Black and grey antler tattoo with shaded linework sitting behind a person's ear.

Antler tattoo behind the ear

Other · Black and grey · Photo

A single antler is drawn in black ink with a bold outline and light shading along its length, curving from the upper left toward a flat cut base at the lower right. The tattoo sits on skin behind the ear, with the ear and a teal earring visible on the right of the frame. The photograph is warm-toned with a soft focus, and the background is out of focus hair and skin.

Other Antler

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth, I've pulled into the lay-by above Glen Tarrow because the heater's packed in and the map says there's a farm shop two miles on, though I doubt it's open on a Sunday. I found the antler on the verge just past the cattle grid, half sunk in bracken. I know you'll tell me I've brought a bone home from a dead beast. It isn't dead. I checked. It's just one antler, shed clean, the broken end flat and pale as a biscuit.

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The stag must have been an old one, because the tines are worn smooth at the tips and the curve dips so deep it looks like a question someone has left hanging. I put it on the dashboard and it's watched me all the way from Fort Hollow, which is more company than your father ever gave me on long drives. I keep thinking about the other one, somewhere up on the hill in the heather, and how a deer must feel carrying on with only half a crown.

This morning I walked the ditch with the torch in the rain and found it, the twin, tangled in fence wire thirty yards down. I stood there a long time with the water running off my hat. Then I left it hooked on the barbs, because it seemed wrong to take both and leave the old fellow with nothing to show for himself.

So the single one rides beside me now with the belt across it like a passenger. I'm going on to the coast tomorrow with your mother, and I've decided a little of her will go up to the cairn above the loch where she always said the light was best. Put the kettle on Thursday. I'll bring the antler and you can decide where it ends up. Love, Dad.