Aging Deer Is Important For Quality Deer Management?

Posted on March 8, 2008 in Recreation and Sports by admin

The Deer Aging Tool is a quick, easy way to age your harvested whitetail deer.

Deer managers should keep accurate records of ages for all deer harvested to determine the nutritional effects of practices they have in place. Knowing the true age of your trophy whitetail deer by using this tool will help make sound management decisions.

Eruption-wear bases its results by comparing your deers molars to established tooth eruption and wear criteria of teeth from known age deer. It provides summaries and basic statistics that will be useful in any deer management program.

Why should you age deer? Because it provides a means to collect, organize, and use deer census and harvest data to benefit deer management programs. Harvest data should be collected from deer harvested during the season. Together, this data help hunters and managers make educated decisions about their deer herds.

On many properties, the number of deer taken is too small and measurements are too variable for conclusions to be drawn from a single year’s data. Therefore, harvest data must be complete and consistently collected from every deer harvested. If this is not possible, a convenient, well-equipped check station or shed to process deer will help encourage data collection. When possible, one person should record all of the data while others process the deer. With practice, hunters can become efficient at estimating deer age using the deer aging tool.

Whether collected throughout the year or only during the hunting season, observation data should be collected the same way each time and compared only to information collected during the same period in future years.

Bucks will not reach their full genetic potential if they are harvested before reaching maturity. Data collected on both bucks and does include: date of harvest, sex, weight, age (jawbone), harvest location, hunter’s name, and any comments or unique observations. Additional data collected on bucks should include number of points, antler spread, antler length, circumference at the base, and possibly other details such as Boone & Crockett score.

Whitetail bucks reach maximum antler size at 6 to 7 years of age. If older bucks (6-1/2 to 8-1/2 years) are small-antlered, we know there is a problem with nutrition or genetics. In ideal hunting scenarios, sportsmen should allow bucks to mature to four or five years of age before harvesting them.

Providing a means to collect, organize, and use deer census and harvest data year after year will benefit your deer management program. Good records generally result in good management decisions, whereas poor or incomplete records often result in faulty decisions. However, management decisions are only as good as the quality of data gathered. When compared to previous years, harvest data provide the opportunity to see where a deer management program has been and where it is going. Without such records, management cannot be evaluated accurately.

Observation information collected by hunters should include counting every deer during each outing, even if the same animal was observed during a previous observation period. The purpose is not to count every individual deer on a property, but rather to determine the relative abundance of deer and the proportion of bucks, does, and fawns. Also, unless a deer can be positively identified as a buck, doe, or fawn, it should be recorded as “unknown. All of this data collected made us realize that we needed to lower the deer population by shooting does and letting the young bucks grow up.

As interest in quality deer management and trophy hunting explodes across the country, there is a need for education in aging deer, both before and after the harvest.
Harvest data provides useful insight into the current condition of a deer herd. When compared to previous years, harvest data provide the opportunity to see where a deer management program has been and where it is going. This also can raise the excitement level around the deer camp and verify that management efforts to produce older bucks are working.

Tooth eruption and wear in deer are closely related to the age of the animal. Get immediate results in the field by using the tooth wear and replacement method. By comparing each jawbone collected to established tooth eruption and wear criteria, an age can be assigned. Upon harvest, view the lower right jaw and simply match the tooth wear pattern of the harvested animal to the Deer Aging Tool. Simply match tooth wear pattern to one of the eight separate age classes.

This method still provides the best aging technique for most landowners and sportsmen. By using the Deer Aging Tool you can quickly and easily determine the age of your harvested whitetail deer.

Michelle Weber had been an avid hunter for many years. She is the owner of the website http://www.howtoagedeer.com where hunters and deer managers can get their own deer aging tool to quickly and easily age their whitetail deer.

Tags: age deer, age of deer, aging deer, aging deer on the hoof, deer age, deer aging, how to age deer

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