Limping deer

[BSK]

Prior to CWD and when we were practicing QDM and trophy management, Ames had a lot of older bucks. These 4 and 5 year old bucks with smaller or average racks would often get busted up in December. It was unusual for a buck with a clean rack to come in and often a shooter buck would become a non shooter due to some big points being broken off as evidenced by cameras. Our so called hit list would start shrinking fast with some being killed and others broken off. If you were after a certain buck, you had better kill him in November or the first week of December. I'm assuming all this fighting resulted from lack of available does to breed.

I really believe the primary culprit is buck density rather than sex ratio. On my place, back when our big neighbor was slaughtering the doe population, which produced a very low deer density on our place with a sex ratio heavily favoring bucks (at times, 2 or more bucks per doe), but a low total density, we did not see these broken racks. Now that our density has jumped way up, but our sex ratio moderated (around 1.4 to 1.6 does per buck) we are seeing tons of broken racks. I think the culprit is the doubling of the older buck population.

 

[Smo]

A lot more people are letting bucks walk these days…
I know I don't hate em' like I once did.

 

[backyardtndeer]

I think the culprit is the doubling of the older buck population.

Older age class bucks definitely do more damage, even 3.5 year olds are capable of inflicting serious if not fatal damage. When you have higher numbers/densities of older age class bucks in any given area, would only stand to reason that there would be more injuries and broken antlers.

 

[BSK]

Older age class bucks definitely do more damage, even 3.5 year olds are capable of inflicting serious if not fatal damage. When you have higher numbers/densities of older age class bucks in any given area, would only stand to reason that there would be more injuries and broken antlers.

And we've gone from having five to seven 3 1/2+ year-olds to 12-13, which is a lot for one small area.