Teeth Aging Texas Hill Country Deer

[Top Of Texas]

Most "trophy" bucks will be killed at 8+ years old, and their teeth will almost always show 5 or 6. However, in the field they LOOK like 5 or 6 year old deer. To someone not familiar with the herd and not having the HISTORY we do with these bucks, they absolutely would incorrectly field judge the age on most of our bucks. And that includes me, if I didn't have the history. So an unfamiliar person would judge one of our bucks to be 6, kill him and the teeth show 6. There. Done. Tooth wear is accurate. When in reality we had been watching that same buck for 6+ years and estimate his age at 9+. The unfamiliar guy has no idea of what he actually killed, but since the tooth wear charts say 6, he was judged a 6 year old in the field, then by golly he was 6. Do you understand what I'm getting at?

Yes! I understand what you're getting at. I'll repeat it back to you so you'll know that I do. You follow the same deer for multiple years, enough years that the estimated ages of those deer exceed the tooth wear charts (8+), so say 9 just to stick with your example above. At around that age (9) the bucks begin to show body characteristics that would represent the typical "mature" deer (5-6 in your example). Deer gets shot and teeth will typically represent a 5-6 year old deer despite that you've estimated him to be 9 years old based on history. You've followed the same deer long enough that many of them reach an estimated age of 10-12 years. And that's working great, as well it should. Because the tooth wear does not meet your estimated ages, then you conclude that tooth wear is not accurate. You then extrapolate that conclusion to any and all potential uses of said tooth wear technique.

Am I hearing you?

I suspect we're arguing 2 different, yet related, subjects. What I'm trying to get you to understand is that, from a management standpoint, I don't care how many years a buck has been alive. I know, because of a mountain of empirical evidence from all across North America, that whitetails peak in antler growth when their teeth show 1-2 dished out molars. Regardless of the actual years - that's true. I also know, that serious hunters have gotten pretty good at identifying the body characteristics of bucks that will frequently result in having 1-2 dished out molars. Regardless of the actual years - that's mostly true. They're not using the molars as pre-harvest criteria (saying that for GarGuy); rather the mature body characteristics and the 1-2 dished molars are also related. Whether those bucks are 6 years old or 14 years old does not sever the bond of those relationships. Because of those relationships (body characteristics = 1-2 dished molars = peak antler growth) I can use tooth wear data to analyze harvest. Regardless of the actual years. Not kick people off leases. But it can identify the need for education and training, or eliminate that need, and give inference to harvest intensity. And that's just for the bucks.

[Top Of Texas]

I'll play along and I feel like it's probably a pretty obvious answer. Ranch #2. If I go by "the book" the average deer taken is 7 yrs old and if I don't then the average deer taken could be 9-10+. Either way really solid age management in my opinion.

Appreciate that. I would agree - solid age management. Ranch #2 probably builds history with their deer.

[Top Of Texas]

I’m fascinated at the tenacity FOR the accuracy of tooth wear aging in this thread. IMO, this is the problem taking results from one or a couple of very specific studies and practicing them as management gospel. The same thing happened years ago with the spike study. How many spikes got waxed for how many years because of that study? Years later, that “valid, data-driven, scientific research” proved to be full of holes, just flat wrong, and killing all spikes turned out to be a terrible deer management practice. Many have seen/experienced this same thing with the tooth-wear, that what was once written in stone actually might not be (isn’t) true.

When you have people that hunt all over every region of Texas, Mexico, high fence, low fence, great feed programs, no feed programs, public/private, pen deer/wild deer, etc., all reporting the same exact observations regarding lack of accuracy of tooth-aging deer, there is probably more than a little something to that. Is there a peer-reviewed empirical study to validate it? Not that I’m aware of, but the hundreds and hundreds of bucks seen and followed by the people posting on this thread are a significantly larger sample size than the 54 deer and 140 jaws cited in the Wildlife Society abstract. They also encompass way more of everything mentioned above.

My own experience is consistent with Chance, GarGuy, DaddyD, and the others that have posted in this thread, across multiple hill country and south Texas ranches. Tooth wear is wrong just as much or more than it is right, and nothing beats the history of seeing a deer over time to get a very close or maybe exact age on a deer. In some areas or ranches, deer jaws might actually match what the charts say they should be, but on the places I’ve been, that’s not the case.

I was at a ranch down south this weekend where 4 management bucks were killed. I looked at the jaws at 3 of them, thinking of this thread, and not one jaw matched the age those deer were. They were off by 2+ years (jaws showed younger than actual ages), according to what the charts say they should have shown. 0% accuracy when comparing to the tooth charts. I didn’t get a chance to see jaw #4 but I’d bet money it was in line with the other 3 and didn't match the charts.

This isn’t hunters “not liking what’s in the mouth or what the teeth show,” it’s seeing a deer on camera/in person for 3, 4, 5, or like some of these examples 10+ years, eventually killing that deer, and the jawbone not matching what these charts say it should. Time and time and time again.

I was intrigued and attempted to read the study from Wildlife Society Bulletin, but they wanted me to register and pay, so all I could find was the abstract. The abstract ToT quoted only used 54 bucks “Using 9 animals/age class, from 2.5 to 7.5 years old” (so no animals older than 7 were evaluated). They found that “Placement within the correct year class was achieved for 48% of male deer, and 90% were classified within 1 year of their actual age.”

The correct age class was only achieved 48% of the time. Coinflip odds at best. The same odds as accurately aging a deer based on a couple trail cam photos. Add to that, no old deer were evaluated, the 140 jaws they validated their data against with were all from the same location, and it’s no wonder they found what they found. They created a formula from a specific population, validated it back against that population, and found it to be accurate. Go figure.

Research has it's place and helps gain insight into different areas, but you can't discredit the thousands of hours of deer observation, hundreds of thousands of trail cam photos, and decades of experience and testimony shared on this thread, just because there isn't a peer-reviewed empirical study to validate what we're saying.

Excellent response. I've got the paper you mention as a PDF. I could Email it to you? Reading the Methods and Results might alter your opinion of the paper.

Also, be sure and check out my last response to Chance. That's a brief encapsulation of my tenacity for proper application of tooth wear in deer management.

[Top Of Texas]

I’m fascinated at the tenacity FOR the accuracy of tooth wear aging in this thread.

Since I'm the lone voice in the wilderness on this thread I take it that you're referring to me. I'm not going back to count, but I have numerous times acknowledged the the inaccuracy of tooth wear. In other threads as well. I can see where a guy wouldn't read all of this thread. I'm long winded, I know.

What I've argued FOR is that tooth wear has application in management in light of its inaccuracies, and I have offered numerous real life examples that demonstrate that to be true.

I have numerous times stated the value of building history. It's great! I have also pointed out its weaknesses, but those weaknesses, while real, don't negate its application in management.

I also feel the need to point out the decades in which tooth wear has added to good management and the individuals who spent careers using it to teach the hunting public a simple concept - let bucks get old. The antler restrictions in Texas, that the majority of hunters love, was based on tooth wear. Just look at the positive impact that's had.

There is one item that I definitely do not agree on, this is my trench. And that is the degree of differences in estimated ages (teeth vs history) and the frequency at which that occurs. I have not witnessed that frequency. Data sets that correlate with tooth wear also demonstrate that to be infrequent. Because of those, it will take a well designed, objective, large sample size, scientific study to change my mind. I'm open to having it changed, as always, but that's what it'll take.

[GarGuy]

Well that was well written but makes no sense. Your first paragraph acknowledges the inaccuracy of tooth wear and your last paragraph agrues that it is accurate and nothing short of an academic study will convince you otherwise.

I have yet to see where tooth wear was useful in any of the examples given. Management decisions are made based on the appearance and history of live deer. Once he is dead, the tooth wear is just a novelty.

[GarGuy]

Here is a real life example that may help you understand where I'm at.


I have a friend that is an electrician . He was helping me changed out a hot water heater. I told him to cut the power off and he said he did. I stuck a screw driver to the hot wire screw and blew fire like crazy. I walked out of the closet and told my friend the wire was hot.

He immediately got defensive and said it wasnt. He was positive he flipped the breaker. Nope, it's hot. He showed me the breaker. Nope, its hot. He showed me the breaker listing chart and which one was listed as the hot water heater proving he was right and the power was off.

Finally I told him it didnt matter how long he had been an electrician or how right he seemed, I had already experienced first hand that the wire was hot.

Turned out the breaker listing was wrong. He was a good guy that knew his stuff. He was totally convinced he was right but his base line info was wrong.

That's exactly the case here. ToT is a great guy that knows his stuff. Makes a great arguement based on the charts but hell, I already know first hand that the power is on.

[Chance Love]

I know there are some others out there with thoughts on this. Just spit it out. I like this discussion. May not agree with what you say, but I like the discussion.

[Miller]

I always thought it was a flawed science from the beginning because of this:

"All 6 observers agreed on the same age for a jaw only 19% of the time."
It stated in that article this was from 6 biologists with at least a Masters Degree in Wildlife Science.

Even if you truly believe in the method it is very inexact at best.

[panhandlehunter]

I always thought it was a flawed science from the beginning because of this:

"All 6 observers agreed on the same age for a jaw only 19% of the time."
It stated in that article this was from 6 biologists with at least a Masters Degree in Wildlife Science.

Even if you truly believe in the method it is very inexact at best.

That’s what I’m saying. If 6 of the “experts” can’t agree, then what does that tell you?

[Puncher51]

I definitely jumped in with 2 feet on tooth wear and replacement. I made sure every deer that was harvested at the ranch had its jaws pulled and we aged off of that. One year, we shot a buck that I had 5 years of history with, that we knew was 7, but his teeth showed 4-5. Cementum Annuli agreed he was 7. I have now had quite a few deer that we have a lot of history with show tooth wear 2+ years off what we know to be true, and 2 + years off what Cementum Annuli tells us. Now we still pull jaws to see what they say, but we don’t “bet the farm” on them so to say. Even though CA has been accurate so far with what we know to be true, I also realize it is nowhere close to fool proof. I just haven’t submitted enough of a sample size to show discrepancies.
I’ll continue to pull jaws and send teeth to labs, but I use the info I get from them more as a guide and not the Bible. Nothing replaces history with a deer.

[MooseontheLoose]

Excellent response. I've got the paper you mention as a PDF. I could Email it to you? Reading the Methods and Results might alter your opinion of the paper.

Also, be sure and check out my last response to Chance. That's a brief encapsulation of my tenacity for proper application of tooth wear in deer management.

I think instead of just emailing it to me, you could add it as an attachment, link it somehow, or snip the methods you are talking about. There are a ton of people lurking on this thread as well as some active participants who wouldn't mind reading it.

Since I'm the lone voice in the wilderness on this thread I take it that you're referring to me. I'm not going back to count, but I have numerous times acknowledged the the inaccuracy of tooth wear. In other threads as well. I can see where a guy wouldn't read all of this thread. I'm long winded, I know.

I've read the entire thread.

What I've argued FOR is that tooth wear has application in management in light of its inaccuracies, and I have offered numerous real life examples that demonstrate that to be true.

I have numerous times stated the value of building history. It's great! I have also pointed out its weaknesses, but those weaknesses, while real, don't negate its application in management.

What weaknesses are there in building history with a deer? The only thing I recall you mentioning was that people might mistake one deer for another deer? MAYBE it could happen on some very similar 8's or 10s, but building history is really straightforward and simple thing to do. Build a video/trail cam catalog of deer. Study the pics/videos/deer in person and track over time. Deer have a ton of unique characteristics, split ears, double throat patches, unique scars, etc., not to mention unique racks on bucks. If you study deer enough you will even start to recognize some of their faces over time, even without the antlers. Throw in annual patterns, home ranges, and it's not difficult. It even shows how often deer don't match their age characteristics, or how much they change or don't change over time.

There is one item that I definitely do not agree on, this is my trench. And that is the degree of differences in estimated ages (teeth vs history) and the frequency at which that occurs. I have not witnessed that frequency. Data sets that correlate with tooth wear also demonstrate that to be infrequent. Because of those, it will take a well designed, objective, large sample size, scientific study to change my mind. I'm open to having it changed, as always, but that's what it'll take.

You’ve already made your mind up that only a well-designed empirical study could even potentially influence your opinion. Nobody here will be able to do it. I just can't understand dismissing mounds of evidence, hundreds of case studies on individual deer, or personal observations from a big cross section of hunters/feed programs/geographical areas represented on this site.

The cited research with 48% accuracy isn’t going to change my mind either, because of what I've seen in the real world, each and every weekend, for years. Then, I come on here and see lots of other hunters from all over are all seeing and experiencing the same things. To me, that information carries some weight.

More of my own examples from this year. I killed a couple bucks that would have tooth-aged at 5 & 6. 5 and 6 are great old deer for the hill country, right?

Except the one that would have tooth-aged 5 was AT LEAST 4 in 2017. The deer that would have aged 6 based on tooth charts was AT LEAST 4 (and likely 5+) in 2016. Tooth charts were nowhere close again. I'm not unique or special in regard to these deer. This story has played out dozens of times on this thread alone.

I know, because of a mountain of empirical evidence from all across North America, that whitetails peak in antler growth when their teeth show 1-2 dished out molars. Regardless of the actual years - that's true. I also know, that serious hunters have gotten pretty good at identifying the body characteristics of bucks that will frequently result in having 1-2 dished out molars. Regardless of the actual years - that's mostly true.

Whether those bucks are 6 years old or 14 years old does not sever the bond of those relationships. Because of those relationships (body characteristics = 1-2 dished molars = peak antler growth) I can use tooth wear data to analyze harvest. Regardless of the actual years.

So sometime when a deer is mature, he will grow his best rack? InterestingThat's painting with an awfully broad brush, don't you think? In the "perfect tooth world," a buck's teeth starts dishing at 5. Then, sometime between 5 and 13, he grows his best set of horns. Not exactly stepping out on a limb with those statements.

What do you do about the old deer that start looking young again? What about the "is he 4 or 8" situation that people see in January? Without any history, we're back to coinflip (or worse) age estimation accuracy based on body characteristics. The peak antler growth year of a specific buck is a wild card that is anyone's guess.

What about the deer that have peak antler growth at 4, deer that never get dished out teeth (buck #2 at start of this thread), or the deer that don't see their top antler year until 10+? What about the bucks that never exhibit all (or even some) of the old deer characteristics? How do you figure those deer out without history?

Deer shown in this thread peaked after their 10th season. Elgato said today on the Mexico thread that some of the deer they saw this year peaked at year 12 and 13. The other data you cited with charts in post 71 said peak antler growth was at age 6. These double digit aged deer weren’t even close to reaching their peak and that study would have been wrapped up and concluded. The deer in the study might have peaked in year 6 when compared to their 3/4 year old racks, but the only way to definitely say which year was their actual peak, would have been to monitor them over the course of their lives, then make the determination once they died.

BUT, we don't have deer tooth charts that go up to 13, so how would we really know how old those deer actually were?

[Top Of Texas]

I believe I see the hang-up. Let me try to point it out like this.

First: We've been aware of the inaccuracies of tooth wear since, at least, I was first trained in the early 90's. That is not new information.

Second: I think maybe those of you, "Never Teeth" guys, are under the impression that the only application of tooth wear is for judging whether individual bucks were killed at an appropriate number of years of their lives. As a hunting community in Texas, that's what we've been force fed from the trophy deer push that has grown over the last several decades. Just as the LooseMoose indicated with numerous examples from many parts of Texas. We've been taught to get down in the weeds and analyze an individual leaf with a microscope. But what I'm trying to get you guys to do, is to stand up, shake that off, take some big steps backwards, and take in a view of the entire forest. From a management standpoint. Stop worrying about nailing down the years of individual bucks and stop polluting the hunting community, from that narrowly focused view, with the false concept that tooth wear has no application in deer management. More evidence and applications later, I just wanted to real quick respond to keep my hat in the ring.

[GarGuy]

Good deal. Im looking forward to an actual example where tooth wear is useful.

[Chance Love]

I believe I see the hang-up. Let me try to point it out like this.

First: We've been aware of the inaccuracies of tooth wear since, at least, I was first trained in the early 90's. That is not new information.

Second: I think maybe those of you, "Never Teeth" guys, are under the impression that the only application of tooth wear is for judging whether individual bucks were killed at an appropriate number of years of their lives. As a hunting community in Texas, that's what we've been force fed from the trophy deer push that has grown over the last several decades. Just as the LooseMoose indicated with numerous examples from many parts of Texas. We've been taught to get down in the weeds and analyze an individual leaf with a microscope. But what I'm trying to get you guys to do, is to stand up, shake that off, take some big steps backwards, and take in a view of the entire forest. From a management standpoint. Stop worrying about nailing down the years of individual bucks and stop polluting the hunting community, from that narrowly focused view, with the false concept that tooth wear has no application in deer management. More evidence and applications later, I just wanted to real quick respond to keep my hat in the ring.

Well I'll be checking back in to see what this other evidence is. And I thought the whole point of using the tooth-wear method was to "nail down a year"? Isn't that what all of the official studies have tried to show?

No one here is "polluting the hunting community" by suggesting tooth wear is simply not a consistent method to accurately age deer. Quite the contrary.

[Top Of Texas]

And I thought the whole point of using the tooth-wear method was to "nail down a year"?
.

See!? That's exactly what I was talking about! That perfectly illustrates that point. We've been falsely lead astray and convinced that's all that matters.

Studies from the 1940s and 1950s discuss the inaccuracies of tooth wear for nailing down exact years and go on to desribe its importance in management. It's not new. What's new, in the last few decades, is the sole focus on the specific years of individual deer. Step back and see the forest.

I'm trying to figure out how to post these studies and others. I have them in PDF, but can't figure out how to share here. Help and guidance requested.