out what caused the antler to be growing out of the deer's skull.

"It kind of stumps me, it really does," he said.