If you step into one of the ritzier vacation lodges in Montana this summer, chances are you’ll spy the tan shafts and white tips of antlers, maybe in the chandelier hanging from the ceiling, or the throne-like chair in the corner, maybe even serving as a handle on a cabinet door.
These accents fuel a multi-million dollar cottage industry in the West that supports artists and backcountry scavengers alike. I spent a few days this spring tracking down the origins of unique antler furnishings. Ryan Stultz squints at the tines — the antler’s white tips — through a spotting scope on the southern edge of the Sun River Wildlife Management Area, a parcel of state-managed public land outside Augusta.
It’s May 15, and for big game enthusiasts like Stultz, today is an unofficial holiday: the game range is opening for the first time since last winter. Hidden among the aspen groves and prairie flowers are antlers shed by elk and deer.
Stultz comes out to the game range each year to hunt for antler sheds. He’ll end up keeping whatever he finds as mementos from a day spent on the range with good friends, but some of the 400 people out here are hoping to cash in their finds, like Stultz’s buddy Mike Marsh.
“I went out one day because I was broke and I was like, I need to find some horns,” Marsh says. “I went and found two six points in about three hours and had money for the rest of the week.”
Opening day at the Sun River WMA is kind of like a giant Easter egg hunt for adults. People mill around the entrance gate that’s guarded by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks employees, stretching and plotting the course they’ll sprint to try to beat out other antler hunters. Packs of riders steady their horses as truck engines rev. As the clock nears noon, the air near the gate is electric with anticipation.
Within an hour, the shed hunters start returning to the parking lot near the gate, where a Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologist waits with a scale hanging off the side of his white work truck.
Back in town in Augusta, Brandon Walton has a scale of his own, laid out on the ground next to piles of elk antlers, his red truck and a sign that says I buy antlers.
“We buy them to make chandeliers, lights, lamps,” Walton says.
Walton is an antler dealer from Idaho. He spends summers traveling from New Mexico to Canada, buying up elk antlers at $13 a pound.
“We buy an average of 60,000 pounds of horn, so probably an average of $500,000 to $600,000,” Walton says. “It's a pretty big market.”
Back in Idaho, his brother-in-law will sculpt the antlers into massive chandeliers.
“Some of them are 12 feet tall, 10 feet around, so they can get pretty expensive,” Walton says.
Expensive, like $35,000 to $40,000 dollars. Today Walton isn’t doing so great. People are slow to come out of the game range, and most people aren’t selling. He jokes with the locals, who see him a few times each year. Some ask him about his price this year and run back home to raid their piles from years past.
Other people walk away with big money.
Within a few weeks, antlers found on the game range and elsewhere will be trucked to artists’ studios, sorted by size and shape, and transformed into one-of-a-kind pieces of functional art.
Cindy Just and her husband co-own Stephen Isley Jewelry in Whitefish. They specialize in designing fine jewelry, but their shop also houses local artwork and furniture. She points out a chair made from elk antlers and fallow deer antlers from Europe.
The elk antlers form a sturdy base for a throne-like seat of supple, dark brown leather. The fallow deer antlers rise above the seat back, like a wreath. There are no screw holes, no blemishes on the brown and tan antlers.
“This piece is about $4,800, but it's a piece that will last forever,” says Just.
Just says it’s not just locals who buy up antler furniture — she’s shipped pieces as far as New York City.
“People just really love that connection with earth,” Just says. “And someone making a beautiful piece of artwork.”
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