With its eyes bandaged and legs bound, the stag groaned in pain as its huge curved antlers were severed with a hand-saw.

The powerful beast surged forward to break away as blood spurted from the stumps, but Siberian herdsmen pinned it down until their work was finished.

The gory de-horning of the Maral deer is an annual ritual in this isolated part of Siberia and dates from the 17th century. It is essential for the export of antler horn -- a prized commodity on Asian markets and money-spinner for the under-developed region.

Tourists, who have traveled thousands of miles across Russia to witness the spectacle in the misty mountains of Gorny Altai bordering Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan, look on in bewilderment, some aghast.

Some deer die from shock during the de-horning but in this case the stag's stumps were treated with salt and the animal was released back into the lush mountains to grow new antlers -- which one day will be culled again.

The big markets for Maral horn, said by aficionados to have rare curative properties, are in China and South Korea where it is sold in pieces or ground into powder for adding to medicines.

The antlers fetch around $300 a kilo (2.2 pounds). With some mature stag growing antlers that weigh about 44 pounds, that means they have a price on their heads -- quite literally -- of around $6,000.

Some locals testify to the benefits of drinking and bathing in blood which is drained from the deer's neck. They say it boosts stamina, soothes stress and helps wounds to heal.

When Alexander, who has worked on the vast deer farm in the quaint Altai village of Chendek for more than a decade, grabbed a freshly severed antler and squeezed some blood into his mouth, some of the tourists froze in shock.

One of the tourists later followed suit, but the majority preferred to abstain.

NEW RUSSIANS

For much of the year, Chendek, populated by ethnic Russians and descendants of Turkish nomads, is a scattering of wooden houses about 2,500 miles from Moscow and a day's drive along the turbulent Katun river from the regional airport.

But the deer cull, held in the early days of Siberia's short summer, changes the scene spectacularly as Russia's new rich, thirsty for extravagant ways to spend their wealth, flock to the area and zip around in sports utility vehicles, maneuvering amid herds of cows, pigs and bemused locals.

"I've traveled all the way down from Moscow to take a blood bath," said 66-year-old Anatoly Gensiorovsky, the head of a Moscow-based engineering company who came to the farm to soak in a tub overflowing with fresh deer blood.

"I've consulted many doctors about my back pain, but this bath is the only thing that helps. It's not easy to come here and the service is very primitive. But yes, it's worth it."

Animal rights groups denounce the practice though they say it does not endanger the deer. "Our only concern is that the brutality of this disgusting procedure could leave psychological scars on the deer's psyche," Alexei Vaisman of the World Wide Fund for Nature in Russia told Reuters.

Local producers, managing tens of thousands of deer in farms scattered around Siberia's secluded Oimon valley, offer a range of goods made from the antlers such as pantocrin, an extract which they say boosts the immune system.

Some Russians drink deer blood mixed with vodka but the pharmacological benefits have yet to be scientifically determined.

NEW SIBERIANS

Once the horns are removed, the herders dip them in boiling water and store them to reduce the moisture content before they go for export. Most are used in traditional medicines in Asia.

Siberians have been making thousands of dollars from antler exports since communist times, selling up to 40 tons every year -- second only to New Zealand.

In the old days, Russian settlers traded the antlers for gold and fur with Mongolian nomads.

Today, this is the driving force of Gorny Altai's economy which has been struggling since the fall of communism in 1991.

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