Do you think he's got potential?

[txdukklr]

yes and that first deer looks every bit of 2.5 years old. I'd kill the second one before the first if I had to cull one out.

[quarterback]

This is not the season to judge deer!! All the bucks will be much better next fall if they get plenty of rain. If they don't, it may be another looooong season.


I think your first buck is still young. With good conditions he could be a nice one next year.

[ILUVBIGBUCKS]

Im way off...i saw him and thought 2.5 or 3.5 right off the bat. No way I would say 1.5 ...

X1

I couldn't agree more. He is too well developed to be 1.5. He also has sizable hock stains which a 1.5 year old will not have 99.99% of the time. I'm leaning on 2.5 but he surely could be 3.5 and just run down some from running. More pics of him at different angles would sure help.

Saying this, if he's 2.5 I think he has very good potential but if he's 3.5 he's probably never going to be a monster buck but still a nice deer!

[ILUVBIGBUCKS]

Scissorhands, the deer in the 2nd pic you posted is a mature deer. When I look just at his body he looks 4.5, but he's older then that! I've yet to see a buck with stains running down his legs that is younger then 5.5 and most of the time they are 6.5+!!!

An example is a buck that we know beyond a shadow of a doubt is 6.5 and he shows up at a feeder very run down from the rut. In most of the pictures the deer looks not a day over 4.5 and in some he looks like the 'classic' three year old. This includes his face, shoulders, brisket, hams, belly, and even his neck! Yet when you look at his hocks and back legs they look exactly like this deer you've posted!

A deer can look completely different at different times of the year. We had a deer two years ago coming to protein that we were all thinking was a super nice 4.5 year old. He was a main frame 10 with a couple of small stickers and about a 6" drop. We did not recognize him from the year before from any of the bucks we knew. Long story short version is that come the rut he swelled a neck bigger then any South Texas buck I've ever seen and his legs were completely black all the way to his hooves! I was the first to see this deer on a stand and knew instantly that we had under aged him by at least 3 years! We had a client coming that week for a hunt on a deer in that range so we put her on him and she missed him at 60 yards. We never saw him again the rest of the year and another guide culled him the first week of Sept the following year. He was a main frame 10 point with terrible tine length except he still had great brow tines (longest tines on his head). The deer was 8.5+ and didn't even break 120"!

All I'm trying to say is even people who look at literally 100s of deer a year still miss on aging them on the hoof! It is not an exact science for sure. You can get better with the more experience you get but there will always be deer that can fool you.

IMO, the 1st deer you posted will be a much better buck then the last one. What he'll do is anybody's guess because each deer is different. We've had deer just blow up between 2.5-3.5 and then make very small gains each year
until they were killed at 6.5. One buck in particular stands out. He was a typical 10, 150"+ deer at 3.5. We killed him at 6.5 and he was a 166" 10 point with two small extras. We realized at 4.5 & 5.5 he really hadn't done much but kept hoping that 'this would be the year for his jump'. It didn't happen. He basically put on some mass, 2 little stickers, and a tiny bit of tine length in 3 years, that's it.

Good luck with your management program and I hope you get everyone on board and on the same page to achieve your goals!

[FJTMEGA]

smoke him next year, nothing but a cull

[cosmiccowboy]

IMHO first deer is at least 3.5 and second deer is at least 4.5.

[stopper]

From the date on the cam he should be at least 9 now. I don't think he can stand another year.