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5 or 6?

catman529

catman529

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Just another doe skeleton I found while shed hunting. I'd like to have a set of jaws from every age class so I can use them to better guess the age of a deer, and can't decide if this one would go 5.5 or 6.5. Could have died late summer if that makes much difference. Relatively fresh skeleton but down to the bare bones.

6F047584-A274-4219-944A-49D55FF32AD2-5092-0000086AEA1122F3_zps52adc18f.jpg
 
Is the 4th tooth worn smooth no ridges to the touch, if so 6.5 yrs. Work your way back to the 5th. If the 5th is smooth 7.5 yrs, 6th tooth 8.5, after that cannot tell. Hard to tell from a pic need to have in hands. I have one 6.5.
 
A/M/G said:
Is the 4th tooth worn smooth no ridges to the touch, if so 6.5 yrs. Work your way back to the 5th. If the 5th is smooth 7.5 yrs, 6th tooth 8.5, after that cannot tell. Hard to tell from a pic need to have in hands. I have one 6.5.
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the 4th teeth are almost smooth but there is just a little enamel left in the middle. Looks older than usual 5.5 year old though so I am on the fence.
 
Yea, after really looking at the jaw, it looks to me like 5/1/2, because of the ridge on the 4th tooth. Again would like to feel the tooth. At any rate old deer. I now have a set fawn thru 6 1/2, like you I too am glad to have a nice set of jaw bones. It took me 3 years to complete my set thru 6 1/2. I prob will never get any older than that.
 
A/M/G said:
Yea, after really looking at the jaw, it looks to me like 5/1/2, because of the ridge on the 4th tooth. Again would like to feel the tooth. At any rate old deer. I now have a set fawn thru 6 1/2, like you I too am glad to have a nice set of jaw bones. It took me 3 years to complete my set thru 6 1/2. I prob will never get any older than that.
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half of the jaws were pick ups and half were ones I killed last year. If this one is 6.5, then I have jaws from every age from 1.5 up to 6.5 as well as one that looks 8.5+ with the 4th tooth being almost down to the bone. I would also have a fawn but the fawn head I left behind the house to rot got dragged off by critters.
 
catman529, send me your phone number via pm, and I will text you pics of my deer jaw bone, that I believe to be 6 1/2, let you decide. I have sent you a pm.
 
aging deer by tooth wear is a noble concept, that is plaqued by overwhelming flaws. The most prominent being the fact that no one can ever check their answers, including the person who taught u and the one who taught him.
 
redblood said:
aging deer by tooth wear is a noble concept, that is plaqued by overwhelming flaws. The most prominent being the fact that no one can ever check their answers, including the person who taught u and the one who taught him.
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with all the trail cam pics and penned deer with ear tags, you would think there would be enough to know what a deer's teeth should look like at a certain age. Then consider what the deer eats and the effect it might have...
 
catman529 said:
redblood said:
aging deer by tooth wear is a noble concept, that is plaqued by overwhelming flaws. The most prominent being the fact that no one can ever check their answers, including the person who taught u and the one who taught him.
Click to expand...
with all the trail cam pics and penned deer with ear tags, you would think there would be enough to know what a deer's teeth should look like at a certain age. Then consider what the deer eats and the effect it might have...
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True as that may be, it is like aging cattle and horses by the same measure, virtualy impsooible to nail down exact ages- better at indicating age brackets. i participated in a project in college that involved aging a set group of purebred cattle (by tooth wear/loss). we used all the perimeters taught in class and in the the example from the text books/field guides. we aged approx 50 females (purebred angus, purebred herefords and a few registered f1 crosses. i was an undergrad student at the time, but we had an equal amount of grad students doing the same. even one of the newer associate professors participated in the project. we all aged these animals to our best ability graced with as much data as we could lay our mitts on. when our estimates were compared with the exact birthdates of the animals in question (from registration papers that correlateed with ear tatoos of each individual). These were all older age class cattle 6-14 yrs for the most part, btw. The student whose estimates were the closest was a sophomore girl who was a ag business major who had no farm background- on average she was 2 yrs off in her estimates based on examination of all the animals in test samples, comparing her guesses with actual birthdates. I faired much worse, but not as bad as the associate professor.in one particular animal, i was 6 yrs off- and i raised purebred and commercial cattle my entire young life. the lesson taken from this exercise, as conveyed by the professor, was that aging by teeth is not meant to be a science but rather an art of ball park estimation. Too many variables from animal to animal, plus differences in diet and maloclussion (sp) lead to different amounts of tooth wear/loss. Perhaps the biggest variable in reproductive females, is calcium loss during pregnancy which can lead to premature tooth damage. As tough as it is to measure in domestic livestock, it is much much more difficult to measure in free roaming deer. so i think it is important to realize that even the most "seasoned" expert is taking his best guess based on instruction from mentors who taught him- while taking HIS best guess.
 
very interesting info. I never said it was a science... it's always just a guess once you get to 2.5 or older. Did you all do any studies on actual deer jaws? because they surely wouldn't be exactly the same as cattle would they?
 
catman529 said:
very interesting info. I never said it was a science... it's always just a guess once you get to 2.5 or older. Did you all do any studies on actual deer jaws? because they surely wouldn't be exactly the same as cattle would they?
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never deer. just cattle for me and their were similar studies for goats and sheep referenced that indicated the same discreptancies as the one i mentioned, but i do not have specifics on those.
 
wish I could see a good variety of pen raised deer jaws with known ages on all of them, and get a better idea for myself how much variance there can be in one herd of deer. I have 10 jawbones on the shelf behind me, some killed and some picked up, just for studying and better learning the "art" of aging deer teeth...
 

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