I'll be the first to tell you we high-grade our buck population to a certain extent. At least when it comes to 2 1/2 year-old bucks. Most of my family members are thrilled to shoot a 2 1/2 year-old 8-point, but they will pass up the 2 1/2 year-old fork-horns and 6-pointers. That WILL have an effect on the quality of the 3 1/2s and 4 1/2+ bucks. We're just lucky we get so much infiltration of "new" deer every year.
I hope you get a chance at him!
It can be entirely unpredictable-especially in TN.
That's not unpredictable, that's hitting the mega-millions lottery.
What is your top scoring buck of all time?
Two very close to each other, a 3 1/2 year-old that scored 157 1/8 and a 5 1/2 year-old that scored 156 0/8. We will have a 140+ buck using the property almost every year, and a 150+ buck about every other year. Top buck ever was easily in the mid 160s and might have touched 170. Three pictures below, left to right, are the 157, the 156, and our top buck ever.
A complete bummer the next two years as well.
I love that 3 1/2 yr old!!
Any possibility at all that he was exactly one or even two years older than you thought? Would cause each year to make a little more sense in my small brain.
Every now and again, we pick up some whopper 3 1/2s. A couple pictured below. The first one scored 140.
I assume gross scores? I love that 2007 buck.
I haven't calculated a net score in probably 15 years. A meaningless number.
Possibly. Aging from body characteristics is also only a best case "probable" assumption. In fact, he could've only been 2.5 and the other shed from 1.5 (but I doubt that kinda size for a 2.5 year old.. not that he was huge.. just a lot of long points and long beams)
Considering the date of the picture, I would place that buck as a solid 3 1/2.
I can get em to 3.5 pretty easily. 4.5 is the challengeI'd love to see him survive to 5 1/2
Uncommon for such a top-end 2 1/2 to make it to 3 1/2 in most hunted areas of TN.
Considering he has survived the local rut, would you give him 50/50 for surviving the remainder of the 2023 deer season?
This is some very interesting data. Its cool to see what the averages are over time and the correlation between age and score.
As I tell hunters all the time, yes, ON AVERAGE antlers get larger with age. The average score of a 3 1/2 is less than a 4 1/2, and a 4 1/2 less than a 5 1/2, but that's only "on average." With a large enough data set from a single property, you will see that each age-class produces a bell curve distribution of scores. Most bucks of a given age will score +/- 15 inches from the average, but the "legs" of the bell curve extend WAY OUT at either end. You're going to see some really low and high scores for each age-class, but those odd-balls are just that, statistical outliers. But they exist. In fact, given enough time, on a given property I'll find a top-scoring yearling that has larger antlers than the lowest scoring mature buck. And that's the critical point and the reason antler size can't be used to judge age. Every age-classes' bell curve distribution overlaps all other age classes' distributions. What that means is a buck scoring 80 could be any age, from yearling to fully mature. The largest yearling we ever killed scored close to 80. The smallest mature buck we've ever killed scored in the 50s (stunted forkhorn).
Its amazing how much that buck changed from the 1st pic to the 2nd. Not the deer, but the hippie looking dude.
