Teeth Aging Texas Hill Country Deer

[Chance Love]

I feel like we're having a discussion. Totally. Chance, if you'd prefer for me to step out of your thread, just say so.

I like discussion. Stay on board!

I acknowledge that tooth wear is imprecise. I also acknowledge that extreme degrees of imprecision (i.e. a 10 yr old deer with 4 yr old teeth) are exceptionally, extraordinarily, rare. I acknowledge that photographic history with a buck can build confidence in determining harvest time (shed horns in consecutive years are my favorite!).

I agree with this, except for the "extreme degrees of imprecision" part. We have just seen it happen way too often. And it's not just me. I know quite a few guys running ranches and they have all come to the same conclusion. We all came to the same realization independent of each other.

I continue to strike the deceased equine because I continue to see comments about tooth wear being "useless," "worthless," "meaningless," etc. To me, that reveals that I have failed in communicating the concept that tooth wear, while imprecise, has application and importance in deer management. Thus, my continued attempts at different descriptions of the same issue. I really thought the charts would do it, because, don't you see that if it were really "all over the place" then eventually, with a thousand dead deer, the chart would be a flat line from about 3 yrs old to 8 yrs old. See? If what your saying is the norm, then that's what the charts would look like. Think about it like this - if you rolled dice a thousand times and charted the results what would that chart look like?

Here again, you are assuming the charts are accurate and the rate of tooth wear is the same across the board. How about this...A guy with no history of our deer herd could have come out and shot those two bucks I posted. If he was a "by the tooth" guy he would call them 4 and 6, and conclude that our deer reach their potential at 4-6 years of age. All because that is what he was taught by the charts. When in reality, those bucks were actually 10+, but he simply has no idea because he didn't have the history. And these are not rare occurrences for us. Not by a long shot. Another example: I know of at least one of "our" bucks that was shot by a neighbor last season. They called him 6, by his teeth. I reached out to the guy and spoke with him since we had so much history with that buck. He was absolutely no younger than 8. Likely older. We called him 8 on the conservative side.

To be fair, on most of our bucks if I did not have history with them, I would just make the typical field observations looking at typical body characteristics. A lot of the bucks that are 8+, look like 5 or 6 year olds. And more often than not, their teeth will show 5 or 6, further complicating things with teeth guys. But when I watch a buck for 6 years, assuming he was 3 when I started watching (so a 9 year old), kill him and his teeth show 5...well you get the point.

I believe this is where the charts lost all credibility with me. I have no doubt the guys that worked up the data were killing bucks that in the field looked 5, or 6, 7, whatever. Then they go to look at teeth and record the data. Low and behold the teeth show a correlation to what they thought the age was in the field, and with what the chart shows for age. When in the real world they simply don't have the history they need to make an actual, educated guess. I was TOTALLY on board with that method...until I was able to start having serious history with bucks.

How about this? If all the bucks you shoot have body conformation like the attached photo (which I merely pulled off the internet), you should consistently kill good deer. No looking in his mouth prior to shooting. No history required. That deer should be, depending on other environmental and behavioral variables, at or near its peak in antler development. Agreed?!

I can't really agree on that pic. I don't know anything about the area or the herd. Since his hocks are snow white I'd assume it's very early season, and looks like it's up north somewhere. Those northern bodies fool me so I would likely call him a 5 or 6 year old. Might change my mind later in the season. If I thought a buck was of that age, then no I don't believe he is at his peak. Far from it. But he is a HECK of a deer!

[Miller]

This is the study that has me questioning TRW for aging deer. 20-30% accuracy where it matters most.

There are a few studies that you can google and they all seem to say that after 4.5 years the accuracy of tooth wear method goes below 50% and drops fast.

I would think someone that advocates for the tooth wear method still being relevant should get a neutral third party to do an updated study and hope the results come back favorable.

I would love to see someone do a study from say 3-4 different regions of of the state and see what the results look like. That would obviously take a lot of man power and money.

[Capt.Brown]

I really like how this thread hasn’t turned into an all out war or words, both Chance and top of Texas get congrats for having a healthy debate. This is more of what TBH and our Country needs, this thread has been very informative and eye opening to many... thanks guys for keeping it civil!

[Top Of Texas]

I like discussion. Stay on board!



I agree with this, except for the "extreme degrees of imprecision" part. We have just seen it happen way too often. And it's not just me. I know quite a few guys running ranches and they have all come to the same conclusion. We all came to the same realization independent of each other.

That's not what I've experienced. I know a lot of seasoned individuals who would say the same. There is some research going on, age and tooth wear were not the objective, but the free range fawns and 1.5 year old deer that were ear tagged are starting to trickle in (harvested). The sample size is currently pretty small, but so far, no big surprises, however the project was started only 6 years ago.

I suppose it would be the epitome of foolishness to suggest that perhaps the deer are being mis-aged based on trail cams?

I do find it curious that, in the past (for some), a guy would see a buck in the pasture, estimate his age based on body conformation, shoot the buck, then look in his mouth to see how close he had estimated the age. But now, some hunters give more credence to their ability to age a buck on the hoof than they do to tooth wear. So much so, that now a guy estimates a buck's age, shoots him, looks in his mouth and it's not what he expected, and so the tooth wear is declared to be wrong. Now, in order to develop history, each buck must have a starting point. I assume y'all don't ear tag all your fawns. So, somewhere along the way, say 3-4 years old (although y'all mention 5 yr), you begin the history of a buck based on body conformation. Now, here's the really curious part about all that ---->

The origins of field aging come from tooth wear.

Think about it. Field aging didn't begin with wild, ear tagged deer. It began with a guy watching a deer in the field, evaluating his body conformation, shooting the buck, looking in its mouth, and then putting it in a category. Those physical characteristics of age had to be developed, and then shared with other hunters. Field aging videos first came out sometime around the early 90's, I think. But they were originally based on tooth wear. All those posters you see these days - That's how it all started. What does this reveal about the starting point on building history with a deer? Is it based on flawed data? By the way, the previous charts reveal that the data is not flawed, I don't understand why folks aren't seeing that.

Because of the more objective nature of tooth wear, most educated individuals should get the same, or really close to the same, answer. But, in field aging, you can get a wide variety of estimates. There's plenty of trail cam posts on TBH Forum to reveal that. And if you want to start a really heated debate, share consecutive year photos, over numerous years, and see how many agree that it's the same deer. That eventually has to boil-down to just - because I said so.

Before anyone boils over at that last paragraph, following bucks over consecutive years can be done and is a great tool. But it does not negate the value of tooth wear in making management decisions.

[Top Of Texas]

I've got a few more thoughts/observations, but need to run. I'll try to check back before the end of the day.

[lnester]

Love this discussion, keep it up guys.

My only input is this: statistics. Let's assume you collect 1,000 (or 10,000) sets of data from deer. Assuming tooth wear can be normally distributed from X to Y years. Normal distribution states that 95% of the data will be within 2 standard deviations of the mean. So if you had 1,000 sets of teeth from 1,000 deer all aged at 6 years, when you look at one tooth from one deer, you can say with 95% certainty that deer's teeth will show age of 6.0 years plus or minus 2 SDs. See image below.

Made up numbers here, just to show an example.

Assume a standard deviation of 0.5 years. Two standard deviations would be 1.0 years. So in reality, we would be 95% certain that the jaw bone aging would range from 5.0 on the low end to 7.0 on the high end.

I'm totally making up numbers, but you get the point.

So if tooth aging indicates 6 years and the deer is really 7 years, was that aging incorrect? I would say no. It's within 2 standard deviations, so that method is accurate and acceptable.

Data is not binary, you must account for some deviation and statistical margin of error. Also, be careful to not throw out the methods of aging because of a few data out in the tails of the curve (i.e. the ones that are 4, 5 or 6 years different from the actual age).

[Top Of Texas]

Love this discussion, keep it up guys.

My only input is this: statistics. Let's assume you collect 1,000 (or 10,000) sets of data from deer. Assuming tooth wear can be normally distributed from X to Y years. Normal distribution states that 95% of the data will be within 2 standard deviations of the mean. So if you had 1,000 sets of teeth from 1,000 deer all aged at 6 years, when you look at one tooth from one deer, you can say with 95% certainty that deer's teeth will show age of 6.0 years plus or minus 2 SDs. See image below.

Made up numbers here, just to show an example.

Assume a standard deviation of 0.5 years. Two standard deviations would be 1.0 years. So in reality, we would be 95% certain that the jaw bone aging would range from 5.0 on the low end to 7.0 on the high end.

I'm totally making up numbers, but you get the point.

So if tooth aging indicates 6 years and the deer is really 7 years, was that aging incorrect? I would say no. It's within 2 standard deviations, so that method is accurate and acceptable.

Data is not binary, you must account for some deviation and statistical margin of error. Also, be careful to not throw out the methods of aging because of a few data out in the tails of the curve (i.e. the ones that are 4, 5 or 6 years different from the actual age).

I'm so glad you posted that. It inspired me to do some literature search in Jstor (online scientific journals). I couldn't find any official documentation, but generally speaking, annual tooth wear should fit a normal distribution curve.

Interestingly, dare I say ironically, while I was searching the literature I stumbled across a fantastically juicy tid-bit. The Noble Foundation (S Central OK), in addition to their 2002 study on tooth wear, more recently (2014) published research on Aging On The Hoof. They tested "106 wildlife professionals" at the Southeastern Deer Study Group meeting in 2009 by having them field aged bucks based on trail cam photos. The free range bucks (70 of them) were captured as fawns and ear tagged from 1997 through 2005. Trail cam photos were collected from 1998 through 2006. "Overall accuracy averaged 36% when placing deer into year classes."

I couldn't figure out how to strip this table from the PDF file. I finally gave up and took a picture of my screen. I hope everyone can zoom in a little and read it. This table was an excellent way to present this data, note how widely distributed the 3 yr old estimates were.

So you can read the entire paper - Source: Wildlife Society Bulletin (2011-) , Vol. 38, No. 1 (March 2014), pp. 96-102

[Hix]

I wonder how accurate the chart data would be if +/- 1 year was acceptable for a correct aging.
I bet most of the incorrect aren’t missed by more than a year.




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[Puncher51]

I also wonder how accurate they would be able to age deer via photograph if they had multiple years of pictures of the same buck? Aging deer by one picture is probably even more variable than aging by tooth wear, and that’s saying something.

[kyle1974]

Oh man. Trail cams for aging deer?

That’s just begging for trouble.

[Capt.Brown]

I will take many years of documenting deer with trail cams and regular photos over tooth charts or collecting tooth data six ways to Sunday. Teeth are just not accurate period I will argue that till the cows come home.

[GarGuy]

Aging deer from a few pics can be almost as much of a trap shoot as jaw aging old deer. The difference us the j.g ae aged deer has no chance of getting any older. Earlier I talked about gathering pics. This was not so much to age by but to develop HISTORY on individual deer. While history may not be 100 percent many people can follow a specific deer for many years from trail pics and visual sittings.

Now for the mature deer pic posted a while back... not many mature east tx deer ever look like that. As a matter of fact some just a look 4 years old most of their lives.

Long and short is that there is no substitute for history. It's not perfect but it is the most effective management tool on a properly if properly maintained.

[GarGuy]

....double post

[GarGuy]

Case in point... look at this pretty 3 year old. Needs 4 more years?

[Top Of Texas]

I also wonder how accurate they would be able to age deer via photograph if they had multiple years of pictures of the same buck? Aging deer by one picture is probably even more variable than aging by tooth wear, and that’s saying something.

That's why I mentioned a "starting point." Building history must have a beginning, and it's not ear tagged fawns, or 1 and 2 year olds. Note the variability in 3 yr olds in that table I shared. A buck has to be old enough to have developed some unique characteristics that he will continue to express in consecutive years for the rest of his life. If accuracy is only 35%, then the starting point is called into question which subsequently calls future age estimates into question.

The people being tested were shown multiple photos from multiple angles. The entire test included 583 photographs of 70 bucks, from known ages (caught as fawns) that ranged from 1 to 12 years old.

I believe the Nobel Foundation failed in this paper, just like they did with tooth aging study, by not grouping age classes. It's a great eye opening study, but it fails to mention that agining on the hoof is a valuable and useful tool in deer management. Even if you don't nail the year.

We all need to stop worrying about nailing down the years, and just strive to shoot old looking deer. And after you've shot him, record his tooth wear age!