How Big is Your Average Mature Deer - B&C?
- Thread starter SwampCat
- Start date
hillrunner
5 year old buck +
I'd guess average is probably around 125 here. The pencil tined 8 points don't get much fanfare, but they are going to bring the average way down. It's not terribly uncommon to have a 3 year old at or really close to 150 here , but they aren't the norm.
I have no idea what a 120 score equates to, I've never had a buck scored. I will say that I can pretty much bank on having a 3 buck group on my cameras every year that are a 12, 10, and 8, plus additional young ones. To that end this 10 point I harvested last year would seem to be the average adult buck here at home. Only wish I got a crack at the 12....
Wild Thing
5 year old buck +
I know exactly what the average weight, antler points, spread, base circumference, etc, is because we have been recording that data for every deer we have ever killed here. Even the does are weighed and aged. I never added them up and averaged them out until just now but, I guess it is nice to have the data.
My property is in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Our bucks do not grow as big as many other areas of the U.P. (or the deer in Lower Michigan). Don't know why or why not - they just don't. With Mandatory Antler Point Restrictions here for many years we were finally able to put some age on them but we just can't get the antlers to grow any bigger than the mid-120 inches.
Every deer we kill is weighed...
and aged using the tooth replacement and wear method. I arrive at my age estimate and later we take either the head or the jaw bone in to our local DNR office and the biologists there also give their age estimates. We are almost always the same although there have been times when my estimate has differed from theirs by 1 year. In fact, on one of those I sent the incisors in to DeerAge.com and they agreed with my age estimate. I was taught this method by several different DNR biologists and technicians years ago and a good friend of mine is a veterinarian who worked on deer farms where the exact age of the deer was known, so he helped me out a lot. I also attended the QDMA Deer Steward II course where we were taught and tested on aging by tooth wear.
Our buck pole is in the lean-to of the barn. All of the tools we need - gambrel hangers, scales, jawbone extractor, chains and ropes are kept right there by the buck pole.
I bought this log book from QDMA many moons ago and we have religiously used it to record the data..
In addition to the biological data, we record the date and time harvested, the hunter and the location of the kill...
These are my scribblings from today for 3.5 year old bucks:
Heaviest weight 200# dressed and the lightest weighed 108. Coyotes got to one of them before we did but the average of the other 20 bucks was 149.1#.
10 points are extremely rare here. We have only killed one 10 point since 1994. Three of these bucks had 7 points and one had only 6 points (no brow tines). 7 of them had 9 points and the rest were all 8 points so the average is just a little over 8 points.
You can tally up all of the antler spread, beam length and circumferences if you are interested. The number behind the decimal point is in eighths of an inch - not tenths.
We haven't scored many of their antlers but, trust me, none of them would go over 125 inches. Even the one 5 1/2 year old that my wife tagged barely made 100 inches. Like I said, we can get a little age on them but we can't get their antlers to grow any bigger. The 5 year old for example, didn't gain a single inch between age 4 and 5.
I wish we could grow giant bucks like some of you guys but it just isn't in the cards (or the soil) here.
My property is in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Our bucks do not grow as big as many other areas of the U.P. (or the deer in Lower Michigan). Don't know why or why not - they just don't. With Mandatory Antler Point Restrictions here for many years we were finally able to put some age on them but we just can't get the antlers to grow any bigger than the mid-120 inches.
Every deer we kill is weighed...
and aged using the tooth replacement and wear method. I arrive at my age estimate and later we take either the head or the jaw bone in to our local DNR office and the biologists there also give their age estimates. We are almost always the same although there have been times when my estimate has differed from theirs by 1 year. In fact, on one of those I sent the incisors in to DeerAge.com and they agreed with my age estimate. I was taught this method by several different DNR biologists and technicians years ago and a good friend of mine is a veterinarian who worked on deer farms where the exact age of the deer was known, so he helped me out a lot. I also attended the QDMA Deer Steward II course where we were taught and tested on aging by tooth wear.
Our buck pole is in the lean-to of the barn. All of the tools we need - gambrel hangers, scales, jawbone extractor, chains and ropes are kept right there by the buck pole.
I bought this log book from QDMA many moons ago and we have religiously used it to record the data..
In addition to the biological data, we record the date and time harvested, the hunter and the location of the kill...
These are my scribblings from today for 3.5 year old bucks:
Heaviest weight 200# dressed and the lightest weighed 108. Coyotes got to one of them before we did but the average of the other 20 bucks was 149.1#.
10 points are extremely rare here. We have only killed one 10 point since 1994. Three of these bucks had 7 points and one had only 6 points (no brow tines). 7 of them had 9 points and the rest were all 8 points so the average is just a little over 8 points.
You can tally up all of the antler spread, beam length and circumferences if you are interested. The number behind the decimal point is in eighths of an inch - not tenths.
We haven't scored many of their antlers but, trust me, none of them would go over 125 inches. Even the one 5 1/2 year old that my wife tagged barely made 100 inches. Like I said, we can get a little age on them but we can't get their antlers to grow any bigger. The 5 year old for example, didn't gain a single inch between age 4 and 5.
I wish we could grow giant bucks like some of you guys but it just isn't in the cards (or the soil) here.
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drycreek
5 year old buck +
In East Texas, probably the same as most of you, 110 to 120 for a 3.5 year old buck. We do have some gaggers killed every year though, 150 to 160 and sometimes over that, gross of course. I had this one on my lease two years running in the spring/summer but disappeared every fall. The one and only time he was at my food plot in the daylight during the season was at high noon on Christmas day. He stayed in front of my camera for 25+ minutes. 
He doesn’t have much mass, but man he was pretty ! He’s also older than 3.5 by a couple years at least.
Edit to add, the gaggers ain’t been within ten miles of my place, when I said we I meant in my county !
He doesn’t have much mass, but man he was pretty ! He’s also older than 3.5 by a couple years at least. Edit to add, the gaggers ain’t been within ten miles of my place, when I said we I meant in my county !
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Native Hunter
5 year old buck +
I really don't know the answer. But, I think all the land around me going to crop fields in recent years has raised our score.
Wind Gypsy
5 year old buck +
That is wild, all those 3.5 YO bucks and no 10 pointers! I would call BS if some stranger in a bar told me that. i don’t get it, hard to believe winters/nutrition are markedly worse than what we see in Northern MN?
Wild Thing
5 year old buck +
Yes - The other influencing factor besides age and nutrition is genetics, and we obviously don't have 10 point genetics here. Worse yet, we have the no brow tines (or very short brow tines) gene to go along with it. It is what it is...
bwoods11
5 year old buck +
I’m in the same neighborhood as Hillrunner and I’d say that’s accurate. We do have some 150+ inch 3 yr olds.
Turkey Creek
5 year old buck +
Majority of ours would be around 130" I would guess.
b116757
5 year old buck +
I don’t know for sure but a 16 point was harvested on the big farm about 3 years ago I don’t know what it ended up scoring and 2 years ago a 200 inch buck was taken on the neighboring property to our small farm. Not at all uncommon for me to have 10’s and 12’s running around in bachelor groups. The discerning hunter in my area has to stay disciplined not to shoot the 10’s and 12’s because a big boy could be the next thing to walk in that’s not always as easy as it sounds. I don’t know about currently but my county in SE Kansas several years ago was one of top 2 in the state for highest number of Pope and Young bucks harvested in the preceding 10 years. It’s a very good place to be a trophy whitetail hunter with better than average odds of getting a crack at a wall hanger.
Wild Thing
5 year old buck +
That does it....I am selling my Michigan property and moving to Kansas!
Brian662
5 year old buck +
A big 3 year old in our area probably runs in the 130 range, but the average is probably 110-115. I've been finding some heavier antler sheds the last few years which tell me 3+ years old and they wouldn't measure much more than the 115" or so as basic 8 pointers. This is in SE MN, you can add 10"+ to these measurements from what I've seen in SW WI after being there for a little over a year.
BenAllgood
5 year old buck +
Age and Nutrition, Age and Nutrition ...then genetics
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