Black Antlers

I bit after leaving the buck from my previous post I came upon this smaller black-tailed deer. It was a good ways off, so I took a photo believing that would probably be as close as I would get to him as he was off in an area with no trails and I'm a firm believer in staying on the trail for a number of reasons including that the wildlife get accustomed to placing themselves at comfortable distances from the trail. Surprisingly, this guy started walking towards me and before I knew it I was cranking back the FL of my lens. Started at 200 and this was shot at 98mm. Close. What I found interesting about this guy was how dark his antlers were. I thought he would be easy to follow through the fall as they are quite distinctive. When I got home and went through the images, I cranked a few up and zeroed in on them and it looks to me like there are very tiny tufts of velvet left on the 2 biggest tines and I guessing the darkness is from staining by blood. Guessing it will disappear as he polishes them up. This is the best photo I could get that showed the antlers and the rest of the scene reasonably well. It's sort of a compromise amongst the series. The BG light helps separate the buck from the BG but is also a distraction. Wish I had some of this light for my previous post. I was unsure how to compose this. The buck is dead center with the head going one way and the body the other. I'm leaning towards cropping some from the right as it would help the framing and also remove some of the distracting bright area. Any consensus on the best way to present this one? This is the full frame so this is all the pixels I have. Comments, critiques, and suggestion are very welcome.

Tech Info

Canon 60D with 70-200mm f/4L at 98mm and 1.4 TC
i/400th at f/5.6 and ISO 1000
tripod