Interesting Experiment Aging on The Hoof

[Fightinaggies]

IMO

the tooth wear and replacement method of aging deer is a tool to be used as a guide to send someone in the right direction. Wat I mean by this it that this method is useful, but to pull a jawbone from geographically separated areas and compare them using the same method may show different results.

learning the typical wear on the teeth of the deer where you hunt / manage can give you the best tool to getting the aging technique as accurate as possible if deviations need to be made from the normal method.

I completly agree with this. We actually made our own jaw board of known age deer we had killed off our own ranch. The question I was posing is how drastic is the affects of a deer consuming a considerable amount of protein on his tooth wear? As we know some deer eat more then others, is it going to be a drastic difference in the tooth wear of two bucks of the same age, on the same ranch, with one being a protein hog and the other not consuming nearly as much? My thoughts are yes which would make it difficult to use the tooth wear method to get consistintly accurate results.

[MooseontheLoose]

IMO,

I think feeding protein (especially if deer eat it their whole life) kinda throws off how accurate the tooth wear can be. We have also been saving jawbones from deer from the past several years, including jaws from known aged bucks, and the tooth wear method doesn't seem entirely accurate. Sometimes it matches the "Aging Plaque," others it doesn't. I also agree it's a tool that can be useful, but not 100 percent accurate. My avatar buck was a deer that Les and I watched for 4 years, we knew he was 7.5 all day long. His teeth showed kinda in between 5.5 and 6.5 if I remember right, and he never ever ate protein. He's just one example, but we have seen it in several old deer. It makes sense to me that if you have 2 bucks same age, one a protein hog and the other not, there should be a difference in tooth wear, especially when you get to the 7.5 year olds, but how drastic? I don't know.....interesting discussion.

[SFAthumper]

thanks for the agreement on the "not 100% full proof" on tooth wear and replacement...

Fightinaggies, you hit the nail on the head with what I was talking about. As a manager of a premiere ranch in the past, I developed an eye for the tooth wear of bucks coming off of that ranch.

Local diets tend to show similar wear from deer to deer.

[Cam-Mac]

How did they take the jawbone out of these deer and the deer were still able to eat?


(Just kidding )