Tilden Burro

The antlers are nothing to write home about, but would you look at the body on this mesquite fed south Texas buck! I let him walk, but I'd like to hear how old you think he is and how much he weighs.He looked like a donkey coming down the sendero.

That's a hog

4.5 and well fed. Very well fed.

That is one healthy deer.

5 yr old with his hock staining down his back leg already. He looks short and blocky to me which does not weigh as much as a long bodied deer.(I will say I am poor judge of live weight on deer)

Here's a picture from a different angle, he is fairly long bodied, and yes they were already interested in certain does. Would you look at that neck!

I think if you care anything about future genes you'd get rid of him.

He looks 5+ to me. I see chicken fried steaks.

If you take him you are going to need some help loading him.

That's exactly why I didn't shoot him, Don. I sure missed going to your place this year, but was short on the green stuff.

What pitchfork said...

I'll go with 3 1/2. They look older with the neck all swelled up during the rut!

I'd go with 5, looks like a hoss.

Very hard to say from those photos. He's all bunched up in the first three pics and can't see enough of his face, neck and shoulders in the 4th one. First impression 4 1/2 and maybe 200 lbs on the hoof. PM me your phone number and I'll txt you known 5.5 and 6.5 year old S TX bucks, one of which weighs about 240 on the hoof. You're free to add them to this thread for sake of comparison, if you'd like.

I is very hard to judge body size of a single deer in a picture. Most people would miss this bucks weight very badly.

He said burro, not mule

Throw a weight guess out on that mule then

Heck, I dunno. I've never cleaned a muley nor been around very many. He's OLD and has lost a bunch of muscle tone. I'll say 240-260 on the hoof.

You made my point about judging a lone deer from a pic from an unknown area. You are off about a 100 lbs. That buck dressed 135 lbs that same year as that pic. He was very old. This is that same buck running away from me a couple of days earlier.

I knew I would make your point for you. Want to see a ~ 240 pound native Texas whitetail? The reason I say 240 is I have killed a handful between 230-238 lbs live weight on this place and this one appears to be larger than any of them.

I have seen WT dead on the ground that weighed between 240 and 258 live weight. I have pics of some also alive and on the ground. Most are very long bodied and do not look short and squatty. The worst I was ever fooled by a buck was in La Salle County. I had seen him for 3 yrs and mostly he was alone at the time. Even got him on video and TC. I told the LO he was the biggest bodied deer I had ever seen on ranch he killed a buck on that (was a native deer) field dressed 208 lbs. The deer was a mainframe 9 with really heavy mass and his bodied was thick like this Mule Deer buck above. His neck was from his jaw to his body and was massive. The owner killed this buck finally after hunting him most of the season. I was shocked by his body weight. He dressed 165 lbs, a far cry from 208. But looking back he had all the signs off a squatty short bodied buck, I just did not choose to heed those signs. He carried over 41" of mass with dark antlers. Made him a great trophy. From that day on I tread lightly on body size and weight guess unless I have more than one picture or another deer to judge by standing next to the deer.

Heck, stx. You may not have been that far off early in the season versus late season on that La Salle Co wt. How much weight does a deer lose throughout the rut? A 240 pound buck early could have easily been a 200 pound buck late in the season. And I know exactly what you are referring to about the different body types. Heck a man in La Salle County and you are the two who pointed it out to me repeatedly.

Did that muley dress 135 soon after that photo or late in the season? Obviously he never weighed 240-260 if he dressed 135 at some point, just curious as to what you think he weighed in the photo you posted.

That mulie was killed a couple of days after those photos. He was fat. He just was short and squatty and never saw 200 lbs live weight in his life.
Some deer loose a lot of weight in the rut and others not as much. Just the same as some bucks can loose a lot of weight in the first two weeks of the rut and look like a shell of what they did before that time. 20% is not uncommon and have heard of 25% loss of body weight in the rut type numbers thrown out. The better the year the more weight they can loose also.
Here is a pic of a 258 lb live weight buck. You know firsthand how tall all that area is in the dock area of the cleaning room. This buck was very long bodied but with that large shoulder/neck size it made him look squatty. He had the largest neck at the base of his jaw of any buck ever taken on this ranch.