Antler size is more a function of diet and heredity than it is of age. The pedicels that young male fawns grow at a couple months of age are not antlers. Overlap is when above-average bucks in a younger age class have the same antler size as below-average bucks in older age classes. Female deer, known as does, have a different appearance and behavior pattern than their male counterparts. ... How to Tell a Fawn's Age. Identifying a female deer may bring challenges, however, if you don't know what to look for. There are several different ways to rate the quality of deer antlers. But, you kind of can use antlers to identify deer, and by identifying deer you may be able to know how old a deer is. But it is impossible to tell the exact age of the buck even with well developed antlers, because you don't know if you are looking at that particular deer's biggest set of antlers. Deer antlers become larger and develop more character with each successive shedding. Young deer grow their first set of true antlers the first spring after they are born, at 10 to 12 months of age. For older age classes, however, you can forget it. It is possible to do deer aging by evaluating teeth growth and wear. While it is difficult to determine the age of an elk accurately when viewing him at a distance, his rack provides some clues about his age. For mule deer and whitetails, that generally means an antler growth peak occurring at 5.5 years of age or older. The most accurate way to tell an elk’s age is by examining his teeth. Of the 34 white-tailed deer biologists surveyed to test this method, 60% failed to correctly age known-age jawbones that were 2 years old or older. Scoring a deer actually involves measuring the antlers of the deer and obtaining a score. How to Identify a Female Deer. When a mature deer is injured or has poor nutrition it's antlers will often be smaller then a healthy animal of the same age. There is really no precise way to accurately do deer aging while hunting, other than looking at the teeth. As a general rule, though, large antlers come with big bodies and old age. Before continuing, it is necessary to outline the terminology that will be discussed. At some point or another, a whitetail hunter will face a dilemma in the woods or fields. Overlap is what makes it tough to estimate age using only antlers. How to Age a Whitetail. Larger antlers and a thick body are good indications, but the real way to tell their age is by looking at their teeth, if they have just a couple teeth in front they are young, if they have some down the side but not all the way to the back they are a couple years old and if they have them all the way and they look worn some, they are maybe 6 years or so. If, without its antlers, it looks like just an average-sized doe, then it’s a yearling. That means that for any age class, there’s a common average, but there are also uncommon bucks with below- and above-average antlers for their age. I prefer to estimate age based solely on body characteristics with respect to location and time of year and then use antler size to “check” my estimate or to break a tie if I can’t decide between two ages. Deer scoring has become popular amongst sports hunters as a way or recording their catch and the deer scoring system is used as a method of determining a winner in a sports hunting competition. A deer of this age will have weathered antlers to show their fights with other deer and their journey through life. As a deer matures it will typically grow more tines and eventually max out and then become smaller year after year as the deer ages. That means the biggest antlers the deer will have develop when the deer is at least 4 years old. Many hunters who know How To Age A Deer By Sight claim that at this age, the deer has a sleek appearance with long legs. Buck fawns have pedicles but unless very close to the deer it is hard to distinguish … ... Can You Tell The Age Of A Buck By His Antlers? Although deer develop their largest antlers at six years of age in South Texas, it doesn’t mean that all six-year-olds will exhibit extremely large antlers because of variable factors such as weather conditions (rainfall) and the animal’s genetic potential, which ultimately determine antler size. Antler growth in a deer is largely dependent on the age of the deer, genetics, and diet. By looking at characteristic patterns of teeth replacement and wear, biologists can estimate the age of your harvested deer. How Soon Do Male Deer Grow Antlers? Not really, no. Despite the many stories hunters tell each other, the size of the antlers and the number of points on the antlers is not a reliable age guide. A deer steps out into one of your shooting lanes. Moose are the largest living member of the deer family (Cervidae) and fittingly bear the largest set of antlers. That said there are ways to judge or field score deer antlers in the field and I will discuss that in another article. Deducing the age of older bucks is much more difficult than determining the age of young bucks.