Age curious

New visitor to feeder, been seeing lots of does and broken up 5
Pt. Really curious on the age of this fella, just showed up.

4.5-5.5

Old enough to be on my hit list as a cull for sure.

5-6 IMO.

Yup
rutted down mature deer. I'm thinking 5.5 or 6.5

This is where I'm at. I doubt he's 4.5, too much body this late in the year. Choot 'em.

This but more 5 from these pics.

I don’t know. 4.5-6.5 leaning on the high side.

OP, I see you say he’s new, so don’t take this as a criticism.

He’s old enough that he bred those crappy genes to at least a few does. Shoot him before he does it again if you’re managing for antlers characteristics. Should have been culled at 1.5-2.5 in my opinion. He was probably a spike, and definitely wasn’t the biggest deer his age on whatever property he grew up on. By his age, deer are “shoulda been culled”s more than they are culls. Culling, or shooting “management bucks” should be done before a deer is mature. Once mature, you really not managing much. You’re shouting a deer that people wouldn’t pay a lot of money for, but you’re not managing the herd.

Even if he wasn’t new, don’t take the above as a criticism. Deer have value other than their antlers(meat for one). AND no one should tell anyone else what antlers to like. If you’re trying to manage for age class, the only way to do that is to shoot fewer bucks. Average age class won’t change long term based on what age you harvest bucks at. Average age class is based only on buck to doe ratio, and buck and doe harvest compared to population. You have 100 bucks. You harvest 20 bucks per year. Your long term average age of harvest will be 5.5. Assuming you keep your population stable with proper doe harvest, It doesn’t matter how many bucks are under 5.5 at harvest, the long term average will remain 5.5 because of the deer that are older than 5.5 at harvest. This model assumes no death from non-hunting causes, but of course, you can account for that with various estimations. What’s the point? If you’re managing for age class, you don’t do so by managing individual bucks, you do so by managing the total number of bucks to be harvested. The age class will work itself out. IF YOURE MANAGING FOR ANTLER CHARACTERISTICS, the younger you cull the better. By 5.5, you’ve managed nothing.


I’m not gonna knock anyone for shooting any deer they want to shoot.

I’m starting to classify all my bucks as young, medium and mature for simplicity sake. That buck is mature.

I like this a lot!

Old enough

4.5