Posted By: sloveless
Age/thoughts on 10pt and a spike - 10/22/14 04:29 PM
Okay, so this is a ~300 acre property I hunt in McCulloch county. It is LF, relatively high hunting pressure, with other folks on the property and neighbors that are trigger happy. We rarely see mature deer, but I am trying to not be the neighbor that shoots the 2yr old bucks. We have a pretty poor buck to doe ratio, and I try to work on that every year, but I think I am the only one that shoots does - everybody else just shoots bucks.
With that said, give me some thoughts and age estimates for this 10 pt. This is probably one of the top 2 bucks I have seen on this property in ~5 years. I'm going to guess 3.5 just for kicks. Sorry for the somewhat crappy pics, he didn't want to stand broadside like a good boy.
Okay, so here is my spike. I am thinking he is young, but with this amount of length, if he was going to branch I imagine he would have already. Don't want to start the shoot vs. save the spike debate. Thoughts on age and if this is genetic. I think 2.5 and am leaning towards shoot.
It has been a really good year it seems, way more basket 8s than we have seen in past. We used to see a lot of 4-6 point 1.5/2.5 YO's, this year seems like almost all of our young bucks look like this:
With that said, give me some thoughts and age estimates for this 10 pt. This is probably one of the top 2 bucks I have seen on this property in ~5 years. I'm going to guess 3.5 just for kicks. Sorry for the somewhat crappy pics, he didn't want to stand broadside like a good boy.
Okay, so here is my spike. I am thinking he is young, but with this amount of length, if he was going to branch I imagine he would have already. Don't want to start the shoot vs. save the spike debate. Thoughts on age and if this is genetic. I think 2.5 and am leaning towards shoot.
It has been a really good year it seems, way more basket 8s than we have seen in past. We used to see a lot of 4-6 point 1.5/2.5 YO's, this year seems like almost all of our young bucks look like this: