The Southampton Island antlers figured by Sutton and Hamilton (1932:
pl. 8) are so strikingly different from all but one (No. 1132) of those
that I noticed in southwestern Keewatin that I should be much inclined
to regard them as representing a separate subspecies, provided they are
typical of that island. In most of the bucks of the Windy River area the
beams are deeply and fairly uniformly bowed, although there is a strong
tendency for approximately the basal third to be nearly straight, with a
pronounced forward bend just above it (_cf._ figs. 3, 4, 9, 10, 12, 22,
25). The bend at this point in the Southampton antlers is extremely
slight by comparison. In mainland specimens the beam in cross-section
is generally more or less round, with rarely any tendency toward
flattening, such as may be seen in the Southampton set and in my No.
1132. Furthermore, I cannot recall in the mainland animals a single such
pronounced zigzag effect as may be seen in the Southampton antlers. In
extremely few of them does the bez tine originate at such a distance
(apparently 8 inches or so) above the base, as in Sutton and Hamilton’s
figure. The lack of palmation in the bez tines of their specimen is
noteworthy.
There is a distinct likelihood that the isolated herd of Coats Island
(Wright, 1944: 188; Banfield, 1949: 481), and also that of Salisbury
Island in Hudson Strait (Grant, 1903: 189; Tweedsmuir, 1951: 37), may be
distinct from the populations on the nearest large land bodies.
I have briefly examined a dozen or more heads (skulls with antlers) of
the Labrador Barren Ground Caribou (_R. a. caboti_ G. M. Allen) in the
United States National Museum; they were collected by L. M. Turner in
the 1880’s. Some of these antlers appear longer than any I saw in
Keewatin. Furthermore, the tips of the bez tines in these specimens
seem, on the average, more strongly incurved than in _R. a. arcticus_.
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