Preserving Deer Antlers

It’s not a bad idea to start thinking about preserving deer antlers, both new and old, if you want to keep them looking nice in the long term.  I’m not talking about deer antlers used for hunting, I’m talking about preserving deer antlers for display in any shape or form.  The process is quite simple, I’ll cover it below.

Preserving Old Deer Antlers

Most deer antlers I’ve encountered are quite solid, and for this reason, they naturally tend to last a long time. If you’ve encountered deer antlers that do not have any velvet, you can simply wash them off. I like to use a hard wash cloth and clean it real well and let it dry. If I want a dark look, I have dabbled with deck stain to preserve the natural look. For an old style looking deer antler, I leave it on the back porch during the high sun days of the summer. This will help fade it fast and turn it naturally white. So preserving deer antlers is not to difficult of a process to get started.

Preserving Velvet Deer Antlers

If you want to preserve the deer antlers velvet, you may want to take it to a taxidermist and have it done right. After all, how often do you take a solid deer in velvet? In our part of the country, we don’t have that many opportunities (but trust me, they do exist).

If you want to preserve the deer antlers naturally, you’ll want to take the velvet off. Often, this doesn’t look very good afterwords as you can see the pores of the deer antlers and it can easily catch dust and show the flaws. This isn’t recommend in preserving deer antlers.

So you can soak the antler in very hot water, with heavy addition of soap. This will keep the pores naturally clean, and help keep the natural look while preserving deer antlers at the same time. Many of tried various methods, but I’ve found that if you use the hottest water possible, this will also help minimize the size of the pores at the same time. This will give you the best end result. From there you can choose to either stain the deer antlers or let them fade outside like mentioned earlier.

If you’re thinking there should be more to preserving deer antlers, well, that’s really about it. Take care of it immediately and you’ll keep your deer antlers looking new for a long time.