A strange deer harvest from Minnesota’s gun season: Is it a buck, or is it a doe?

St. Stephen, Minn. — Rod Host was sitting in his deer stand within a stretch of timber north of Long Prairie in central Minnesota on the morning of Nov. 4 when he noticed a group of whitetails approaching down a trail. 

It was a typical rut scene in Minnesota’s Todd County during the opening day of the firearms season. There were seven deer, with does and fawns leading the way, a spike buck near the back, and then what Host thought was a 2 1⁄2-year-old buck following from behind.

Host, who lives in St. Stephen, said his opportunity to hunt was going to be limited this year. So he made the decision to take the buck, and his shot from about 65 yards dropped the deer. 

Host’s girlfriend also was sitting in the stand to spend time with him as he celebrated his 50th birthday that weekend. They took a couple of photos with the deer to remember the hunt before Host turned the deer over to field-dress it. 

That’s when he made a rare discovery. 

“I rolled it over to gut it and said this is actually a doe,” he said. “There were no (male) parts. It was a dry doe, which kind of surprises me. It was about 150 pounds. There was no bag on it or anything, but it had the nipples and everything on it like you would see on a doe.… I started exploring a little bit further behind and saw there were obviously two holes coming out the back side like you would typically see on a doe.” 

Host has hunted for years and taken many deer, so he has plenty of experience field-dressing both does and bucks. Hunting in a deer permit area where hunters can take multiple deer, he shot a doe Nov. 5 and examined the animal closely to compare the anatomy with the deer he shot the previous day. 

“Everything lined up to be the same type of a deal,” Host said. 

Antlered does, and more

While certainly rare, it’s not unheard of for a hunter to shoot what he or she believes is a buck, only to realize it’s lacking visible reproductive male organs. 

In some instances, instead of it being an antlered doe, the animal is a cryptorchid – the testicles do not drop from the abdominal cavity. It may also be a hermaphrodite, a variety in which the deer has both testicles and ovaries.

Missouri hunter Sam Perotti shot a deer in 2021 that did not have visible male sex organs. Like Host’s deer, Perotti’s deer had shed the velvet on its rack, which featured 16 points that scored 150 inches. 

In a story from Field & Stream, Missouri Department of Conservation Cervid Program Supervisor Jason Isabelle said he believed that deer was a hermaphrodite, or a pseudo-hermaphrodite.

“Male pseudo-hermaphrodites can look like female deer externally, but they don’t have ovaries,” Isabelle said in the story. “These deer have testicles, but they’re located either inside the abdominal cavity or under the skin near the abdominal cavity, so they’re not readily apparent when looking at the deer.”

Female deer do grow antlers in rare situations. It happens when something triggers high testosterone levels in a doe. 

“Injury is probably the biggest thing,” said Eric Michel, an ungulate research scientist with the Minnesota DNR. “You have some type of injury that stimulates production of testosterone. I don’t know if that injury is something as simple as getting hit by a car or a gun shot or arrow during archery season, but it’s some injury-related testosterone production.”

The antlers that grow on a female will typically be small or malformed.

“A lot of times, antlered does are going to have velvet on the antlers still because they don’t get that surge of testosterone right there at the end of antler growth to fully harden the antlers and get the velvet off,” Michel said.

He said he wasn’t shocked to hear about Host shooting the deer that he did. What would surprise Michel is seeing a doe sporting the hard-horned eight points that this deer did.  

“It seems like we hear something like this every year, where someone shoots an antlered doe where it’s kind of a cool story for the year,” Michel said. “What really struck me about looking at the (Host) photo was the development of the antlers. It looked like a pretty typical, clean eight. When you have antlered females, you don’t tend to get that stereotypical antler development like you see in that picture.”

No one from the Minnesota DNR inspected the deer that Host shot Nov. 4. He said he did not think of reaching out to the agency until later in the week. He did so last Friday, but as of noon on Monday, he had not heard back from anyone.

The DNR breaks down its harvest statistics into “antlered buck harvest” and “antlerless harvest.” Host registered the animal as an antlered deer. 

“I shot it with the intention of it being a buck, so that’s what I tagged it as,” he said.

In hindsight, Host said, if he were to be in a similar situation again, he would see if a DNR officer could come help examine the deer after the harvest.

“I definitely would put a little more time into seeing if both male and female organs are there,” Host wrote in a follow-up email. “But it’s definitely a fun story to tell.”