fishboy1 said:
I wonder if good quality forage is MORE important than age for the average hunter to see "larger" bucks.
Compare the age and gross score of deer in some scraggly TN hardwoods with deer from the grain belt.
Within reason yes, and that is the point I've been trying to make, although some don't want to admit this is the truth.
Now that
doesn't mean age isn't important. It simply means that great habitat can produce large antlers at much younger ages.
At one given location, age is going to be the most important factor in average antler development. However,
when comparing different locations, nutrition CAN over-power age as the determining factor. For instance, I have client that took his son bow-hunting to KY last year. In one weekend they both shot 150-class bucks.
Both bucks were 2 1/2 years old. I've NEVER seen a 150-class 2 1/2 year-old in TN, and I've seen a lot of TN deer. I review trail-cam census pictures for a client in southwest KY. In TN I see few 150-class bucks, and almost never are those 150-class bucks younger than 4 1/2. Yet my client had three 3 1/2 year-old 150-class bucks on his 600 acre property last year. Three on 600 acres, while a 150-class 3 1/2 year-old buck is a rare creature in TN.
It still amazes me that a deer study has shown that quality forage/habitat can account for 2 years worth of antler growth on a buck vs. lower quality forage/habitat in the same state.
And that was just the differences within one state--a southeastern state. I would love to see the same comparison between a southeastern state and a Midwesatern corn-belt state.
Below are two graphs from the MS study. The first is a comparison between the gross antler scores of harvested 3 1/2 year-old bucks between three sections of the state. Although this study was looking at soil fertility, I think it would be far more accurate to consider these three categories as simply habitat quality, as the high soil fertility areas are heavy agriculture, while the poor soil fertility areas have little to no agriculture, and are predominantly swamp-land.
In both graphs, the dashed vertical lines are the average number for that category.
A comparison of 3 1/2 year-old buck antler scores. Notice that there is nearly a 30 inch difference in average scores from low to high habitat quality. In addition, look at the top-end percentages. 27% of 3 1/2 year-old bucks in the best habitat areas produced antlers grossing 130+. That's slightly better than 1 out of 4 bucks of that age. Yet in the poor habitat areas, only 3% of 3 1/2 year-old bucks grew antlers topping 130, or about 1 out of 33 bucks of that age. HUGE difference:
The second graph is comparing the antler development of 5 1/2 year-old bucks from the poor habitat/soil area to 3 1/2 year-old bucks in the high habitat/soil quality area. Notice the averages for the two are almost identical as are the distribution of scores:
