As we move into opening day of deer season for rifle I thought I'd share something I learned on aging deer by their teeth. My neighbor and I went to a whitetail seminar about a year a half ago in Knox City. This was put on by biologist from A&M, Texas Tech and handful of other biologist from around the country as well as the local Texas game biologist from around that area. It was really well done and a ton of helpful information. The topic of aging deer by their teeth came up. They had a three or four different groups of jaw/teeth, each group had five or six sets of teeth for folks to try their luck at aging them. Ranchers, hunters and farmers that really thought they could age by their teeth came up, all gave their educated guesses on how old each set of teeth were in each group.

Once everyone who wanted to age them was done. The biologist listened to their findings. Then he told all of them you are all wrong in your assessments. It's impossible to age a deer by their teeth once their past eighteen months old. Well this started a bit of a fire storm. He said let me explain. It just can't be done. He said the first group of teeth were all three and half year old's. The next group were all four and half, the next group were all five and half year old's. Too be honest I'm not sure if there was another group. Each group of teeth showed different wear patterns, from a little to a lot of wear and color variations from light to dark. These patterns have been what folks have used for generations to age deer.

He explained if the area has a lot of sandy soil, it will wear down teeth rapidly. The soil content of any area wears teeth at very inconsistent patterns. No two counties, areas or possibly different parts of a ranch have the same soil contents. Each group of deer teeth ranged from 3.5 to 6.5 years old deer. If deer are eating a lot acorns, their teeth will be a lot darker and browner than deer eating grasses and corn.

There was a lot more that went into this. However, most of us who attended realized the game biologist were correct, you really can't age a deer by their teeth.

The science behind annular aging of incisors says the age will be within a year most of the time.

There is no hard and fast “guarantee” to getting an age on a true low fence buck. There is only one way to know for sure how old a deer is and that is tagging it at birth and following it over the years.

Other than that, we can get within a year or two most of the time.

There was a test done a few years ago where they had biologist tooth age deer whose age was already known. Results were very poor as far as the biologist aging. The study also included results of aging in a lab (cementum annuli)and those results were also poor.
I believe the most accurate way to age deer is to keep track of them year to year with cameras and videos.

Deer range over a pretty good area. Bucks that you see on your place would have mostly eaten the same things in their lives. It would take time, but I suspect you could judge your own deer against their previous peers with some accuracy (+-1yr). Unfortunately you'd likely have to have 3-4 known jaws each of each age group (or at least 4, 5, and older than 5). I agree with TLK that your best bet is photographic evidence. It can be hard without scars or earmarks to know them, though, if they make a big jump from 2-3.

Yep. I can show you a deer that looks like he is 10 years old that is only 6.

I can show you a 6 year old deer that looks 3.

Deer are like people. They age different.

Yep. Cementum annuli or whatever they call the method and for whatever reason, works much better in climates with more extreme temperature changes during the year.

I agree with every single post so far as well as folks in the seminar. QSYB comments is something some may not think about. Over time with effort you can learn about deer in your area that may not hold true elsewhere.
We sent in a lot of teeth to the lab for years and “as far as we could tell” from what we thought we knew about the deer, they were close “most” of the time. A few deer they aged were definitely wrong based on long history with particular bucks.
Good thread.

As Leonardo so eloquently muttered, "I concur.".

I took a nice buck A few years back. We watched him every year on cameras and live . When I took him, we knew he was age 7. The lab test on his teeth came back at age 5. We knew them at the lab test were not very accurate either.
If we ever have a buck that we think may be 6, but we aren’t 100% sure we let him pass and take him the following year

Any guesses?

71/2 probably..

yeah that deer has definitely got some age. i'd be thinking 7-8

5.5 +

Double edge comment,
We hunt in sand country and have feeders throwing corn into sand 2x a day all year. Sandy to the point I spread old carpet under one of my feeders to keep the corn from soaking into the loose sand. We have shot several deer that we have 4-5 years of history with that show nothing even in the realm of the tooth wear pictured above.

Experienced the very same here. Also had a hunter who came in with what he and everybody else believed to be his mistake. We try to take trophies no earlier than 6 and if 5 we can understand that. If a hunter believes it is 5 and takes him, that would be not be acceptable. This one came in with the hunter believeing ii to be 4 after seeing it on the gound, some of us thinking a superior 3 year old and the teeth aging came back at 5. I guess all of us could've been wrong.

Maybe, but I guess we will both have to wait and see if it was accurate!

Had a long conversation with Jack Waymire (OK Department of Wildlife Conservation biologist) about this subject some years ago. His viewpoint after seeing thousands of jaw samples over his several decade career was that tooth wear aging was an educated guess at best. He could get pretty close on deer for the WMA he managed, but that was due to years of familiarity with the resident deer and environmental conditions.

Exactly!! There is no perfect way to judge age other than knowing the deer for all his life. I had a white eight point that showed at my blind at three years old and was with me five more years. He never showed up any more after eight. I couldn't age him easy..He was very large even at three. I didn't want to harvest him as I considered him good luck.