Age / Teeth / Injury

pj1

Well-Known Member
I shot a fallow buck last Saturday and have a few questions if i may. Apart from an obvious limp on his front foot he looked healthy. When we got up to him he was obviously a bit lean. He had old and fresh evidence of liver fluke but all nodes etc looked normal. His testis seemed a little small but then so would mine if i had just been shot with a 308.
So
1 Does the ridge on his shoulder blade look crooked form the injury at the same time as his foot???
2 Do his teeth look normal. Does his lower jaw look to narrow making uneven wear.???
3 How old you you say he was.???
Thank you in advance Pete.

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not a fallow expert by any means but looking at the injured foot,old injury and shoulder out of alinement i would say rta.may have had head injury at the same time. as to it age i would say 6 years but the teeth wear would depend on the area and food source
 
Agree with banus regarding the injury but he's way off the mark regarding the age. That animal is definitely no more than 3 1/2 years old.

At 36 months all dentition is present but the rear cusp of PM3 may not be in wear. At 36 months PM3 will be beginning to wear.

The teeth on your fallow are very sharp and unworn. The rear cusp of PM3 doesn't even look like its yet in wear so it may only be 2 1/2? However, the head looks very advanced for a 2 1/2 year old animal hence my thoughts that it's 3 1/2. You should have a better idea on how it compares to other bucks in your area.

Teeth guide is available in the Deer Initiative website here http://www.thedeerinitiative.co.uk/uploads/guides/110.pdf

Hope that helps.

baguio
 
Every thread I read I learn something new.


Even answers to things I hadn't considered.

Thanks baguio.
 
This is an interesting thread which is supported by some excellent and educational photos!
Whilst we shouldn't age deer by their antlers, this one is interesting...
A fallow its first winter is generally known as a fawn or kid and is about 6 months old at Christmas. The next year it is 18 months old and known as a 'Pricket' and will have fairly simple knobs or short spikes.
The next year it will be 2.5 yrs and known as a 'Sorrel' and will have longer antlers which may divide, but are still relatively round in profile. The following year it is 3.5 and known as a 'Sore'. It should now have a full set of teeth including M3 at the very back. It's antlers may well now be showing slight sign of 'palmation'. The photo above is slightly misleading as the antlers are 'Fishtailed'. If they were not, it would be fairly heavily palmated! The crown is also wide and pedicles short, and the beams are fairly thick. The antlers alone would therefore indicate an animal greater than 3.5 years old. So, back to the teeth! We know that at 36 months (3 years) all teeth will be present. However, at 3.5 years, M3 will have only just erupted and grown. It will not be showing signs of wear and would not be very stained. The photo shows both staining and wear to M3. I would therefore put this animal at a minimum of 4.5 but more likely 5.5 or even 6.5. Diet will be a factor with wear and staining, and what this thread does show clearly is that ageing deer is very difficult and very subjective after they reach 3 years old!
Thanks for posting.
MS
 
I had considered the thickness of the beams MS, but considered that they obviously grew large heads in that part of the country before their time as the teeth don't appear to be very worn at all.
We need to sort out a fallow jaw board. We ought to be able to get jaws up to 4 or 5 years old without too much trouble surely? Have you still got the ones your lad shot? They ought to be comparable to this one?

Pj1, What did the carcass weigh?

baguio
 
The prominence of the spine of the shoulder blade would correspond to muscle wasting due to the foot damage. It doesn't look that out of line to me, but I'll reserve judgement until cut up!
 
Unless you are going to send the teeth to a lab to be cut etc I'd just through shooting a lot of Fallow experience say Age 4.5 to 5 years old Foot injury due to lucky escape from Fence hook up then being on a lot of soft soil as for the Antlers typical example of our very mismanaged Fallow Deer especially the Males/Bucks ( and that in noway is a dig a the OP ) :thumb:
 
Thank you for the replies. Very informative. As for weight im not sure. Scales are on the wish list. He wasn't incredibly heavy. He was taken from an terreitory ( if that the right word ) containing farmland, golf course and wood. Soil is fairly heavy clay. He wasn't the biggest in the herd ( but not far off) and would have been left but for his limp.
As far as his fellow bucks go he is of a reasonable size. I will post some pictures of two other heads. One taken from the same herd and the bigger one taken about three miles north. The bigger one is probably as big as I've seen around this area. Most heads are similar to the buck st the top of this thread.

no offence taken stalkerboydy. Myself and two others have just got permission on the land containing this Buck so management is only just starting. Unfortunately the parcels of land round here are small so the chance to manage a herd is difficult because the herds will roam over several pieces of land over which several different people will stalk
 
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Thank you for the replies. Very informative. As for weight im not sure. Scales are on the wish list. He wasn't incredibly heavy. He was taken from an terreitory ( if that the right word ) containing farmland, golf course and wood. Soil is fairly heavy clay. He wasn't the biggest in the herd ( but not far off) and would have been left but for his limp.
As far as his fellow bucks go he is of a reasonable size. I will post some pictures of two other heads. One taken from the same herd and the bigger one taken about three miles north. The bigger one is probably as big as I've seen around this area. Most heads are similar to the buck st the top of this thread.

no offence taken stalkerboydy. Myself and two others have just got permission on the land containing this Buck so management is only just starting. Unfortunately the parcels of land round here are small so the chance to manage a herd is difficult because the herds will roam over several pieces of land over which several different people will stalk

:thumb: Good luck . With Fallow hit when you get chance as I've found they are hard to manage and take a lot of effort and time.
Obviously you have to leave some kind of Mature Bucks BUT personally I'd flatten as much rubbish as you can eg if i had say 1 Pricket even and above the ears and 3 Bucks like yours I'd flatten all 3 Bucks the Pricket would walk.
Don't forget good Mature Bucks will/can travel up to 15 miles to rut.
I stalked a very very large estate for 20 year's which probably held 3 - 4 Big Palmated Bucks yet come 2nd week October I'd have 15 - 20 Big Lad's now as yourself have found out Fallow are hard to manage.
My advice work hard to study what is around take Doe's over Bucks leave any even above the ears Prickets Males have a long season and try not to make the mistake like i did when i first started Flatten 2 one Antlered Bucks only to find they had shed the missing Antler :oops:
 
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some more pics of what is around here in north east sussex. 30 cm ruler for scale. the two smaller bucks taken from the same herd. another picture of the teeth. this boy needed some fillings as the teeth in the upper jaw are very holey.
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twisted foot was from the smaller buck as the shorter antler length on the opposite side to the injury would indicate.
then the buck from the top of this thread with another view of his teeth
then a big buck i took several years ago. proper shield / mounting to follow
 
Ah yes! Forgot to talk about the foot injury! I assume it was the right foot that is damaged? That would account for the 'wasted' right shoulder as the muscle has had little use.
But of more interest is the effect of this on the antlers. For some strange reason, when deer become injured, it is the antler on the opposite side that is affected. We can see here that the left antler is malformed with a short front tine and a deeper fishtail.
Jaw boards are useful to some extent, but they are still subjective as they are no better than the person that aged them in the first instance! That is clearly not an exact science as this thread has shown! Even sectioning of teeth in a laboratory is not conclusive. This is why census techniques such as cohort analysis are a load of bollox as they rely upon the fact that people can accurately age deer, which they clearly can't! A jaw board from tagged farm or park deer is the only way to gain accurate ages, but even that is then subjective when compared to wild deer which will have different diets to effect tooth wear. Ageing dead deer is clearly of some interest, but it is also somewhat irrelevant as the deer cannot grow older as it is dead! Being able to age live deer is the key to success, as that is the only way you can be selective prior to culling. Managing transient deer is never easy and you can rest assured that your neighbours will have different ideas! The biggest bucks will always be taken first by some people. I'd like to see a change in deer law where the closed season for male deer coincides with the rut!
MS
 
Looking at his general physique which I accept is reduced in weight due to the injury, and reading other peoples opinions, I am going to change my guess to 4 1/2 years old. The neck just doesn't look that that of a Great buck to me. From my photos of Park deer it looks like a bare buck (in its 5th year) to me.
 
The teeth are sharp edged but that ma be due to feeding on soft green feed but importantly the pedicles are heavy and not overly long,that in itself suggests a little more age.
A pedicle reduces in length for every year a stag/buck cast his antlers.
 
Wise words from Monkey Spanker. Categorising deer as young-mature or old is a safer bet. If specific ageing within a one to two year range is desired then all of the available indications need to be taken into account as so many variables exist and yes, even antler development is a factor. Jaw boards are a good idea but need also to be area specific, ie is the soil acidic and sandy or much kinder on the teeth over the years. It can make a big difference to tooth wear. The transitory nature of Fallow makes this even more difficult to monitor.
 
Are you sure that's a foot injury and not septic arthritis? Hard to tell from the pic but certainly has a bit of an aladins slipper which you'd expect.
 
Looking at his general physique which I accept is reduced in weight due to the injury, and reading other peoples opinions, I am going to change my guess to 4 1/2 years old. The neck just doesn't look that that of a Great buck to me. From my photos of Park deer it looks like a bare buck (in its 5th year) to me.

:thumb:I'm with you at 4 1/2

Paul
 
Banus, please don't contact me again via PM. I know that you're going through a hard time right now and that you will probably apologise once again for it but I am not going to put up with it and will report you next time. I still believe that you're way out with 6 1/2 years. This is a forum and you haven't been proven to be correct any more than I have. The fact that you have been stalking for a long time doesn't make you correct either!
Thank you
baguio
 
Another to look for is ossification of the skull sutures. As a deer ages the gaps close and generally fuse together,young deer have wider gapping.
Can you post a photo of the skull showing a clear look at the forehead section?
 
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