Hunting & Fishing Old Mule Deer Stag

[omurnion]

A good friend of mine took this buck this morning...

I have never seen a buck this old, he is going to have it aged, we are both curious about old this buck really is.

 

[psinclair]

Re: Old Mule Deer Stag

I've killed a few "stags" over the years...they are always as fat as a butterball and damn fine to eat!!

 

[omurnion]

Re: Old Mule Deer Stag

For as short on teeth as this old guy was, I was amazed at how fat he is. The other nice thing about them is they don't have that rank nasty mule deer smell going on this time of year.

 

[crumpmd]

Re: Old Mule Deer Stag

Even without a good look at the jawbone I will guess 7 or 8 years old.
Let us know what the official result is.

 

[slayer_21420]

Re: Old Mule Deer Stag

whats the deal with the velvet on his antlers this time of year?

 

[omurnion]

Re: Old Mule Deer Stag

The buck didn't have any testicals, so they are always in the velvet. As far as I know they don't ever shed their horns either.

 

[slayer_21420]

Re: Old Mule Deer Stag

aw I see, I have seen whitetails that had castrated themselves and stayed in velvet, the antlers just keep growing and they get really fat, I assumed that was what happened here, I just hadn't heard them called stags before.

very cool pic,

Steve

 

[MontanaS]

Re: Old Mule Deer Stag

Here he is at the kill sight. Needless to say I was confused myself when I saw all the velvet and more so when we went to open him up and saw he had no balls.

 

[omurnion]

Re: Old Mule Deer Stag

Glad to see you joined the site!! I was just uploading your kill photos on photobucket to add them. Not to shabby for your first mule deer. Is that a little bigger bodied critter than what your used to?

 

[MontanaS]

Re: Old Mule Deer Stag

Just a tad bit. Those TN whitetails rarely get over 130 dressed, and that when they are corn fed. They also rarely make it past their third year. Here's a pic of one my friend from back home got on Monday. It surpassed the norm scoring 140 and weighing 185 dressed.

 

[rcr]

Re: Old Mule Deer Stag

No balls huh...that's because they are funning around with his wife somewhere in her purse.