Get ready for the most unique wildlife workshop you'll find anywhere! For five full days we'll be taking up to three participants on an adventure through Rocky Mountain National Park looking for giant bulls stripping their velvet off. You won't find another workshop like it. For more details please visit our Velvet Unbound Workshop page at: https://www.goodbullguided.com/workshops/velvet-unbound-2024
Its taken us a few years to put this workshop together because if we were going to have people join us on this experience we wanted to be sure it would be consistent enough to find stripping bulls each and every year. After four successful years in a row we're confident we can offer this workshop and get a minimum or one bull in the process of actively shredding velvet. So - will you be one of the three lucky photographers to join us on this experience?
ANTLER LIFECYCLE
As many of you know, elk antlers are shed each year starting in March and April (bigger bulls first). As soon as the old antler is cast off the new antler starts to grow. At first it is just a scab covering the large hole where the antler used to be. In a few short days it turns into a mushroom shape and then eventually into a butterfly shape before sprouting into the antlers you're used to seeing.
The interesting thing about antlers is that they are the fastest growing mammalian tissue that isn't cancerous. A bull elk's antlers can grow up to an inch per day! In order to do this, an elk undergoes a period of osteoporosis, depleting its bones of nutrients in order to put them into their antlers. As a result, antlers grow very fast and by the end of June the antlers are approximately 90% finished growing. Just a few more inches are added on through July but mostly the elk spend that time hardening their antlers and replenishing the nutrients stolen from their bones before winter hits.
Which brings us to August. Typically between the 10th and 15th of August the first, and often largest, bulls will begin to strip the velvet off their antlers. Velvet is a vascular tissue - meaning its full of blood vessels. As a result, when the velvet is stripped off it is often a bloody affair. How much blood depends on how early the elk's body cuts off the blood supply to the velvet. Velvet is after all a living tissue and when the antlers are done growing a bull's body will cut off the blood supply to the velvet. With the blood supply cut off the tissue begins to die. That means the decaying tissue starts to itch (and likely smell) which prompts elk to start stripping the velvet off on trees and bushes. As they do so, the dead velvet rips off and any blood still contained in the velvet stains the antlers (which are otherwise bone white - literally) and gets on the vegetation used to strip the velvet. There are nutrients in the velvet and bulls can often be seen eating or licking velvet to recover some of these lost nutrients.
Finally, with the velvet removed, bulls begin the process of preparing for the rut. They will continue to rub their freshly cleaned antlers on small trees and begin sparring with other bulls to build their strength and test their antlers. They will continue to spar with other bulls until their antlers are once again cast off however they will only rub their antlers on bushes and trees during the actual rut itself.
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