Aging White-tailed Deer on the Hoof

Estimating the ages of live deer accurately in the field is an invaluable skill for any serious deer manager, and trail-camera photographs provide excellent opportunities to practice. Whether you use your trail cameras to conduct accurate surveys of your deer population or just to gather snapshots, accurately estimating ages to bucks is important to assess the progress of your management program.

To help you hone your aging skills, select photographs will be posted on occassion. We will then ask you to age the buck to challenge yourself to become better at estimating age. We will, of course, give you the correct answer afterword.

Make sure to carefully examine each of the photographs and make your own age estimate before you read what you should be looking for. Just remember to keep in mind that aging on the hoof is an inexact science. Aging beyond 3 1/2 is difficult to say the least, but for management purposes, sorting bucks into 1 1/2 , 2 1/2 and 3 1/2-plus age group will get you started.

As you will see over time, even these dividing lines are not always clear. Often, it takes input from many reviewers to reach a general consensus on age.