"That's a good, mature buck!"

When you guys kill a buck do you age it by taking out the jawbone and giving the molars a good once-over, even if that's not the most 100% best way to age deer?

Or do you look at a little gray in the face and maybe a torn ear or broken tine tip and pronounce it "mature" without aging otherwise?

I see this sometimes, and especially with does. "That's an old, mature doe. See how her ear flops over?"

What's your mechanism for aging a buck or doe to keep accurate records for your property or club?

Jawbone

Combination of history/body characteristics and jawbone. Most of the ones we kill we have several years of pics of.

Body size for bucks. I don't kill does, and don't pay attention to their age.

I'm no expert at all, but neck size, belly sway, muzzle color.

We haven't pulled jawbones in years, but we used to send them off to the biologist (back when we had doe tags). We provide live weight and record the sex (with number of points if buck) and IF the doe is lactating.

Bucks, more often than not - based on size (not a good indicator (the bucks in Montgomery County generally weigh a little more) - 175-ish 3-1/2, 190-ish 4-1/5, 200+- 5-1/2+). I've never used gray as an indicator. When I hunted Montgomery County - we had pictures of most of the deer we would kill, so we had some photographic reference before pulling the trigger. During the rut - all bets are off on the weight. I killed a very large 8-point several years ago that was pretty light (182) for his frame, the taxidermist jawbone aged him at 5-1/2+ - I have the jawbone somewhere around the house that if I can find it, I'll post the picture.

Does - I normally open their mouths and run my finger across their teeth and check the sharpness, wear, and enamel. This is also not a good indicator based on soil type, but in Montgomery and Bullock county - the soil is not sandy, so I don't expect excessive wear from what they eat.

I personally have never used ears as an indicator

I age bucks based on body size and shapes, like many others have said I normally have pictures that help with accurately aging bucks. I don't age does, never have really. A lot of times I decide to shoot a doe based on if she starts blowing for no reason at all.

Usually check their wallet for an ID.

I've never killed a buck I wanted to know the age, but my old club did jaw bones for does too so I just went off that.

I just don't think pulling the jawbone is necessary we all know what a mature deer looks like.

I might be a 14 inch spike on one side or a nice symetrical 10pt. Is it 4 yo or 5 yo? Who cares. You should be astonished it made it past 3 without taking a bullet.

It ain't a 4 inch 4 point.

Reality says - Not a lot of guesswork involved.

Pretty much my thinking I can 1 2 and 3+ just cant distinguish differnce over 3 so once they hit 3 they mature to me 😃

I’ve never pulled a jawbone on a mature buck I’ve killed. Scared I’d mess the cape up for the mount. I’ve never killed a mature “cull” that wasn’t going on my wall.

Same. It's really not scientific to me, I guess I just know it when I see it. And the way I hunt I don't normally have the leisure of viewing that deer for any length of time, I hunt a military base mostly and it's all big woods and cutovers. Lots of times the deer might've been jumped. It's usually just "Oh crap, there's a good un, BANG!" Sometimes you get down and walk over to him and there's a little ground shrinkage, maybe he's a 3.5 year old 15" wide 8pt. Next time he's 130" and the biologist says 6+. Those two deer would be fairly distinguishly different on a food plot together, relaxed with plenty of binocular time. But most of us can't / won't tell them apart slipping through a chest high cutover at 100 yards, going in the direction of that other guy's headlamp you saw this morning. Hurry up, BANG!!! But for me there's just no scenario where I'm gonna shoot a piss willy, those deer are always obvious.

We have pics of all our bucks every year and keep up with what bucks make it through each year. We are yet to kill one we dont know.

That's why you get a Taxidermist to pull it after he's caped it 😀

It’s very simple to pop a jaw bone out on a deer getting caped. Slide the bar down the outside of the both knocking tissue away. Reach back in with loppers and cut bone. Slide bar in back of mouth over the cut bone and it slide right out. Rocky Willamson thought me that way in Dallas county back in the early 90’s. We did it for clients all the time cause we figured once they left we’d never see the jawbone again

I know a mature buck as soon as I see it. No need to pull jaw bones.

I don’t have to check their ID after or during the fact. We have a bouncer at the gate that only lets 5.5+ deer into the club. We just know what works for us.

Usually by the number of brown paper bags I get from the processor.
3/4 bag=1 yr old
1 - 1 1/4 bag(s)= 2yr old
2 bags=3 yr old
2 + bags= mature(and I was a guest on somebody else’s place)

Oregon has a voluntary program where you send them an incisor and they age it and send you back a postcard with the age. I like to keep the cards with the euro mounts I do. They slice that tooth and count the rings. It is a more accurate method than tooth wear, and doesn't risk tearing the hide. The lab procedure is time consuming and expensive, but we pay a lot more for licenses (and tags).

Yup. That's why those removal tools have the one side of the "L" that narrows down toward the end....so it'll fit right down between the cheek and gums.

This may be odd to many of you so dont hate on me for judging this way.. If it makes me pic my rifle up, its old enough.

We ustah take all kinds of measurements on deer captures in texas, we measured stomach girth, length of the skull,width of the ear tips, how pronounced the roman nose was, the amount of loose skin under the chin,on the neck,between the front legs,along with jawbone age and overall facial and body coloration(graying of the face)...we took the weights as well but that was worthless for aging..i honestly think appearance,loose skin in the right places, and body types..combined with the jawbone is about the most accurate way you could do it..other than a known history with camera footage and on the hoof sightings. Which is how i aged deer most of the time...and when i aged deer..i never said hes 2.5 or 3.5...i always said hes 1.5-3.5,3.5-5.5,5.5-6+...cause past 6 years they are very hard to age without having the abouve criteria..and thats from me dealing with hundreds of deer and pulling hundreds of jawbones...and sorting and editing thousands of pictures..with a known age database with several years of history to look back at. All that said...i will shoot the fist spike that walks by me on public land with my recurve.🙂

I like how you lump the years together, that's sensible. 99% of us would know a pencil-neck 2 year old from a filled-out "grown buck", and for me that's really obvious at 3 years old. A 2yr old looks like a kid deer, but in the woods to the untrained eye there's not often a difference in a 3 and a 5 unless they're all together and you have lots of calm time to look at them. Even still, if the 3 yr old has a bigger rack, I'm killing the 3yr old. I can't mount the age, and where/how I hunt I'll likely never see that deer again. Heck, there's a good chance he won't make it till dark if he walks over the hill from me. I mean, I know scientifically a 3 yr old isn't mature, but my arbitrary rule is "grown" means 3 years and up. He's "adult" at 3 is I guess what I'm saying. I'm looking for adult, not "mature".

I use the info that the state has gathered on deer checked at management area's. It has body weights for different age classes and antler circumference for the different weight classes. We weigh every deer we kill and we use that as well as body characteristics to determine age, best we can. Qdma is about letting 1.5 year old deer walk, shooting doe, and trying to harvest 3.5 year old and up bucks. People confuse QDMA with TDMA(trophy deer management). We try to practice QDMA.

Sound judgement coming from a barner! LOL

9 times out of 10 i know what buck i'm looking at when I see him so i have a history, ample amounts of pictures to look at and judge and have usually already determined if he's a shooter. however, last year i had a buck that i called a shooter on camera and when i saw him in person, i let him walk

I can only sum this up to variations from one piece of property to another, but I'm impressed by local Bama folks who identify deer on cameras and actually see them and kill them throughout the season, because my experience with this is to get several deer on cameras repeatedly up until early bow season, at which time they vanish from earth to never be seen again.

Yeah, that's a foreign concept to me.......I've never hunted a place where you have a real "history" with deer............get them on camera multiple years, be able to compare yearly progress, see a deer on-the-hoof and know which one it is, pattern specific deer and know when/where to expect them. I have never had that luxury.

This is stuff that only happens to Midwest TV hunters

I thought so. LOL

Seriously that is because of 2 things:

1) hunting pressure in general

2) someone doesn't shoot them.


Billy Bob ain't riding the shooting house 60 days popping deer up there. We have about twice the number of deer those States have yet many fewer good bucks. Some would say we lack the genetics. I say that is BS... Alabama has better genetics than we give our state credit for I have seen many deer over 150 and some 170's killed within an hour of Birmingham. I can lower my expectations and that's fair. However, the reality is we don't have the age structure they have. A 4 year old deer in Illinois has a larger rack no doubt but show me a pile of 4 year old deer shot in Alabama.... You can't. They are all somewhere between 35lbs and 3 years old stacking them up like cord wood.

Y'all think we have vast expanses of un-hunted property throughout the State? We don't. There are a few but nearly every stitch of ground here is hunted.

Hey Goatkiller. You right.

Add in the fact that the hunting seasonis far shorter and more specifically.....gun season..... is dramatically less. The opportunity for a buck to reach maturity is exponentially better.

It's ALL of that, plus a very different paradigm from the hunters themselves. From the day they are old enough to go with dad, all they know is they've got ONE tag, so it better count. On the converse, most folks our age in Alabama (I'm 45) grew up in the 1 doe / 1 buck per day for 3-1/2 months paradigm. And for some reason there's just this goofy mentality in the South to act like unemployed hillbillies who'll starve to friggin' death if they don't "get some meat in the freezer". Seriously, for so many (it's REALLY prevalent with the old guard) that's all hunting is. They aren't serious enough about it to bowhunt, so all they're really looking for is gun season to start, they go shoot a 3 point for "meat in the freezer". Are they wrong? Nah, but it's just a different paradigm from the rest of the country. The Midwest guys bowhunt about the percentage that we gun hunt down here.

I hunt because it's FUN. I can buy food, I don't HAVE to kill for food. I don't mind eating it, but I don't usually. It's not cheaper, but folks act like they'd never go buy 75# of meat from the local grocer or supplier, but by golly they'll jizz their shorts to pay stupid money for bloody deer meat. In the South it's disproportionately "food" hunters...we don't give a crap about management, or antlers, or really being all that serious about anything hunting, just "get some meat in the freezer". In fact, most hunters down here angrily reject those things. Really bizarre for a 1st world country in the year 2019.

All good points ikillbux. My problem is we have been spoiled for generations with a very liberal deer season & I don't want the gubberment telling me when & what I can kill on my own property. Another thing is I'm not an antler farmer & that butterball 6 is my favorite deer to take. Now excuse me while I ride up to my killing house, over looking my killing field & see if I can get some meat for the freezer.

Don't start with me

How I got my Aldeer name is my answer. Even though it is not perfect, it is about the best way for an easy and relatively quick way to age them.

I used to age a few by jawbones. But after a while I've found that the back sway and extended belly are good enough for me. Problem is when you get crop fed deer vs ones relying on only acorns and natural browse. It can be deceiving.

By the way...jawbone aging isn't rocket science. For those of us that have been tested on it the skill is easy enough to learn that most can pick it up pretty fast.

I don't care how long it lived. All I care about is how long it takes to get the meat cooled.

Every deer I've ever killed was as mature as it was going to get.

I know a few people who do this with regularity. They don't pressure the deer, don't have scads of people running around their property, and they know which bucks are which. After 4-5 years if the hunt goes as planned, they'll kill one or two really nice "wow!" bucks a season.

On a previous property I hunted, I had two bucks with relationship issues. One, I played cat-and-mouse with for a couple of seasons. He's the one I could've shot but it would have been after "legal shooting hours," which IMO are completely f'king stupid (but that's a different rant). Smart buck. Got some photos of him on camera now and then.

The other was a truly "wow!" buck that showed up in the same spot the same week three years in a row. He was, as ikillbux said, one of those that just vanished. Traveling buck, moving from one area to another. I think I knew where he was coming from and going to, but lost the land before I could hunt him more seriously. He was a good one.

I have a buck now that I have a two-year relationship with. If I can kill him this year I'll be pretty darn happy since he's one of the most weirdo non-typical bucks I've ever seen other than the Cryptorchid 'cactus' bucks.

I really don't care. After I shoot it, all that matters is taking care of the meat.
Maybe do a Euro Mount.