[piasa]

They’re not after flesh they are after bone for the calcium and salts and trace minerals. Deer will gnaw shed antlers and box turtle shells, too.
I thought everyone knew this?

[txhurl]

Absolutely true. When I was 20 I had a floppy-eared, I had just made a T-bone and set it on the low coffee table and Bunya snatched it right off the plate and went to town. I stared, dumbfounded, he was eating at the little notch on top where the marrow and blood leak and harden, not the flesh itself.

[texas_mrs]

I have a video of a squirrel gnawing on a set of antlers in the tree outside my office window. You could get within 10 feet of him before he would run away then would soon return for more as if he were addicted.

[elteemike]

I find a lot of old sheds with gnaw marks on ‘em...

Wildlife guys told me likely porcupines and other critters after the minerals...Didn’t think about deer but their needs must be similar...

[Salamander]

Oh really?

O_o

[TXnMA]

Yep, here in the eastern Texas Piney Woods, the soil is deficient in calcium. The woods are full of deer, but it is very rare to find a shed antler...