Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 824: Foundations - Why We Should Stop Believing We Can Easily Age Deer on the Hoof

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Ep. 824: Foundations - Why We Should Stop Believing We Can Easily Age Deer on the Hoof · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
0:05
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
0:09
Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
0:14
Speaker 1: First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
0:19
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson.
0:20
Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome to the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
0:22
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
0:24
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about aging deer
0:27
Speaker 2: on the hoof and how it's not nearly as easy
0:29
Speaker 2: as we think. This is kind of a fun one
0:41
Speaker 2: for me and that it will undoubtedly piss some people off.
0:45
Speaker 2: But there's something that bothers me in the outdoor space,
0:47
Speaker 2: and it involves people just definitively saying, you know, a
0:50
Speaker 2: deer is a certain age. This came straight from the
0:53
Speaker 2: outdoor TV space and has permeated the white tail hunting culture.
0:56
Speaker 2: But a lot of the talk around aging deer is
0:59
Speaker 2: total bs. Now, maybe you disagree, but I'm going to
1:02
Speaker 2: lay out a case right now for why I'm on
1:04
Speaker 2: that side. But first I have to let you know
1:07
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1:10
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1:12
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1:16
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1:18
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1:20
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1:23
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1:25
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1:27
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1:30
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1:32
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1:35
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1:37
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1:39
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1:43
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1:45
Speaker 2: if you're looking for a little gear upgrade this season,
1:48
Speaker 2: go check it out. All right, enough of that, let's
1:51
Speaker 2: get onto the show. I like dogs a lot. In fact,
2:03
Speaker 2: aside from hunting and fishing, I think the two things
2:06
Speaker 2: that make my life significantly better besides my kids and
2:10
Speaker 2: I guess my wife are dogs and music. Both are
2:13
Speaker 2: cheat codes for a happier life in my opinion. Now
2:16
Speaker 2: I have two dogs. One is eleven and one is three.
2:20
Speaker 2: They were both born in April. Not that that really matters,
2:24
Speaker 2: but at least might frame us up a little more.
2:26
Speaker 2: I guess now the older dog. She looks older, there's
2:30
Speaker 2: no doubt about that. But she's in good shape too,
2:32
Speaker 2: or I should stay. She still has a healthy body shape.
2:36
Speaker 2: We mostly maintain that through feeding and paying attention to
2:39
Speaker 2: her body conditioning. Although she still does some retrieving and
2:42
Speaker 2: she still swims every chance she can. She isn't all
2:45
Speaker 2: that gray around the muzzle, and so when people meet
2:47
Speaker 2: her they often comment about how she must be pretty young.
2:52
Speaker 2: She just doesn't look as old as she is now.
2:55
Speaker 2: My young dog, Sadie is actually approaching middle age of dogdom.
3:00
Speaker 2: She's three and a half, so you know, young, middle aged,
3:02
Speaker 2: but still now. Sadie is a pipsqueak and she weighs
3:06
Speaker 2: forty eight pounds, and she looks just like a puppy.
3:09
Speaker 2: People consistently guessed her age in months like eight months,
3:13
Speaker 2: and not in years like three and a half years.
3:16
Speaker 2: I knew Sadie had a high likelihood of being very small,
3:19
Speaker 2: because that's part of what I wanted out of her.
3:21
Speaker 2: I had worked with her mom and another pupp that
3:23
Speaker 2: was brought into the World Buyer Mom, who, by some
3:26
Speaker 2: strange connections in my life, is owned by Lee and
3:28
Speaker 2: Tiffany Lakowski, which I guess is a fun fact to
3:30
Speaker 2: toss out there. But anyway, Sadie is a dink and
3:33
Speaker 2: she acts like a puppy and she looks like a puppy,
3:36
Speaker 2: but she's not really a puppy anymore. Now, Luna is old,
3:40
Speaker 2: and she acts pretty old, but she doesn't look super old.
3:43
Speaker 2: She's not really built like a lot of older dogs. Now,
3:47
Speaker 2: take my buddy's golden retriever, Margo. She's eight, but she
3:51
Speaker 2: looks like she's about seventeen. She's had a full gray
3:54
Speaker 2: muzzle for years, and she just has the vibe of
3:57
Speaker 2: an older dog. But she's not ancient. Though. When you
4:00
Speaker 2: have bird dogs, you know that eight can still be
4:02
Speaker 2: pretty amazing, even though you also know that your dog
4:05
Speaker 2: is knocking on the door of, you know, being a
4:08
Speaker 2: little too old to handle the all day hunts and
4:10
Speaker 2: the cattails for the pheasants anymore. The variation in dog
4:14
Speaker 2: size and shape and overall vibe is based on a
4:18
Speaker 2: lot of things, not the least of which is genetics.
4:22
Speaker 2: It's pretty hard to look at them and just guess
4:24
Speaker 2: correctly how old they are, because there are too many
4:27
Speaker 2: variables that could throw you off. But no one is
4:30
Speaker 2: going around saying that, you know that Labrador Retriever is
4:34
Speaker 2: definitively a five year old dog because of the belly
4:37
Speaker 2: and the sway in the back and the j low
4:38
Speaker 2: type bubble butt. When it comes to deer, it's a
4:43
Speaker 2: different story. And maybe the last I don't know, ten
4:46
Speaker 2: or fifteen years, we've just all collectively agreed that we
4:49
Speaker 2: are all deer aging experts and that's that done and
4:52
Speaker 2: freaking done. We base our hunting strategies and goals around
4:55
Speaker 2: the age of deer we would like to shoot, and
4:58
Speaker 2: we obsess over the maturity level of certain But do
5:01
Speaker 2: you know where this came from. It came from the
5:04
Speaker 2: people who make hunting content mostly. But why we decided
5:08
Speaker 2: that maturity was the goal might not be so obvious,
5:12
Speaker 2: and it's really probably not obvious to the younger crowd.
5:16
Speaker 2: But you see, not that long ago, we all just
5:19
Speaker 2: hunted trophy bucks. That was how big deer were described.
5:23
Speaker 2: We were all good with that. After all, we are
5:26
Speaker 2: all kind of trophy hunters at heart, at least to
5:29
Speaker 2: some degree. There isn't a hunter out there who doesn't
5:31
Speaker 2: love a giant buck. And if they say they don't care,
5:34
Speaker 2: that's only because there isn't a giant buck walking down
5:36
Speaker 2: the trail toward their stand. They aren't going to pass
5:39
Speaker 2: a one to fifty to wait on a dough, trust me.
5:42
Speaker 2: It's kind of like the guys who have a problem
5:43
Speaker 2: with good looking women and they find a reason to
5:46
Speaker 2: talk shit about them. They know that at a certain
5:49
Speaker 2: level of physical attractiveness is going to put a woman
5:52
Speaker 2: right out of their league, so it's easy. It's safer
5:55
Speaker 2: to be dismissive or worse about those women because it
5:58
Speaker 2: doesn't matter. They're never going to inner or intersect in
6:01
Speaker 2: any meaningful way. The hunter who has no faith in
6:04
Speaker 2: it ever encountering a big buck. It's kind of in
6:07
Speaker 2: the same world. It's easy to talk shit about it
6:09
Speaker 2: when you know that the odds of one passing by
6:11
Speaker 2: the season or in the next ten seasons are slim
6:14
Speaker 2: to none. It gives you an out to shoot something
6:16
Speaker 2: else but not feel bad about it. It's all weasel
6:19
Speaker 2: word stuff, which is how we got here in the
6:21
Speaker 2: first place. Now, back in the day, whatever day that was,
6:24
Speaker 2: I guess we coveted trophy deer. We called them trophies
6:29
Speaker 2: and we didn't care. Is that's what they were. Then
6:32
Speaker 2: a few high profile people shot lions and giraffes, and
6:36
Speaker 2: the trophy hunting thing went global and the optics were
6:40
Speaker 2: not our friends. That was macro level stuff, though on
6:44
Speaker 2: the micro level we damaged ourselves in simpler, less obvious ways.
6:48
Speaker 2: Talking about deer as if their sole value is derived
6:52
Speaker 2: from the size of their head gear sells the whole thing.
6:55
Speaker 2: Real short, non hunters don't want to hear about hunters
6:58
Speaker 2: prioritizing trophy status first. It's just an ugly look for us.
7:03
Speaker 2: So we came up with a new way to trophy hunt. Now,
7:06
Speaker 2: over time we settled on mature deer. After all, that
7:10
Speaker 2: sounds way more responsible, right. I hunt mature deer, not
7:14
Speaker 2: immature baby deer that are just cute and still have
7:16
Speaker 2: a little milk stash and are attached at the hip
7:18
Speaker 2: to their mamas. Mature deer have served their purpose in
7:22
Speaker 2: nature and need to be removed from the herd before
7:25
Speaker 2: they do I don't know some damage. I guess. I
7:28
Speaker 2: don't know what a buck is going to do at
7:30
Speaker 2: eight years old. That is different than what he did
7:31
Speaker 2: at five, but that's not really a point. We figured
7:35
Speaker 2: out a way to not be trophy hunters, which was
7:37
Speaker 2: the goal, except that it just so happens that the
7:40
Speaker 2: mature bucks we hunt also happened to be at their
7:42
Speaker 2: peak antler growing stage. I promise you that if we
7:45
Speaker 2: suddenly found out that bucks had a huge gross spurt
7:49
Speaker 2: in antlers at ten and a half years old for
7:50
Speaker 2: some reason, five and a half year old bucks would
7:53
Speaker 2: not be considered mature for much longer. We'd figure out
7:56
Speaker 2: a way to target deer that are ten and a
7:57
Speaker 2: half for now, though, the optics of hunting mature deer
8:02
Speaker 2: and the feel good reasons we throw around to do it,
8:04
Speaker 2: they're better than the alternative. We don't want to be
8:07
Speaker 2: viewed as trophy hunters because that's a fast track to
8:09
Speaker 2: losing support in this current culture where we're glad to
8:12
Speaker 2: take away hunting opportunities from anyone as long as it'll
8:15
Speaker 2: make it easier for us. We don't want to give
8:17
Speaker 2: the non hunters and the antis anymore, AMMO. We make
8:20
Speaker 2: enough problems for ourselves. Mature bucks are a better message.
8:25
Speaker 2: But are we so sure we are hunting mature bucks?
8:28
Speaker 2: Kind of sort of a little bit, because here's the thing,
8:33
Speaker 2: how do you know how old a deer really is now?
8:36
Speaker 2: Unless you have like a double throat patch buck that
8:38
Speaker 2: you can track from his fond days to whatever season
8:41
Speaker 2: it is now, you can't, not as well as you
8:44
Speaker 2: probably think. Anyway. Now, a lot of folks are thinking,
8:47
Speaker 2: I've got that dipshit Peterson guy now because I know
8:50
Speaker 2: when my bucks hit two and a half years old
8:52
Speaker 2: and I can track them from there. Fair enough. Are
8:56
Speaker 2: you basing that age assessment off of antler size at all?
8:59
Speaker 2: Or is it body shape or astrological sign maybe what
9:02
Speaker 2: energy the crystals are giving off today? When we look
9:05
Speaker 2: at the general guidelines for aging deer on the hoof,
9:08
Speaker 2: we see some stuff that absolutely makes sense and generally works.
9:13
Speaker 2: Young deer have slim bodies, They look tall because they
9:16
Speaker 2: don't have that sagging belly. They have small sets of antlers.
9:20
Speaker 2: Year and a half old bucks are easy to judge.
9:22
Speaker 2: They all kind of look the same, kind of like puppies.
9:25
Speaker 2: Then we get to two year olds. Now they're supposed
9:27
Speaker 2: to have that lit body, no real definition to it
9:31
Speaker 2: yet and better than forky racks, but still small antlers.
9:35
Speaker 2: But with age comes the expression of genetics. Now, those
9:39
Speaker 2: of you listening who have kids, think about the difference
9:42
Speaker 2: in an infant versus a kindergartener and how they might
9:45
Speaker 2: look to you, or how they might start to act
9:47
Speaker 2: like your spouse. At some point, it's suddenly a little
9:50
Speaker 2: less certain that, for sure, without a doubt, you have
9:53
Speaker 2: a two year old buck in front of you. But
9:56
Speaker 2: we all say we can tell, and I think we
9:58
Speaker 2: can tell them still pretty easily compared to other ages.
10:01
Speaker 2: But where we get into trouble is the buck we
10:03
Speaker 2: deem two and a half that has, you know, one
10:05
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty five inch rack, or the buck that
10:08
Speaker 2: is two and a half that has the forty inchrack.
10:11
Speaker 2: When we get way on the right side or the
10:13
Speaker 2: left side of the antler growth bell curve, things start
10:16
Speaker 2: to get a little wonky and we start to fill
10:18
Speaker 2: in the blanks. But then you get into three and
10:20
Speaker 2: a half year old bucks, and this is where the
10:23
Speaker 2: wheels really start to fall off. How many of us
10:32
Speaker 2: get to spend a lot of time watching three and
10:35
Speaker 2: a half year olds doing wild three and a half
10:37
Speaker 2: year old type of things. Not many. And at this
10:41
Speaker 2: point a buck is middle aged ish, he's expressing his
10:45
Speaker 2: genes in both antler size and body characteristics. So we
10:49
Speaker 2: look and see one hundred and thirty five incher with
10:51
Speaker 2: a decent sized body, and we go, well, I know
10:53
Speaker 2: how old that buck is done and done in two
10:56
Speaker 2: years he'll be mature and I'll kill him. But how
10:59
Speaker 2: do you know you're not looking at a deer with
11:01
Speaker 2: a just naturally smaller body. You don't, No one does.
11:06
Speaker 2: Just like some bloodlines will have outsized racks, some will
11:10
Speaker 2: have outsized bodies or undersized here's another way to look
11:15
Speaker 2: at it. I just wrapped up a successful bear hunt
11:17
Speaker 2: with my daughter. I've probably one hundred bears ten times
11:20
Speaker 2: in my life. And while most black bears all kind
11:23
Speaker 2: of look the same, some are kind of squatty and stout,
11:27
Speaker 2: and others are kind of long and lean. They don't
11:29
Speaker 2: have antlers to cloud our assessments. They have bodies, and
11:33
Speaker 2: their bodies vary a lot by the bear. They don't
11:37
Speaker 2: follow a strict path for development, and neither do deer
11:40
Speaker 2: because they have different genetics. Not to make things even worse,
11:44
Speaker 2: antler size, like I mentioned, exists on a bell curve.
11:48
Speaker 2: You've all heard this, but it's true. We don't think
11:51
Speaker 2: of it like this when we're looking at deer, though,
11:54
Speaker 2: there are outlier five year old bucks that won't grow
11:57
Speaker 2: a rack bigger than one hundred inches, even in Iowa,
12:00
Speaker 2: while other five year olds can grow one hundred and
12:03
Speaker 2: eighty inch track. Most though, fall in the middle of
12:06
Speaker 2: those two. You might be thinking, so, what, how do
12:10
Speaker 2: we even figure this out? Well, the easiest way is
12:14
Speaker 2: to start sending in the teeth from the bucks you
12:16
Speaker 2: kill to get them cementum annuli aged. There's no more
12:20
Speaker 2: accurate way to find out the age of the bucks
12:22
Speaker 2: you kill. And even then it's not an exact science
12:25
Speaker 2: because those rings on the bucks teeth that they count
12:28
Speaker 2: they can vary a lot, depending on it being from
12:30
Speaker 2: the south or the north, and the corresponding severity of
12:34
Speaker 2: winters that your buck had to deal with. It's a
12:37
Speaker 2: good way to learn that you can't age deer worth
12:39
Speaker 2: of shit. Though. I say that because for a few
12:42
Speaker 2: years a couple buddies and I sent in the teeth
12:45
Speaker 2: on our bucks. I can safely say we were mostly wrong,
12:48
Speaker 2: and often wrong, in that we were chronically underaging our deer.
12:53
Speaker 2: The one hundred and twenty inches we love to shoot.
12:56
Speaker 2: We're all over the map, and a lot we're way
12:59
Speaker 2: older than we cementum annuallye aging can turn two and
13:03
Speaker 2: a half year old bucks into five year old bucks
13:05
Speaker 2: pretty quickly. Now, one of the reasons you don't hear
13:08
Speaker 2: about a lot of people doing this, especially the people
13:11
Speaker 2: who claim to know the exact age of deer, is
13:13
Speaker 2: because it's a little bit of a pain in the
13:15
Speaker 2: ass and they don't actually care what the age of
13:18
Speaker 2: the buck is. They don't really want to know. It
13:20
Speaker 2: really doesn't matter. But if you want to give yourself
13:22
Speaker 2: a reality check, this is a good way to do it.
13:26
Speaker 2: It makes the idea of aging deer on the hoof
13:28
Speaker 2: seem like far more of an inexact science than we believe,
13:32
Speaker 2: because honestly it is. Now, there's nothing wrong with laser
13:37
Speaker 2: focusing on what you think is a mature buck, really
13:41
Speaker 2: nothing at all. You do you seriously, There is no
13:44
Speaker 2: question that age is a secret sauce in growing big bucks.
13:47
Speaker 2: It just is, and it's what makes some places so
13:50
Speaker 2: easy to hunt and most places so hard to hunt.
13:54
Speaker 2: But what I want to say as I wrap this up,
13:56
Speaker 2: is that if you're confident of your aging abilities, check
13:59
Speaker 2: your don't do it by looking at a deer's jaw,
14:02
Speaker 2: because that's a coin flip as far as being worth anything.
14:05
Speaker 2: Cement to manualie aging, which is available through quite a
14:08
Speaker 2: few different labs, that's the closest you're going to get,
14:11
Speaker 2: and it's pretty exciting to send in teeth and wait
14:13
Speaker 2: for the results, which in my experience are always pretty
14:17
Speaker 2: interesting and rarely lined up with what I believe to
14:20
Speaker 2: be true. Now does that matter in the grand scheme
14:22
Speaker 2: of things. Not really, But there is a message here
14:25
Speaker 2: that I kind of want to leave everyone with. The
14:28
Speaker 2: idea of aging deer on the hoof comes from a
14:30
Speaker 2: place where we had to change our messaging so we
14:33
Speaker 2: didn't appear to be trophy owners. It has morphed into
14:36
Speaker 2: something else, especially with so many people interested in quality
14:39
Speaker 2: deer management and raising deer in a specific property. Now,
14:43
Speaker 2: I'm not saying focusing on age is a bad thing,
14:45
Speaker 2: because I don't believe it is. I just think it's
14:47
Speaker 2: best to be honest about what we are actually doing
14:50
Speaker 2: and understand that while our current messaging might sound a
14:53
Speaker 2: hell of a lot more responsible and palatable to non hunters,
14:57
Speaker 2: it's also a little bit damaging to a lot of
14:59
Speaker 2: other hunters. Newbies to the sport. Hear the talk of
15:03
Speaker 2: mature bucks, and they want in. But that's a terrible
15:06
Speaker 2: way to start. It's almost a guarantee to create and
15:10
Speaker 2: destroy a new hunter in a matter of not too
15:12
Speaker 2: many seasons. You don't pick up a football at target
15:15
Speaker 2: shopping out your lunch break and then go play in
15:17
Speaker 2: the super Bowl the next week. For a lot of
15:20
Speaker 2: folks hunting in heavily pressured areas, this aging deer thing
15:24
Speaker 2: is a bad idea too. If ninety nine percent of
15:28
Speaker 2: the bucks in your county are destined for the big
15:30
Speaker 2: betting area in the sky before they reach four and
15:32
Speaker 2: a half years old, it doesn't do anyone much good
15:35
Speaker 2: to try and hunt mature bucks. In the conventional sense.
15:38
Speaker 2: You might as well pick up a unicorn tag when
15:40
Speaker 2: you're at it, because you're just as likely to fill
15:43
Speaker 2: that one. Now. I do believe there are bigger bucks
15:46
Speaker 2: in a lot more places than we like to think.
15:48
Speaker 2: But there's also the reality of a lot of hunting
15:51
Speaker 2: pressure in a lot of places, And there's also bad winners,
15:54
Speaker 2: heavy predator loads in certain places, and just the truth
15:57
Speaker 2: about genetics and what they will give you. Wise being
16:01
Speaker 2: in a place where you can age bucks or pass
16:04
Speaker 2: up bucks and wait on them to get mature. That's great,
16:08
Speaker 2: but a hell of a lot of hunters aren't anywhere
16:09
Speaker 2: near that. If you're in that crowd, the path is
16:12
Speaker 2: going to look a lot different, and it can still
16:15
Speaker 2: be super fun and crazy rewarding. But the idea of
16:18
Speaker 2: holding out for a truly mature deer might just be
16:20
Speaker 2: a bad one for you. There might be no way
16:22
Speaker 2: around that. Plus, it's way way harder to age deer
16:27
Speaker 2: than we generally present. In fact, on the hoof, it's
16:31
Speaker 2: impossible to be super accurate. Now you can lump bucks
16:35
Speaker 2: into age brackets by looking at them, at least some
16:37
Speaker 2: of them, but overall, this is a much harder task
16:40
Speaker 2: than we believe it to be. That gets way harder
16:43
Speaker 2: by how we are biased around rack size too, which
16:46
Speaker 2: while we talk a big game about looking at body
16:49
Speaker 2: shape and size, rack size just definitely factors into our
16:53
Speaker 2: age estimates. So take that in the reality that we
16:56
Speaker 2: generally don't know shit about the specific genetics any one
16:59
Speaker 2: buck is carrying around, and you'll know that age is
17:02
Speaker 2: just a moving target, one where we're shooting at while
17:05
Speaker 2: blindfolded and hanging upside down by our ankles. While a
17:08
Speaker 2: bunch of angry hornets buzz around our heads. It's just
17:13
Speaker 2: tougher to do than we think. Think about it and
17:15
Speaker 2: think about coming back tomorrow when I'm going to drop
17:18
Speaker 2: another episode about why most people don't kill Big Bucks
17:21
Speaker 2: and the hard truths some of us just need to accept.
17:27
Speaker 2: That's it. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired
17:29
Speaker 2: to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by
17:31
Speaker 2: first Light and first Light has eight ton of stuff
17:34
Speaker 2: on sale right now. In fact, pretty much anything met
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Speaker 2: eat or sells can be yours at some level of
17:39
Speaker 2: discount if you go over there to first light dot
17:41
Speaker 2: com and start spending some money. As always, thank you
17:44
Speaker 2: so much for listening and for all your support. We
17:47
Speaker 2: truly appreciate it. Here. Keep checking back because we're going
17:49
Speaker 2: to have a lot more content dropping this week. And again,
17:52
Speaker 2: thank you, thank you, thank you,