How old is this buck? Jawbone pics...

[megalomaniac]

this is from the buck I shot back in October. I'm finally getting around to doing all the european mounts from this season's kills.

Note the osteonecrosis of the jawbone... the other side was even worse.

Pics of the buck after a few guesses ....

 

[8 POINTS OR BETTER]

6.5 ++

 

[TheLBLman]

Certainly appears too old to age with ANY degree of accuracy.
My best "guess" would be 7 1/2 or older.

On the other hand, he could have just had bad teeth and bad bones! :grin:

 

[spoon]

That is the oldest jaw bone I've seen...6+

 

[Andy S.]

6.5+

 

[baller_9]

I agree with the others. I would feel comfortable saying 6.5+

 

[ROUGH COUNTRY HUNTER]

real old

 

[pass-thru]

Could be anywhere from 8-15. Did you just now get to looking at the jawbone?

 

[BSK]

That buck's tooth arrangement and wear patterns are not normal. That makes it hard to age. But all of the teeth show significant wear.

 

[megalomaniac]

Sorry... this was a little bit of a trick question

I killed him in South Dakota, not quite a whitetail. I have no idea how applicable whitetail aging techniques when aging antelope, but I would suspect they are fairly similar, since tooth configuration is similar.

This buck had above average horns for the area, but the area isn't known for producing trophy quality heads. He was a loner, probably on the decline and pushed out of the herds by the slightly younger and stronger bucks.

oh, and doing a european mount on a speedgoat is a royal PITA- I spent 2 hours trying to get the sheaths off the skull before boiling it... I finally gave up, boiled the whole skull for 30 minutes, then the sheaths simply pulled off with minimal pressure.

 

[Andy S.]

His horns look like many of the whitetail deer I see while hunting. :grin:

 

[buckhorn40]