Is there an "Alabama Version" of this article based on data collected around here? I assume the lessons directly translate, but number values might change slightly based on region. It's interesting to see how few high scoring bucks exist, even in 5.5 year old age class.

I'd like to see data from Black Belt, below fall line, north central, and Jackson County.


http://www.msudeer.com/docs/articles/Managing%20Bucks%20and%20Expectations.pdf

It's also interesting that hunters very routinely use the word "cull" to talk about getting bad genetics out of the herd, and yet killing a large racked deer gets the good genetics out of a herd just as quick.

We do have data from the various soil regions that has been collected from DMP cooperators as well as WMAs. The results are similar. We have areas with high soil fertility and areas of lower soil fertility. There is a direct correlation with soil fertility and antler size/body weights. Our data hasn't been analyzed and put into a nice publication like that article to my knowledge.

I think it would make an interesting article to publish some of those bell curves from 2.5, 3.5, 4.5, 5.5+ yr old deer. It's nice to know what's really obtainable on normal soils.

I suspect we will do some of that in the future. Similar to the turkey publication. I think we are a few years out though. Mainly due to staffing and us working on current projects.

Yeah, I hear you. Our leaders haven't exactly covered your agency up with staffing and funding!

I remember reading an article in Quality Whitetails about the importance of soil quality, basically it's that simple.

I recognize the importance of soil. The most interesting part to me was the wide spread in antler score - even at 5.5 yrs old.

If I recall correctly the King Ranch average mature buck score, seems like it was high 120s for 5.5 yr olds?

here we are on this damn soil map again.....

BSK always said that the score in any herd would have an average difference of 100 inches between the top scoring buck and the lowest scoring buck across the same age class. Speaking of mature bucks.

Doubt that would hold true for all properties. I'd think the range would be more like 60-70" in our area. But who knows for sure, right.

I'm sure it would probably vary some from property to property but I bet it would be close. Here's a good example. This guy weighed just over 200 lbs. What do you think he would score?

How old was he? You have a lot of 170-180s on that place or does it top out about 150"? I guess I should ask what's the highest scoring buck off that place? I just think some places that bell curve is gonna be a little tighter than 100 inch spread.

Surely you didn't load that deer in the back of that "scooter" by yourself? That's an unattainable task.

I bet he'd score 75-80", CNC

Yep...about 75 inches. Not 100% sure on the age but I believe that buck was actually a really old buck. I don't think this is the bottom of the bucket either. I've got pics of some poor looking racks. We have a good deer population and good age structure but we don't grow huge bucks where I hunt. A normal top end buck will score in the 140's. There are some rare deer that will go higher than that but they're extreme outliers. I wonder if the 100 inches that BSK referred to was between the extreme outliers on either end of the curve? Many of our mature bucks will fall somewhere between 110" and 130".

Scooter?......Scooter!?!?.... My truck ain't no damn scooter! I'm offended.

I'm actually a really big fan of those mini trucks. However, from this point forward, I do like to refer as all atv's, utv's and any other hunting related motorized vehicle as a scooter. I actually learned quite a bit reading all 25 pages of the ISO thread.

Nice buck by the way!