Don't tell Rudolph

Here, Peter Shearer (centre) shows off the head his employers Kathy and Donald Hudson entered in the South Canterbury and North Otago competition.

And it's in a paddock near Feilding there's a world champion in the making. He's called Davidson, a son of Harley – and we're not talking motorbikes.

Davidson's an 8-year-old stag and last week his hard antler as a 7-year-old landed the champion title in the trophy antler section of the Deer Farmers' Association's national competition, Invercargill.

The head scored a massive 735 points on the Safari Club International scoring system, which in such competitions excludes the inside span and coronet measurements as heads have to be on the animal for those to be measured.

Had those figures been added – the breeders, the Loveridges, took the measurements while the head was still attached – he'd have scored 790. "That's over 120 points over the current world [trophy stag] record," competition convenor Peter Allan told Rural News.

To be eligible for an SCI trophy record, the stag must be shot with the head attached. If he'd met that fate "he'd have blown the world record [of 669] out of the water," said Allan.

Davidson was just one of a trio of potentially world beating heads entered in the hard antler section: Odysseus, from Deer Genetics, landed 657 competition points, and the late Amadeus, from Foveran, 605. "The red hard antler entry quality was just incredible."

Numbers of hard antler entries were back slightly but in the velvet section they were on par with recent years and with higher average weights yet again. "The graph is still going up, and quite steeply. You'd have thought by now it would be starting to plateau," notes Allan.

That said, weight isn't the only factor and the heaviest head doesn't necessarily win: imperfections and suitability for processing are factored into the scoring system which this year saw six-year-old Zama, winner of the open red velvet class, named champion. Reserve champion was elk supreme section winner, six-year-old Mojo. "It was very close with a split vote."

Zama's head entered by Brock Deer and Geoff and Lynette Elder, Gore, and weighed in with an 11.28kg head, while Mojo belongs to Tommy May, Mayfield Elk.

Allan says there's a positive mood among velvet producers.
"It's one of the few commodities that's selling quite well at present. We're up 10-15% on last year and probably looking at similar volumes." That's despite a cold spring which reduced early weights cut.

"But later weights have been good. In the past week it's been 18-20 degrees C. Velvet grows at 2cm a day at those temperatures. You can almost see it growing."