The toughest sheds to find....and the mark of a very good shed hunter! If you're fortunate to live in an area that produces big antlered bucks....the shed hunting can be easy.
Looked closer at this and a few other angles of him and I can't find anything that would make him stand out to identify next year.
Wish he had a sock, a patch, anything. It would be interesting to know him and see what next year brought. Of course moms going to run him off if he's a button.
Shoot mom and odds are he'll stay. Then, to both ID him and keep him safe, you can do what a guy from a big city suggested to me last yr...Shoot him with a paint ball gun, with permanent paint. Then, tell the neighbors that this buck is yours and that they can't shoot any of the deer with paint spots, but that they are welcome to "mark" their own deer with a different color. That way, you have your deer to hunt and they can hunt theirs, but you don't have to worry about any of you shooting the other people's deer. He was dead serious when he told me this and truly believed he'd solved the management problem of neighbors shooting deer you'd rather they didn't.
I had a similar deer on camera this year and couldn't tell if he was a fawn or a 1.5 YO. I finally got a shot of his face in profile and that sealed the deal at a 1.5 YO…he had a long nose that did not have that short triangular shape that fawns tend to have. Do you have a profile shot of him?
Edit: It's tough to tell in the straight on shot, but looking at your pic again his nose appears to look more long and narrow than short and triangular.
That's funny. I would have told him I wish I thought of that in junior high when it came to girls. :D