The ability to age deer on the hoof is an important skill for a variety of reasons. First, if you hunt on or are part of a hunt club with a quality deer management philosophy, the plan will rarely work if you only use antler points as a judge of age. For example, if you have an older dominant buck with 6-pt genetics, it may get passed on year after year in a 4-points-on-a-side program. On the other hand, a youngster with dynamite genetics, a healthy mom, and a good food source may develop eight points its first full year. If these two buck pass the hypothetical tree stand, which one gets shot? The buck with the most promise becomes table fare while the eternal-six gets to pass his genetics to another generation.
This post from the folks at Realtree is very cool because it shows a progression of bucks from 1.5
years to 6.5. Few of us will ever see whitetail deer at their full prime, yet the ability to distinguish 1.5 from 3.5 will make or break a QDM program. You should also know that this age-determination skill is in high demand. If you can judge whitetails on the hoof and learn to estimate B&C score you become very well paid as a whitetail deer guide, especially in Texas where so many operations promote trophy hunting. For example, some hunting operations charge huge premiums for bucks in record book categories. Imagine the problems with a hunter who pays to shoot a 140-inch deer and kills a 180? The difference may be many thousands of dollars and the opposite scenario can be equally problematic. The bucks you will see in this interactive post will test you analysis skill and I recommend that you download it to your cell phone and practice in the field. This will be the most fun test you’ve taken. Why didn’t they teach this in high school?
… <a href=”http://www.realtree.com/deer-hunting/how-to-age-bucks?utm_source=Website+Subscribers&utm_campaign=0ae679a1c0-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2016_11_10&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0411fab956-0ae679a1c0-18054421&mc_cid=0ae679a1c0&mc_eid=8fe2237aad” target=”_blank”>[continued]
