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10 pt with Potential

jagermeister

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I was really excited to see this guy on camera. He's still a young deer IMO... probably 2.5 yrs old. Looks to be 125-130 inches at this point, so he's definitely getting a free pass from me this year. What's amazing is how much he grew during the month of July. In June, I had a picture of him where all he had were brows and 1" G2s... now he's a full 10 pt with nice long main beams. Hopefully he can dodge the locals this year and be given a chance to blow up next year. What do you guys think?



















Oh I forgot to mention, this is the only series of pictures I've gotten of him in an entire month. Yet, he was at the same mineral and salt blocks for over an hour! The bucks have really been eluding me lately for some reason.
 

jagermeister

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Nice! I hope you get a shot at him next year or the year after. What a start!

Thanks Hicks.

Earlier I went back through some pics from June and stumbled upon some pictures I didn't pay much attention to at the time. I had a series of pics from June where three bucks walked through the same trail... the first two looked like they would turn into decent 8 or 10 pointers, as they had started sprouting what I had thought were all of their points. The third buck was the smallest of the three, at the time. He had his two short brow tines, 1" g2 sprouts, and beams out to the tips of his ears... nothing more. It turns out that the third buck, which was the smallest, is the buck I posted above. That leads me to believe that the other two should be even bigger than this guy, making them shooters for this year more than likely. I really hope I get some pics soon of the big boys. I just gathered some intel that a neighbor's been seeing a lot of buck traffic at a nearby apple tree. Might have to move the camera around a bit next time I go back down.
 

Hoytmania

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I agree with your guess of 2.5 yrs. It looks as if he is getting ready to shedding velvet soon also. He looks to have some good semitry to him also. It will be interesting to see how everything plays out.
 

rgecko23

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Nice dude, hes got some potential for sure, looks like he carries his mass and has good symetry for sure...
I'm not good at ageing deer so i wont try hahaha
 

jagermeister

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Ok, so I am a bit perplexed right now. A friend of mine, who owns a deer farm, was just here and was looking through some of my trail cam pics. After seeing this deer, he's not exactly convinced that it's a young deer... at least not 2.5 like I thought. His opinion was, based on his observations over the years, when a deer gets to be relatively old it's body characteristics will revert back to that of a younger deer... i.e. scrawny, boney body. Based on the main beam mass and the relatively large head/snout, he thought this might be an older buck. I'll be the first to admit that I thought the deer's head did not look like the typical head of a 2.5 yr old buck. But who knows for sure. The pics I have are from a month ago, so I guess it's possible that he's added some bone since then, and body weight too. I guess maybe I shouldn't completely rule him out of the shooter category until I get some more recent pictures.

What do you guys think about this? Have any of you seen or harvested older deer with a scrawny body? This one does seem to have a fairly large skeletal frame.
 

formerbowhunter1023

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I'm no deer farmer, but I think that deer is 3.5 and I'd subscribe to him being 2.5 over going downhill. Notice how "clean" he looks. I'm not seeing the age. He has a nice long snout, but no arch. I've seen does with noses that long that had more of a Roman nose than he does. Both my bucks were 6.5 and one had a serious sway and the other was all beat up. I could be way off base, but it ain't a science until you have the teeth...
 

jagermeister

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Ok, so I looked into this a little more (Ageing).....This helped alot..

http://www.1atexasdeerhunting.com/bodyagingdeer.htm

After reading that, I'm leaning towards my initial hunch of 2.5 yrs old... maybe 3.5. I need to get some more recent pictures to be sure I think. I have a strong feeling there are two bucks running around there that are bigger than him, so hopefully this is all a moot point LOL.