Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum Long nose deer vs. short nose deer

I was looking at the two deer I killed and noticed that one is long and one is short nosed.
To me they look totally different and Since I had them side by side I wanted to share the picture of the two.

Just my opinion but it looks like an older deer the one on the right. What was their age?

I'd be interested to see that one on the left side by side with 100 more deer skulls. I bet it would still be shorter. It looks oddly short to me. Not young short, not proportionately correct looking, short.

Aside from age, less than 2yr versus 2+ let's say, I've never noticed an obvious difference in skull length between our deer where I hunt. We do have two distinct body types in that some of our deer are tall, lean deer and others of the same age are short-legged, stocky looking deer.

I'm not a expert ager by any means but the deer on the left I guessed at 4+ and the one on the right is 3 tops. The deer on the left his teeth are badly worn compared to the other.

Keep those bottom jaws and use the QDMA chart to correctly age them jokers.

This will age them but, won't answer why the skulls are smaller.

It may be camera angle but deer on left also looks wider across the orbital sockets.

I have found skulls on the same property that have similar differences like yours

No different than dogs. Take a gsp for example. You can have different head shapes in the same litter. Some long and thin and some short and boxed looking.

This is just speculation on my part but we have different strains of deer here in Tennessee due to past restocking programs. This was taken from an article on Outdoor Alabama.

The majority of deer restocked in Alabama were from sources within the state and assumed to have been O. v. virginianus. Deer from several other states, including Arkansas, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin, were used to a much lesser degree in restocking several areas around Alabama. Those restockings included deer from as many as six different subspecies of whitetails, including O. v. borealis, O. v. macrourus, O. v. osceola, O. v. seminolus, O. v. texanus, and O. v. virginianus. Due to the variety of stocking sources, many locations in Alabama may contain deer with a combination of ancestries that cannot be placed in a single subspecies. As a whole, it is assumed the majority of deer in Alabama are of the Virginia subspecies since 56 of the state�s 67 counties were stocked using this subspecies.

I have several scull mounts. They all look like the right one. Left one looks weird to me but I'm not a biologist. Never seen a short one like that.

This is a deer my son killed a few years back. It is not a camera trick that makes the face look that long. It really was long enough to remind me of an African Eland.

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Interesting. I killed a nice 8 point this year that was the first I've killed with a long "south alabama" nose. Most of the ones I kill here are shorter roman noses.

Here's a picture of the left deer's bottom jaw(the short nose). Something had already got the other jaw so I have no comparison. I don't know how to age by looking at the jaw but I can tell you this one was worn alot more than the other one.

Where I live most of the deer are long nose and that's what I'm used to seeing. I have a lease about 40 miles away and all those deer have the little short stubby noses. They just look so much different on camera and in person.

Good question. Nearly every big buck I killed when i hunted just north west of Grove hill, had very short noses and short necks but long body's...