美国国家公共电台 NPR Boom In Antler Pet Chews May Have Opened A Black Market

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LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

At fancy pet stores across the country, pieces of antlers and horns are flying off the shelves. And they are sold as a healthy, all-natural chew toy for dogs. But as Alaska Public Media's Zachariah Hughes reports, some hunters say the demand for the snacks have created a black market.

ZACHARIAH HUGHES, BYLINE¹: At a Washington, D.C., pet store called Howl to the Chief, clerk Vincent Ford² extols³ the benefits of antler. It's got healthy minerals, lasts a long time and is particularly good for canine⁴ oral health.

VINCENT FORD: It takes off their plaque⁵ and tartar by them chewing on it, so this is a good treat for that, too.

HUGHES: Antler is just one of the popular chew products sold to pet owners, a growing share of the booming multibillion-dollar pet supply industry. Online for $15, pet supply companies sell 6-inch chunks⁶ of what they call organic elk⁷ antler, marketed as naturally shed like someone just found them all in the woods. But for a few years, hunters have suspected that at least some of these antlers got on the shelves another way.

JEFF YOUNG: I mean, you know, it's - it sucks getting stuff stolen from you, you know? I mean, it doesn't matter what it is.

HUGHES: Jeff Young is a hunter living in Anchorage. And last summer, two racks of moose antlers he'd mounted way up high on his garage got literally⁸ ripped off.

YOUNG: I think they just hung on them. You know, they were up on this 6-foot ladder as far as they could get and then just pulled them down.

HUGHES: After it happened, Young tried tracking down his antlers. The larger rack had some sentimental⁹ value. It came from his first moose. But to no avail. It wasn't until later that he started hearing other hunters gripe about cherished piles of antlers snatched from lawns and sheds.

YOUNG: Another guy was like, yeah, I always threw them on the roof. You know, come home one day - all gone. So I just started hearing more stories about guy's antlers getting stolen.

HUGHES: Police can't definitively¹⁰ say whether or not antler theft is on the rise. Anecdotally, hunters and horn merchants believe thefts are being carried out by low-level criminals trying to make a fast buck¹¹, unloading antlers that are eventually sold to larger pet supply companies in a loosely regulated market. There are no federal or state officials in charge of enforcement over these kinds of pet products, so it often falls on individual merchants to determine if a moose or caribou¹² antler was legally obtained.

GUS GILLESPIE: You know, you kind of get a feel for it.

HUGHES: Gus Gillespie got into the horn and hide trade several decades ago and says he can size up a legitimate¹³ seller.

GILLESPIE: If a guy comes in, and he looks like a hunter, and he talks like a hunter, then you get a pretty good feel for it.

HUGHES: Along with his wife, Gillespie runs the Alaska Fur Exchange. In the four or five years since antler chews got popular with customers, it's been good for their business. But to keep everything legit, he's also got to turn away a lot of sales. If Gillespie suspects someone's drunk, high or in withdrawal¹⁴, he might tell them to come back in a few hours. Sometimes, he'll even pull their license¹⁵ plate number from his security camera and give it to police.

GILLESPIE: We have been instrumental in a lot of people getting caught.

HUGHES: But anyone he turns away can just go to Craigslist, where every day in Alaska, plenty of people promise in all caps to pay cash for antlers by the pound. And once they're sawed down into small chunks, sold over the counter nobody can really say whether they were stolen or not. For NPR News, I'm Zachariah Hughes in Anchorage.