3 days Ago
With one glance, Richard Dorchuck could size up the value of most any of the lots at Utah’s antler auction. “I am the original ‘Antler Man,‘” he said. “I have a professional, vocational, recreational Ph.
D. in this stuff.” Dorchuck towed two helpers and an orange scale the size of a wheelbarrow down rows of deer, elk and moose antlers, around bobcat and beaver pelts and between bison and cougar skulls.
He’d come from Hagerman, Idaho, to join other hunters, artisans, collectors, sightseers and wholesalers in surveying the goods to be auctioned off by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. He was specifically looking for antlers to resell as dog chews, though he has also sold them to Chinese buyers for medicinal uses and to furniture and craft makers in the past. (Trevor Christensen | The Salt Lake Tribune) Richard Dorchuck displays his novelty license plate outside an antler, pelt and skull auction hosted by the Division of Wildlife Resources on Wednesday, March 26, 2025.
Many of the 270 lots piled up on the floor and in a parking lot at an auction house in northwest Salt Lake City had been seized from poachers. Hunters who illegally take wildlife in Utah have to surrender their trophies to the state. Then, every few years, the state auctions them off to raise money for wildlife conservation projects.
“It’s a good eye-opener for people to recognize how valuable wildlife is to our state and to our constituents and how much it means to protect it,” said Lt. Casey Mickelsen, a Utah Division of Law Enforcement officer. In addition to the ill-gotten trophies, the auction includes some of the remains of roadkill and animals that died on state property.
Brooklyn Joseph, a wildlife officer with the Department of Natural Resources, said several of the specimens died of starvation in the winter of 2022 through 2023, when the state experienced record snowfall. This year’s online auction, which ended Thursday, netted $130,000 for the Utah DWR. By comparison, the previous auction brought in $340,000.
That sale, held in 2022, contained a six-year stockpile of specimens, Joseph said. The biggest-ticket item was a shoulder-mounted mule deer buck with the velvet still on its antlers, said Maj. Chad Bettridge, a law enforcement officer with the division.
It went for $5,500. (Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Antlers, pelts and skulls on display for the Division of Wildlife Resources auction on Wednesday, March 26, 2025. Another set of velvet antlers with a pair of matching drop-down tines went for $4,500.
They resembled the rack of “The Rabbi” — the specimen officers overseeing Wednesday’s auction believed to be the most expensive ever sold at the DWR event. The mounted head of that buck, which was poached by an Altamont man in 2011, sold for $23,500 at the 2022 auction . The DWR reported that over 1,000 fish and wildlife — including deer, elk, moose, bison, bears, cougars and bald eagles — were killed illegally in the state last year .
The state reports it found more than 6,400 violations in 2024 and issued more than 1,400 citations. Penalties for poaching big game animals in Utah, set by the state Legislature, can range from $3,000 for pronghorn antelope to $45,000 for bighorn sheep. (Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Antlers, pelts and skulls on display for the Division of Wildlife Resources auction on Wednesday, March 26, 2025.
Mickelsen explained that the money raised from the auction indirectly fights poaching. “It may not be directly buying a pair of binoculars or a new decoy,” he said, “but it’s indirectly helping us because it’s increasing the amount of wildlife on the landscape and the visibility to that wildlife.” This year’s auction included shoulder mounts of two massive bull elk, two of mule deer bucks and one of a big horn sheep — all seized by law enforcement during poaching investigations.
This year’s lots included skulls, pelts and horns from black bears, cougars, bobcats, grey foxes, badgers, beavers, bison, elk, deer, fish, moose, pronghorn antelopes, mountain goats and big horn sheep. A bow and arrow, a fishing pole and several traps taken from poaching investigations were also up for grabs. (Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Antlers, pelts and skulls on display for the Division of Wildlife Resources auction on Wednesday, March 26, 2025.
Perry Hall serves as the chair for the Utah chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, a nationwide group that works to preserve hunting and fishing “through education and work on behalf of wild public lands, waters and wildlife.” “When someone goes around the law to poach an animal,” Hall said, “it gives the entire conservation community a black eye.” ‘So, yeah, it’s a little more prevalent than we would like it to be, and I think the size of the auction kind of goes to show that,” he continued, “but at least there’s a silver lining to it, where the money is coming back to conservation.
” Some of that money comes from the perpetrators, Dorchuck, the antler collector, said. One man at Wednesday’s viewing said he was looking for the pelt of a cougar that, he said, had eaten his pet goat before the cat was shot by his neighbor. Mickelsen said he had not heard of poachers buying back seized trophies.
Dorchuck said no matter their motives, “nobody’s gonna get a yard sale special.” The piles of antlers required a minimum bid of $50. But the value of the antlers as dog chews, he said, make them more valuable than even some of the bigger, more symmetrical racks.
Most piles of antlers in the yard Wednesday, he surmised, would go for between $900 to $1,200. And most did. (Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Antlers, pelts and skulls on display for the Division of Wildlife Resources auction on Wednesday, March 26, 2025.
.
