There’s a lot of money — and walking — in the elk antler market

Every spring, elk naturally shed their antlers, which can weigh as much as 40 pounds. People then pick them up and sell them.

It is a big business year-round. But the market particularly shines in the spring in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

On a recent Saturday the town square, which is flanked with permanent elk antler arches, was buzzing. It was the world’s largest annual auction for elk antlers.

Local kids paraded antlers that were twice their size. The auctioneer babbled to hundreds in the crowd. Prices edged into the thousands.

This was the flashy public-facing event of the weekend. A lot of tourists buying a piece of the West for their living room mantle.

But off on the side streets, there was an informal, parking lot economy of sorts. Lots of Carhartt jackets, camo ball caps and clanking antlers.

The hunter

Mike Bosworth dragged heaping piles of antlers from his old truck bed.

“I found most of these,” Bosworth said, sporting a brown hoodie with the words “antler addicts.”

“I’m an addict,” he chuckled.

Every spring, Bosworth scours mountain foothills and forests of his home in Oregon looking for antlers.

“I’m just an outdoor guy,” he said. “You start finding them, and it's like an Easter egg hunt for an adult.” Like, a 12-miles-a-day type of hunt.

But this year he is hiking farther for antlers. “They're all in different places. They're scattered,” Bosworth said.

A little context on elk migration: The animals go wherever there is the least snow because they need grass to eat. Normally when they shed their antlers, they are still in low lying, easy to hike to places. But with such little snow in the West this year, a lot of the elk — and their antlers — were deep in the mountains.

“I had to walk so much farther,” Bosworth said.

So he is cashing in to make his hobby worth it this year. But is it a little sad selling his found treasures?

“Yeah. I can remember where I found lots of them,” Bosworth said.

The buyer

Purchasing the antlers was Roy Rasmussen, who drove down from Montana. He sorted through the grades — or quality — of the antlers.

After loading them into Rasmussen’s giant horse trailer, it was time to figure out the price tag. The nicest grade of antler is about $14 a pound. The two men punched numbers in their calculators, eventually landing on an almost $10,000 check for Bosworth.

“Thank you bud,” Bosworth said to Rasmussen. “Have to buy you something to drink later.”

Rasmussen is a middleman of sorts. He will buy even more antlers and re-sell them over the next year for a little more money. Just how much antler he is moving is a little unclear.

“It varies. Every year's different,” Rasmussen said.

When asked if it is tens of thousands of pounds, he replied, “Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.”

Back of the napkin math scribbles out to about $300,000 worth of antlers on the low end.

Rasmussen got into the business about 40 years ago.

“It was all getting exported overseas for medicinal purposes,” he said.

In countries like China and Mongolia, antlers are pulverized into a powder and used in tea and extracts. It supposedly helps with arthritis and low energy.

Antlers are also highly sought after in high-end mountain home decor, like chandeliers and table legs. But one of the bigger markets? Dog chews.

The end seller

Take Stephan Nicholas in Breckenridge, Colorado.

“I'm the Chief Antler Officer of RidgeRunner Antlers. Kind of a tongue-in-cheek thing to my former corporate days,” he said.

Nicholas spent decades managing luxury hotels. Now, he cuts up antlers into dog chews, fully replacing his prior income.

Nicholas described one of the canine customers’ favorites: “It's almost like a Charleston Chew of antler because the bone is really, really thin,” he said. “There's lots of marrow and they just love that part.”

Those will cost you about $25.

Nicholas does not think his prices will be hit by the mild winter making it harder to find antlers. But, the high cost of living right now, like gas and groceries?

“You're going to have to cut something out,” he said about his customers. “So maybe you only get one antler instead of three, maybe you don't give them anything.”

And that could mean he would have to raise his prices for elk antler dog chews.