Hello everyone. Today we would like to talk about a hunting topic that we find lots of people assume everyone who hunts knows, but actually, a lot of hunters don’t. How to judge the age of a deer?
We feel this is an important topic for ethically hunting whitetail deer. Now every state has its regulations so you’re going to want to read up on what applies to your state and even county. For now, we are going to focus on Texas as that’s where we live.
We’ve had some acquaintances who did not get into hunting until they were adults. As such, they completed their hunter education and safety courses online. Being over the age of 17, they were not required to do a field day as part of their course. So they were able to complete the entire course online through the NRA. Now, this course was very educational and did bring up lots of appropriate topics about firearms, safety, and hunting safety, but we felt it lacked a bit in hunter ethics or scenarios.
In the state of Texas, this topic mostly comes up in regards to hunting bucks. Texas has some counties that fall under special antler restrictions regulation. In these counties, a legal buck deer is defined as a buck deer with:
at least one unbranched antler; OR
an inside spread of 13 inches or greater (does not apply to a buck that has an unbranched antler)
To add more confusion in counties with antler restitutions you can only harvest one deer with an inside spread of 13 inches or greater. These regulations try to prevent hunters from taking a buck that is too young. But what about counties that don’t have these regulations?
In counties that do not have antler restrictions, you are allowed to shoot multiple qualifying deer. This is where ethical hunting and being able to judge the age of a deer comes into play. For those who are new to hunting or maybe don’t even know that age is a factor this is important.
The following chart is an excellent depiction of how to age whitetail deer.
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We’ve seen many hunters harvest bucks that were in the 2 to 3.5-year range. In our opinion, those are deer they shouldn’t have harvested. Those deer hadn’t reached maturity. Be it young hunters looking for their first buck or hunters that haven’t seen anything all season and it’s the last weekend and by golly that 2.5-year-old 8 point is theirs, they shouldn’t pull the trigger. Let those deer grow. Ultimately you want to harvest the 4.5+-year-old deer, with emphasis on 5+-year-old deer. Doesn’t matter if you’re a trophy hunter or hunting for the meat, your best deer are going to be the mature deer.
Circling back to our original point is that we’ve found a lot of hunters aren’t aware of this issue. So don’t assume every hunter knows. Landowners leasing your property out make sure your hunters know how to age deer. Hunters spread this knowledge to others!
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