Thread: Who has heard of a humell and is this one?

I was showing a very knowledgable hunter at work a photo of a recent fallow deer I shot and he said it was a humell and went on to say a humell is a male deer that never grows antlers.

He said they can grow very big because all the goodness is going into the body of the animal instead of growing antlers.

Here is a photo of said animal, so what say you?

yup, heard of , and i would say yes.... yes this is ?

depends on its "wedding tackle"
uncle shot a roaring red...it had no antlers but on other end had..bum,fanny,ball and pizzle...
hermaphrodite is I believe the technical term for such a beastie...its neither male nor female but actually both....
your deer may have just damaged its antlers in early velvet stage or some such...

Look to me like it's had antlers but has dropped them. I have come across two reds that I suspected were humels but they didn't have any sign of antler formation at all.
Here's one.

It had a big set of nuts, I shot it about 3 weeks ago which I thought would be too early to drop antlers.

However you guys are experienced hunters so you would know more than me, thanks for your answers so far. I'm just interested.

I don't think its a hummel. This one looks more like its done damage too its pedicles fighting and the result is little of no antler growth. Ive seen them fight so hard they have ripped the entire pedicle out of thier skull. Though I have never seen one do it too both antlers.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

depends on its "wedding tackle"
uncle shot a roaring red...it had no antlers but on other end had..bum,fanny,ball and pizzle...
hermaphrodite is I believe the technical term for such a beastie...its neither male nor female but actually both....
your deer may have just damaged its antlers in early velvet stage or some such...

Your right there mickey that's a hermaphrodite more common in sheep than deer.
But a Hummel is not a hermaphrodite, it's a normal stag that will hold hinds but won't grow antlers,
I'm unsure what part of the country the op is in but the fallow here are still in hard antler and normally are till sep-oct,
Certainly, it looks like a Hummel to me.

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It was shot in South Canterbury

back when they first started putting mature farmed stags out for safari..they ran into a massive issue...stags who had previously been velveted every year had never grown the strength of bone around the antler peticle to fight with the by now heavy set of antlers they had grown..many ripped skull apart and died...this is why we now see many stags in hard antler running around paddocks..they are building bone strength etc for when they go out on the hill to be shot lol....
plenty of deer around with damaged antlers the electric outriggers on fences are leathal for damaging velvet and fallow dont see a wire netting fence as an obsticle..its just a series of hole with wire around it....
at one stage I had photos on my phone (too blurry to bother posting) of a yearling/2year old white fallow in mid air as it went through a deer netting fence..it ran full throttle at fence ,jumped and sailed straight through it like it wasnt there.....had it had velvet...it may well have taken it off.
fallow are terrible around fences,many get caught up n die so its not improbable your fella damaged himself at some point in life and never recovered from it.

Thanks for all the replies so far guys, there seems to be a few different ideas but an interesting topic and I guess we may never know for sure.

I welcome more ideas

https://www.bonhams.com/auction/2064...ottish-origin/
No sign of antler growth there?

Originally Posted by Shearer

https://www.bonhams.com/auction/2064...ottish-origin/
No sign of antler growth there?

You are looking like being right judging by that

Originally Posted by Shearer

https://www.bonhams.com/auction/2064...ottish-origin/
No sign of antler growth there?

Pretty sure they can still have those little stubs.

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I shot one similar last week but I can’t upload a photo of it, it has no antler but it has the knobs where they grow and it wasn’t a spiker

I had never heard of this before but @Shearer sent me some good info and it was a good read