Thought I would post some pics and ages of the mule deer bucks taken from the endemic CWD area we hunt and manage a ranch in. These deer are tooth aged in the lab, it works great up here with our extreme season changes.
We hunt management bucks on the ranch, bucks that are not basic 4x4's.
I'll start with my 2017 buck- 8 1/2 yrs old.

2016, 7 1/2 yrs .

Nice old bucks

2015, 4 1/2 yrs, Dead find is next. Aged at 8 1/2 yrs. Found when walking up to my buck. He was next on the hit list.

Interesting, for the eye test the 7 yr old looks much older and grayer than the 8 yr old. To bad you killed the last 2 bucks remaining in that zone that CWD has decimated.

Just wanted to show CWD is not decimating this herd. Thread might get locked but not my intention to spark a debate, just to show the sky is not falling.
I have about 20 years worth of deer ages on this ranch,. Took 4 nice bucks this past year and 0 tested positive for CWD.
Is it an issue , yes but we're not panicking just yet.
By the way the ranch shares the high fence on one side with the Sybille Research unit where CWD has been and is being studied.

Look close, that 7 1/2 yd old has a puffy spot by the left eye. It was a puncture wound from an antler tine. Went almost into the brain cavity.
We have found some older bucks get the white , pale face and some are dark faced. We also see the more brownish colored hair and darker gray colors between them.

How does the toothwear age you see compare to the age from the lab?

It's interesting. This is rocky country with very little or no agriculture, only some grass hay meadows. The old deer usually have very worn teeth but some young ones can be worn too. We've been trying to save jaw bones to compare last few years. We always look at them though. The 4-6 yr age class are hard to distinguish between sometimes. We've been surprised a few years with the ages.

We'll get ages on 4 bucks from this past fall sometime later in summer. Should be 3 older bucks and one little younger.

Good info, thank you

Great info and pics. The whiter the face and lighter hair color on top of skull I've found to be very consistent with 7+ year old bucks we kill. Thanks for sharing.

Nice bucks. Those deer are more reddish brown than our Texas Mulies that tend to be more blueish- grey. Some dandies. Thanks for posting.

Old Mulies sure get faded white, gray on their head tops, a lot more pronounced looking than old whitetails.

Many times the whiter face is what we notice first when glassing, old doe get it too up here.

Found a pic of the lower jaw on this 7 1/2 yr old buck. Really shows the wear they can get in this rough country.

Got the ages back on the bucks taken this past fall, surprised by a couple of them. Body size varied a good bit between the 4 bucks.

5.5 yrs


4.5 yrs


6.5 yrs


5.5 yrs


We started mineral supplementing a few years back and it seems to be paying off with better body size and antlers on the younger bucks, 4 1/2 yr and younger.
We have been using Whitetail Institute 30-06 w/protein for supplementing during spring/summer and winter.

Very impressive. It takes our bucks on the Pitchfork longer to reach the body and antlers you have there. We don’t supplement the feed so I’m sure that has an effect. Thanks for the update!