(FWC PHOTO)

Thirteen-year-old C.J. Nowling shot his first “buck” this January, a 6-pointer, hunting on a tract of land near the Escambia River. That “buck” turned out not to be a buck when he and his grandfather went to clean it, and realized it had female sexual organs.

It was a hermaphrodite.

“Often, underdeveloped males, called cryptorchids, can be mistaken for antlered does because they also exhibit poorly developed external sex organs,” said Dr. Robert Vanderhoof, FWC biologist and Deer Management Program leader.

After a close inspection of the carcass and entrails by veterinarian David Summerlin and FWC wildlife technician Mike Graves, the deer had only female sex organs and its antlers were hard and well-polished.

This was no cryptorchid.

“In most cases, antlers on female deer tend to be malformed and stay in velvet. A doe with polished antlers is quite a rare occurrence,” Vanderhoof said. “Females with polished antlers are almost always infertile and usually have tumors on their reproductive organs, which produce the hormone testosterone necessary to enable polished antlers to develop in deer.”

Surprisingly—or maybe not—later this month, halfway across the state in Levy County, a Williston man shot another antlered doe. The 4-point deer weighed 142 pounds.

And just like Nowling’s 6-pointer, Cale Barber’s deer’s antlers too were hard and polished. As well, it had only female reproductive organs as confirmed by FWC biologists Elina Garrison and Bambi Ferree and FWC veterinarian Mark Cunningham.