Thursday, September 08, 2011
Age and Aging
Most folks know biologists can age deer after the harvest by examining the lower jaw for tooth wear and replacement. But, many hunters don’t realize that they also need to be able to age deer – and not just dead ones, but live ones in the field! You see, aging before pulling the trigger is critical to making good harvest decisions.
While aging harvested or live deer takes practice, managers and hunters alike need to learn to how. As for aging by tooth wear and replacement, there are many good go-bys that will illustrate how to go about it. We’re not going to go into that here, but we will take a look at aging in the field.
Every hunter needs to be fairly good at field-aging 1.5 to 3.5-year-old bucks. Serious managers need to be reasonably accurate through 6.5 and pretty decent at aging does. All this takes familiarity with the local herd, a basic knowledge of the year-classes and practice.
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Posted by
David Morris on 09/08 at 12:47 AM
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