Is he really that much bigger?

[Dusty Britches]

I was causally strolling through my game cam pictures when this caught my attention. Is the one on the left really that much bigger bodied or is it an optical illusion? They are both fairly young bucks.

[88 Bound]

It sure looks that way.

[sweldo73]

He may be a little larger, but a lot of it is due to the angle of the camera and perspective. The deer on the left is farther away from the camera, so with the camera being set a little higher he appears taller. Look where their feet are relative to one another, and you can see that the deer on the left is higher in the pic and therefore appears a good bit taller.

There's also a bit of lens distortion that happens around the edges of a photo, and that tends to stretch out objects (including deer) sometimes making them appear somewhat larger.

[sweldo73]

I did a quick comparison to demonstrate.

The orange line is at the level of the left buck's closest foot, and the green line is at the center buck's closest foot.



I then clipped out the the left buck and moved him to the same level as the center buck. The 2 blue lines show that their rumps and shoulders pretty much line up. Now, because the the left buck is a little farther away from the camera in the original pic, there is a legitimate case that he should be enlarged slightly when brought forward to the same distance as the center buck. Doing that would show he's probably a little larger, but not by a huge margin.

[Jon B]

Some straight up csi stuff right there.

[Dusty Britches]

Some straight up csi stuff right there.

Dang sure is! I'm impressed!

I have other photos of bucks in that same spot on the left but they don't look as big as that. At first I thought it had been photo shopped but since I'm the only one with access to that camera, I had to tell myself it was not.

[sweldo73]

Some straight up csi stuff right there.

[MathewsTX5]

I did a quick comparison to demonstrate.

The orange line is at the level of the left buck's closest foot, and the green line is at the center buck's closest foot.

[ATTACH]970593[/ATTACH]

I then clipped out the the left buck and moved him to the same level as the center buck. The 2 blue lines show that their rumps and shoulders pretty much line up. Now, because the the left buck is a little farther away from the camera in the original pic, there is a legitimate case that he should be enlarged slightly when brought forward to the same distance as the center buck. Doing that would show he's probably a little larger, but not by a huge margin.

[ATTACH]970594[/ATTACH]

Nice. Thanks.

[Hornfan]

Only thing I have to add is some bucks just seem to be bigger than others, even holding content age, body health, etc. On our Throckmorton lease we had for 5 years there were bucks that were healthy fat 5-6 year olds that weighed 160. There were also some that weighed 190. The larger ones just were larger framed animals. Not sure how to explain it. I guess they’re like humans in that way.