by Greg Mayer

Thanks to the many WEIT readers who have tried their hand (or eyes) at reading the German handwriting on the side of a deer’s jaw, we have arrived at what I believe is a correct reading. Special thanks to Aldo Matteucci, who immediately recognized the second word as “hirsch” (meaning deer), Michael Fisher who edited the images for easy comparison, and to Heidrun Wenisch, who made what I believe to be the correct reading of the first word. Michael Sternberg brought Heidrun’s reading to my attention, and suggested the key empirical test– what exactly did the deer’s antlers look like? They look like this:

Heidrun wrote, “The 2 words of the first line are Schad Hirsch. The word Schadhirsch is hunters’ jargon only and is used when speaking of an older male red deer.” Michael Sternberg then asked me, “How do the associated antlers look that you mentioned in the article? Branched at several points like you’d expect given the age, or just a single spike (“Spieß”) with possibly short buds, thus “defective”, as the hunter’s jargon term translates?” As you can see, it’s definitely “Spieß”. Michael elaborated, “A 2-year old Hirsch with such antlers would be said Spießer, but if the higher age is correct for this specimen (as derived from the degree of tooth grinding as you mentioned), then Schadhirsch applies and explicitly calls out that the age is higher than a first glance at the antlers would indicate.”

Looking carefully at the writing, this reading is not, to my mind, ruled out by any features of the letters, and fits the specimen perfectly. Problem solved! Thanks again to all who took the time to study and comment on the photos.

by Greg Mayer

WEIT readers are a fairly polyglot bunch, and so I’m calling upon readers to help with a problem. It involves difficult German handwriting—difficult in the sense that the writer was writing in pencil over an irregularly curved and hard surface. The writing is on the outside of the mandible of a Red Deer (Cervus elaphus), one of the two native species of British deer, which is also widespread on the Continent, including in Germany and other German-speaking areas.

And now with flash (click to enlarge this and the first photo).

The lower line of writing is, by the interpretation of a more German competent colleague and myself, “Alter 6-7 Jahre.” So it’s a male (we already knew this from the antlers on the associated skull), aged 6-7 years (deer can be aged by the condition of their teeth). But what does the top line, of apparently two words, say? This is what I’m asking readers for help on. There’s clearly an “i”, and I think a “ch” in the second word. My colleague is not fluent in German, and I studied German for a single semester.

The skull and mandible were present in the teaching collection when I arrived in 1992. The skull has two short, unbranched antlers, and I long thought of it as of interest mostly for this feature, thinking it to be a White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus), a very common species in Wisconsin and throughout eastern North America. But last year, another colleague, who is a deer hunter, remarked that it was not a white-tail. It was then that I noticed that the writing was in German, and, identifying it by the teeth (instead of assuming it must be a local deer, and hence a white tail), I determined it was Cervus elaphus. This species, under the vernacular name Wapiti, also occurs in North America, but the German writing makes me think this must be the European form. Our teaching collection is mostly of local or at least Wisconsin species, but we do have a warthog (no idea how we got it!), so a German deer doesn’t seem beyond the pale of plausibility.

So, any help greatly appreciated!