Jawbone Experts
- Thread starter Mortenson
- Start date
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
Aging is local. Different habitat equates to different wear. After you get to about 3 years old, there is a lot of judgment involved. The biologists from your local game department probably have as good of handle on age estimation of your deer than anyone cause they age a lot of local deer. If you really want to know, you can send the tooth to a lab.
Thanks,
Jack
Thanks,
Jack
Tap
5 year old buck +
Around here, based on deer that I've sent for lab aging, that amount of wear on your jaw would be from a deer at least 5.5. Tooth wear estimates are based on looking at the dentine exposure, not on how much the tips of the teeth are worn down.
Your jaw doesn't look like that of an old timer but he most likely isn't a 3.5 year old either. Tooth aging is classified into a couple categories...Tooth replacement, which is a for-sure method up to 2.5 years old. After that, it becomes a "wear" estimate. At that point, you place them into age groups...middle aged, fully mature, or old age. Not many old age bucks are running around most parts of the country.
Your jaw doesn't look like that of an old timer but he most likely isn't a 3.5 year old either. Tooth aging is classified into a couple categories...Tooth replacement, which is a for-sure method up to 2.5 years old. After that, it becomes a "wear" estimate. At that point, you place them into age groups...middle aged, fully mature, or old age. Not many old age bucks are running around most parts of the country.
Mortenson
5 year old buck +
Thanks guys. He had been a hard one for me to peg. Was a regular on our farm. I figured he was a minimum of 4.5 or 5.5 based on 3 years of trail cam pics. His dentin wear to me suggests that's what he was - 4.5/5.5. His rack never scored more than probably 115ish. His '16 rack was larger and wider than his '17 rack. He showed up on all my trail cams, yet I never once saw him. Dates on the pics are correct. Large bodied deer.
