Doesnt it make you sick to find...

[bloodycactus]

Found dead this year

[Texas8point]

[Cam-Mac]

Sippy is this the place your family just bought? Did you hunt it last year?

[Sippy]

Yep. I have been hunting and working on it for 8 years.

[Smart]

I have been working and hunting on this property for the past 6 years and we had the opportunity to purchase it this year.

Yep. I have been hunting and working on it for 8 years.

6 or 8?......

[Coach W]

I googled em. I think dr deer came up along with a couple more studies.. I just googled fatality rates and some other key words... Mature buck, Read through a couple studies for South and central Texas... Each had numbers on that line... They did include fawns, i recall they tagged buck fawns and followed them through radio collars... Seems like one study said of 100 tagged 75 died before 6.

But ive slept since then and was drinking a tad too.

[Encinal]

I googled em. I think dr deer came up along with a couple more studies.. I just googled fatality rates and some other key words... Mature buck, Read through a couple studies for South and central Texas... Each had numbers on that line... They did include fawns, i recall they tagged buck fawns and followed them through radio collars... Seems like one study said of 100 tagged 75 died before 6.

But ive slept since then and was drinking a tad too.

With no hunter mortality? No helicopter mortality? You handle deer by popping them with a net gun.... A lot are going to die... I don't care what they say.

So that data is kinda like Shrodinger's cat.

[Coach W]

With no hunter mortality? No helicopter mortality? You handle deer by popping them with a net gun.... A lot are going to die... I don't care what they say.

So that data is kinda like Shrodinger's cat.

I'm pretty sure they just caught em once as fawns and watched em through radio collars.. But either way...

Point is still there regardless of if the numbers are skewed a bit (say 10percent) by human involvement.

As a deer gets older, it has a higher risk of dying of natural causes. The older it gets, the worse it's odds for survival. Low fence small acreage... It's a very calculated risk letting a nice (145-150) 4.5 year old 8 point walk when in the next few years (if he makes it with the odds stacked against him) that he puts on 6-10 more inches... Kind of a bird in the hand versus two in the bush type of deal.

[Encinal]

Point is still there regardless of if the numbers are skewed a bit by human involvement.

As a deer gets older, it has a higher risk of dying of natural causes. The older it gets, the worse it's odds for survival. Low fence small acreage... It's a very calculated risk letting a nice (145-150) 4.5 year old 8 point walk when in the next few years (if he makes it with the odds stacked against him) that he puts on 6-10 more inches... Kind of a bird in the hand versus two in the bush type of deal.

Well a 150" 8 point as a 4 year old could end up being 180. That's a monster 4 year old... Especially off feed... That deer walks every time in my opinion... You wil have many chances at 140-150 inch deer... That 150 is one if your true chances at a monster. The odds are never in your favor of killing a huge buck... But when you have one going and kill it halfway there... You have much less chance.

Like i said... If the worry is hunter mortality that's one thing... But those numbers are too high for a natural mortality average.

[Coach W]

Coach were are you getting your mortality numbers from? If I remember right the studies Ive seen showed the mortality of a mature buck being less than 10% once they reached maturity.

If I remember it right.. It was saying that bucks in their 6.5-7.5 had it the worse... They are out trying to breed everything, making ore rubs than any other age class, and fighting off the younger bucks... it proved to be just too much... A lot of them died post rut from being run down.

3.5-4.5 had it pretty bad as well... Fighting to find their space in the gene pool... Getting whooped by the older bucks... Post rut was tuff on them too..

At 5.5 it was less than 10% mortality... Golden years

Just what I've read before and re read in a couple surveys..

[TSper20]

It's actually 10 times worse to lose a great deer on a low fence ranch... you have to work that much harder to manage your bucks due to bordering propery poor practices... losing a great deer on a high fence place is bad, no doubt, but the landowner is the one who can control who takes what and when. The way high-fence TX has gotten, more than likely you will have another opportunity to take a big deer on the property. Our place is 380 acres low fence... minimum age to kill a trophy deer is 4 1/2... even though peak is north of that, we've had our hearts broken too many times by letting deer pass at 4 1/2... I'd really hope to hear that deer died from natural causes instead of a bad shot!

[jcox]

Wow, nice buck. I agree, its hard to pass up a nice 4.5 but if you dont, you will never see a 5.5 year old buck. Deer in my area have no problem reaching 5.5 years. Maybe we are just lucky.

[JStrickland]

was this found on your place in coleman county Sioppy?

[Chad C]

Just wait until you have a high mortality year. It can be very depressing!

[Sippy]

6 or 8?......

7

I really cant remember. Sometime late elementary school/early middle school

was this found on your place in coleman county Sioppy?

Yep.