With the weather pretty darned cold these days, we’re looking for projects indoors. Here’s a post from the archives that’ll be a great use for any antlers you happen to have or happen to be able to get a hold of.
Deer antlers have traditionally been used around the house in a couple of ways. These include the taxidermist’s staple: the mounted buck heads, as well as lodge-style interwoven chandeliers and, seen more and more these days, the European mount: a simple clean rack like this.
For me that’s just the beginning. And it’s just the beginning on Madison Avenue in New York too these days where I was walking recently and three windows in three blocks used antlers to accessorize their displays. These designers set them on sofa tables and desks and in one unusual case used a junior six point rack as a wall mount to imply a man’s library – all suggesting, “here’s a well travelled, cool person”.
But there’s more, much more, especially if you or someone you trust is just a little bit handy. Antlers make great-looking hooks – don’t picture an entire antler, instead, picture one cut down to a single or a pair of points.
Here’s how you make an antler rack:
Use a circular saw with a ceramics blade — as solid as they are, they’re remarkably easy to cut with the right blade.
Now you’ll need at #6 bit for your drill with a countersink to put two holes in their bases.
Now on to the next step — you’ve got to drill to set up your countersink.
With a box of 1.5” #6 phillips head screws you’re almost in business..
Use them in the mud room, the boys’ room, the bathroom, the kitchen, the pantry, the outdoor shower, the pool room … for coats or towels anywhere you need a hook. They’re nearly as tough as steel. Screwed in tight they’ll hold hundreds of pounds (take it from me, I test mine to say the least…)
If you’re not a hunter, you can often find them in junk shops (sometimes attached to a somewhat moth-eaten mount with one eye missing from 1968…) — but easiest of all, go to your local deer processor. Some of the bucks that come in to them were taken for meat. The trophy hunters usually want the eight plus point racks, if they’re well formed, but smaller racks and antlers might even end up being chew toys for the processor’s dogs.
When the bucks shed their antlers, I have found many mismatched pairs in the woods of gated residential communities, where shooting is prohibited. I have used antlers in my tack room to hang bits, bridles, and chaps.