It’s only a few short days until the opening of South Carolina’s deer hunting season and hunters are itching to get in the woods. Also itching are the deer they will be targeting.

Male deer shed their antlers in late winter and begin to grow new ones during the summer. During this growth period, the new antlers contain nerves and blood vessels and the hairy skin looks much like velvet.

The velvet stage lasts only a few weeks. Once the antlers have reached their peak in size, the blood vessels begin to dry up and the velvet itches. Deer rub their antlers against trees to scrape the velvet from their antlers.

“I would say roughly until Sept. 1, probably 85 percent of them…