Age my jawbone

[Doug]

As the title says... age my jaw bone. Antlers alone can be deceptive, other photos are in my post in Bowhunting.

Thanks,

Doug

[hockeymjt]

My guess would be 6 1/2

[boozyleroux]

It's really hard to tell from pictures. Looking at the wear I'd say 3.5 but I'd like to see closer pics of those 5th and sixth teeth.

[johny]

The charts showing wear patterns on teeth are all based on deer from agricultural areas.
Deer feeding on farms eat an enormous amount of DIRT compared to Forest deer like the NorthWest and Central Ontario that live dominantly in forest.

The dirt wears down teeth really fast.
So a 2 year old living in soy bean country might have the same tooth wear as a six year old from the forest.

I know of no tooth wear patterns for forest deer.
Antler size is notoriously unreliable anywhere.

Here is a Forest Deer that Boone and Crockett called 2 1/2 year old based on tooth wear patterns
171 BC.jpg

[rick_iles]

If that deer is 2 1/2, then I must be 12....!

[Hunter John]

Good points Johny and something I have not considered before. To the op I would say 2.5 to 3.5.

[bigtedd]

I agree in the 2.5 to 3.5 age class. Fawns typically have 3 or 4 teeth, yearlings have 6 including premolar, and adults 2 years and older have 6 permanent teeth

[Fenelon]

Deer is a typical 2.5 yr wear class age. Adult fully erupted premolars 2,3,4 showing nice white teeth with no infundibulum or cheek side cusp wear. Molars 1 to 3 all have crisp buccal crests with no wear. Tiny straight line infun. On m1 and m2. Not 3.5 for sure. It's a 2.5 year old . Re: age sets - you will get some regional variation in wear characteristics so most deer check stations used to put together sets from validated local deer. Eg. Microtome an incisor to get an accurate cementum age then you can accurately assign your wear class ages. Adult ages are not needed now for most of the population modelling. Just need to know fawn, yearling and adult ratios as well as sex. Yearling buck antler beam diameter also was used back when the check stations used to operate

[Hunter John]

Good info Fenelon

[Highlander Hunt]

There is a company out of Montana that ages your deer for you. You send in one tooth from the jaw. I can't recall the name but if you google it you might be able to find them. It's supposed to be very accurate, especially on older deer.

Cheers
John
Highlander Hunting Podcast