Tell me about this roe buck

J111

Well-Known Member
Hi there

I was wondering if anyone could give me thoughts about this buck I shot this morning please?

He's a fairly scrawny looking thing that I'd been planning to take out before the rut since I saw him first a few weeks ago on my trail cam. He hasn't shed his winter coat fully, and hadn't fully frayed his antlers off. He seemed to be behaving pretty normally though as far as I could tell before I shot him, although he couldn't see me at 40m stood in a clearing in the woods, but this may be just be because I was stationary and wearing face veil etc. He is skinnier than I was expecting, had a fair few ticks but probably not much more than normal. His teeth look shot - there are no teeth in the top of his mouth and only the ones in the photo at the front in the lower jaw. His antlers are fairly poor and seem to be leaning back. Internally seemed ok to me - I can't remember enough from my DSC1 to fully check all the lymph nodes etc but liver was perfect and all the rest of it looked ok. There was however on the inside of one side of the ribs a swelling in the muscle that when cut open had a what I can only describe as a clear gel in it.

What's going on here, was he just old and coming to the end of his life anyway or something more sinister? Ok for eating?


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he looks like an old boy going back. good to eat, and good old beast to take off the ground, there should be a few old one's in every cull plan to let the young up and coming bucks onto his territory.
 
Thanks fellas, yeah pleased to take him out - there's an absolute beauty of a buck about that I'm very happy to leave.. for now!
Any thoughts on what the gel sort of thing in his ribs might be? Unfortunately didn't get a photo of it.
Also, is 'going back' literally that the deer's antlers start leaning back with age?
Cheers
 
Deer don't have teeth on the top at the front just a hard pad the incisors are only on the bottom, Roe start to go back from about six years onwards, and no it's got nothing to do with the antlers leaning backwards,it's all about age antler points become blunter and shorter may loose points the antler itself may become shorter but will often stay thick, the first sign of age is often a downward sloping of the outside edge of the coronets, there are other ways of ageing bucks, teeth and configuration but all require a degree of experience, and at best short of sectioning a tooth you will only be accurate within a year or so either way exact ageing is difficult
as it depends to a certain extent on where they are living and what they are feeding on , for example roe living
where the soil is sandy have greater wear on their teeth than animals living elsewhere.

However to manage a Roe population exact ageing is not necessary all you need to be able to tell are young, middle aged and old.
 
he looks like an old boy going back. good to eat, and good old beast to take off the ground, there should be a few old one's in every cull plan to let the young up and coming bucks onto his territory.

To be honest my cull plan at the moment is to shoot two bucks and two Doe per year and see how the population responds.
 
+1 on teeth as above. From the side view rather than front his coronets do look sloped thus indicating age.

It sounds like the lump on the ribs was probably from an old injury, if the lump adhered the lungs to the rib cage then it should be treated as potential disease.

Worth genning up on your lymph nodes dare I say. A good source is on this link:Carcass inspection | bestpracticeguides

ATB Nick
 
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Only a suggestion, but keep the jawbones and some record of the deer coming off the ground.. Comparing tooth wear from different bits of ground can be flawed but if you keep all of the jaws then you can compare and contrast as the years go bye. As for the swelling.. the lymph node sites would be my first port of call when trying to work out how healthy the deer was..
 
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