We were shocked to find this buck still in velvet during a recent thermal drone survey on November 1st. Has anyone ever seen a deer hold onto their velvet this late into the season?

Most of the time it's a ball dropping affair . I shot one two years ago on opening weekend that was still in velvet on opening morning.

Interesting! I figured others had to have some stories as well. It was pretty wild for us having not seen any velvet for the past month and a half of surveys.

Landowner friend of mine in Colorado last year shot a MD buck in velvet during 2nd season. The buck was a gelding. He had no nuts..... True story.

Agree with others on his inability to do his thing.
How can you tell from that type pic that hes in velvet. I sure couldn’t tell but Ive never looked at night pics like that.

Great question! When bucks are in velvet, the warm blood makes the antlers "glow" bright like the rest of the body under the thermal camera. Hard horned antlers are much more faint as they do not have any heat. Here's a photo of some bucks that are out of velvet.

Learned something today, which I always like to do. Thanks.

Glad to hear it!

There’s a condition that I forgot the name of . But the bucks stay in velvet and if I rember when we looked it up never shed .

Fairly common in parts of the hill country. We called them Stags. Another name for them is a Cactus Buck. They are the best eating deer.

I believe the term is cryptorchidism...where one or both testes fail to descend resulting in a hormone deficiency.

We had a young buck on the place we were hunting in Gillespie County back in the '80s that produced a little six-point set of antlers but they never hardened properly. My dad wound up putting him in the freezer so we were able to confirm that neither of his testicles had descended. Fattest whitetail I've ever seen, too!