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Overestimation of bucks ages….

Dumbluck said:
One of the biggest fallacies in hunting is there are guys that think if everyone around them passes up everything there will be an abundance of mature deer which is not the case.
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While I 100% agree that bucks die for many different reasons....in the same breath one can say that if everyone around you shoots everything they see then there won't be many (or any) mature bucks to chase.....and no we can't stockpile bucks....that's a fact.....but multiple people working together... allowing more bucks to reach maturity... does increase a hunters opportunity at taking a mature buck.....this has been proven time and time again on large blocks of private, well managed, land.
But I completely agree that if you let five bucks walk today it certainly does not mean you will have five mature bucks next year..you wont....but....if you and your neighbor kill those same five bucks....your guaranteed those five bucks will never reach maturity.
 
Ski said:
As in they're older than you thought? I'm not confident I could tell the difference between a 5yr and 7yr buck on the hoof. I've probably never even seen an 8yr+ on the hoof.
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Yes, we do a good job on estimating the 3 & 4 yr olds, but for the older ones we underestimate as often as not.

Here's an 8 1/2 yr old grandson killed a few years ago. Note that this was an estimated age by a very well known taxidermist. Wish I could find pic of teeth as they were worn down to nothing. Only one I've ever seen like that.
 

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megalomaniac said:
This one is 6.5... hard to tell since he is bristled out in this pic, but getting ragged, plus he's missing about 10% of the hair off his back from fighting
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I killed a weird racked 8 point years ago that had a 8" spot on his back with no hair. Looked like leather. Don't know what his age was. But, looked like he had been around awhile.
 
tellico4x4 said:
Yes, we do a good job on estimating the 3 & 4 yr olds, but for the older ones we underestimate as often as not.

Here's an 8 1/2 yr old grandson killed a few years ago. Note that this was an estimated age by a very well known taxidermist. Wish I could find pic of teeth as they were worn down to nothing. Only one I've ever seen like that.
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Bet he'd had a better rack in younger years, but man! What mass!
 
megalomaniac said:
This one is 6.5... hard to tell since he is bristled out in this pic, but getting ragged, plus he's missing about 10% of the hair off his back from fighting
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I was wrong... he was only 5.5.

But you are right, it is easy to overestimate ages, but bucks can and do live older than 5.5 by toothwear/ replacement if given the opportunity, but like Tellico said, often older by cemented annuli.
 
redblood said:
That is not always the case. I have a 5.5 that is proportioned like a midget. I will post some pics when i dig them out
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Sometimes they get that old because they are mistaken for younger deer due to their size. One of the oldest bucks I've killed was a small deer.
 
I am not a big fan of cementum annuli, especially in the South. Cementum annuli works because deer go through stress periods during the year, usually winter, which produces a distinctive slow-growth ring in their tooth, just like rings on a tree. This works well in the North where the difference between summer and winter is dramatic. However, in the South, other stress periods can produce an extra ring of slow growth, which leads to an extra ring in a single year (two rings of slow growth instead of just one). The most common reason for this is severe summer droughts, which are fairly common in the Southeast (like this year in West TN). After this summer/fall, I promise you any deer alive in western TN will be overaged for the rest of their lives due to this year's double stress period.
 
Beyond 4½ or 5½ the only way I could predict age with any level of confidence would be with trail camera picture history. And even then it's a +/- 1 year guess. But there is zero doubt deer do live past 5½... buddy of mine sent teeth off from a nice "hills and holler" (not ag land) buck with a long rutted down body....CA analysis came back 7½ or 8½ year old....but even with CA testing, in the south, with our mild winters, it's accurate +/- 1 year they say. More recent example is the buck pictured. They are late summer pics in velvet. We have three or four years of pictures of this deer. Rack hasn't changed much last couple years...we have three of his sheds and based off of the trail cam picture history we are confident he's 6½ or possibly 7½ year old.
 

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As for field-judging buck age, I think it is very difficult to field-judge age beyond 6 1/2. Heck, it is difficult to field-judge age beyond 5 1/2. In fact, that's why I generally don't. I just have a 5 1/2+ category.

And as for bucks 7 1/2+, in farm country they certainly exist often enough. But in ridge-and-hollow hardwoods, they are exceptionally rare. Why would this be, as farm country is easier to hunt and easier to poach than ridge-and-hollow hardwoods? Because life is so much harder in ridge-and-hollow hardwoods. Running up and down those hills drains away considerable body resources. Ridge-and-hollow hardwoods often lack high-quality foods that help rut-stressed bucks survive the winter.

Running photo censuses for a living, I literally have millions of trail-camera pictures in my possession from TN. The vast majority of these pictures come from intensively managed large tracts of ridge-and-hollow hardwoods where bucks are protected into the older age-classes. How many bucks do I have in that collection that are 7 1/2+? Through matching antler configuration over a number of years, I probably only have 4 or 5 that I could confirm are 7 1/2+. The lack of 7 1/2+ year-old bucks is not due to over-harvest of younger bucks or poaching. It's due to the incredibly stressful lives bucks lead in that particular environment. Post-rut stress is a much greater killer than most assume, despite the fact we don't have severe winters.
 
BSK said:
I am not a big fan of cementum annuli, especially in the South. Cementum annuli works because deer go through stress periods during the year, usually winter, which produces a distinctive slow-growth ring in their tooth, just like rings on a tree. This works well in the North where the difference between summer and winter is dramatic. However, in the South, other stress periods can produce an extra ring of slow growth, which leads to an extra ring in a single year (two rings of slow growth instead of just one). The most common reason for this is severe summer droughts, which are fairly common in the Southeast (like this year in West TN). After this summer/fall, I promise you any deer alive in western TN will be overaged for the rest of their lives due to this year's double stress period.
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For the CA analysis that's interesting factoring in the stress period of the drought....the buddy I referenced in my previous post sent the teeth off because the deers teeth were worn down as far as any we had seen... interesting stuff.

So with so many variables with CA analysis and tooth wear...it goes back to having trail cam history with a particular buck (when possible) from age 2½ or 3½ on....this is probably the most accurate method.
 
DoubleRidge said:
For the CA analysis that's interesting factoring in the stress period of the drought....the buddy I referenced in my previous post sent the teeth off because the deers teeth were worn down as far as any we had seen... interesting stuff.

So with so many variables with CA analysis and tooth wear...it goes back to having trail cam history with a particular buck (when possible) from age 2½ or 3½ on....this is probably the most accurate method.
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I would use all three. None of the systems are perfect. Tooth-wear produces a very accurate minimum age, but the older a deer really is, the greater the chance tooth-wear under-ages the deer (if I remember Mick Hellickson's research numbers correctly, by the time tooth-wear indicates 4 1/2, there is a 75% chance the deer is actually older). Cementum annuli's accuracy rate is just as poor as tooth-wear for older deer but has the downside of being wrong in both directions, unlike tooth-wear. Field-judging age is more an art than a science and I can point to numerous deer I've field-judged that I got wrong. Each deer is an individual and some show varying degrees of body conformation at the same age.
 
Falconi said:
It'd be great if there were a machine learning (AI) app that could pull out those bucks it determines are older than 5.5. You'd best get cracking on that. ;)
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Some cool research projects exist on this topic. In Texas, they took known age bucks (ear tagged as fawns) and took every body measurement imaginable, looking for the best fit to age. They found no single measurement worked, although combinations of measurement got close. In another project from the southeast, measurements were taken from trail-camera pictures of known-age bucks, and the only measurement that worked well was the one I use more than any other, and that is a comparison between front leg length to chest depth. As bucks age, their chests get deeper in relation to the visual length of their front legs. By maturity (4 1/2), the two are about equal. Beyond 4 1/2, the chest appears deeper than the legs look long.
 
BSK said:
Some cool research projects exist on this topic. In Texas, they took known age bucks (ear tagged as fawns) and took every body measurement imaginable, looking for the best fit to age. They found no single measurement worked, although combinations of measurement got close. In another project from the southeast, measurements were taken from trail-camera pictures of known-age bucks, and the only measurement that worked well was the one I use more than any other, and that is a comparison between front leg length to chest depth. As bucks age, their chests get deeper in relation to the visual length of their front legs. By maturity (4 1/2), the two are about equal. Beyond 4 1/2, the chest appears deeper than the legs look long.
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Excellent point...the visual front leg legnth compared to the chest depth is an excellent way to determine 4½+...one buck came to mind from years past that fits the description...from trail cam pic history we knew this deer was 4½+...and comparing front leg to chest depth confirmed that. (Also this was mid to late summer pic)
 

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DoubleRidge said:
...and comparing front leg to chest depth confirmed that. (Also this was mid to late summer pic)
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The best part of this measurement system is it works almost as well in summer as just before the rut. Just before the rut I throw in neck shape, waist thickness and ham depth to get the best age I can. Not always perfect, but good enough for large-scale management.
 

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