GARRET from WI asks,
Bill, I appreciate all the content you’ve provided over the years and hope your hunting season is going well. Now on to my question. I recently listened to the HUNTR podcast you were on. Centium analysis for aging deer was brought up. I’ve recently been researching this a little. I was wondering how much experience you have with centium aging and how much you rely on it? It seems like all of the aging methods (trail cam & personal history, judging the deer’s body in the field, jaw bone wear, centium analysis, etc.) have some degree of inaccuracy. What methods do you use/prefer to age a deer and why? Thanks so much, Garret
Bill responds,
Topic: Cementum Annuli Aging for Whitetail Deer:
Believe it or not, the buck in this photo was only 3 years old at the time. Because of the size and shape of his body, I misjudged him as a 4 year old. It is very easy to misjudge bucks when using only sightings for reference because they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.
Garret,
I have used Matson’s Lab to do my cementum annuli deer aging three or four times through the years. For those not aware of this method, the lab tech sections an incisor and then can determine with a degree of accuracy how old the deer was. This is the second most accurate method of aging deer, in my opinion. The most accurate is actual year after year experience with the buck starting when he was 2 years old. You likely won’t mistake a 2 year old for a three or one year old – and they are starting to be unique enough that possibly you can follow individual bucks from that age on.
I have messed up a few times on using my history with the deer as the method for aging and that was always because I judged a 2 year old as a 3 year old. The 2 year old was very well developed for his age. How did I learn I had messed up? By sending the teeth in to the lab and have the cementum annuli test done. So my lesson is that I am more likely to call buck older than he is than to call him younger – based on history alone.
When you send the teeth in, the results sheet from the lab will give you their estimate of accuracy. Not sure how carefully they rate their own accuracy, but they will give you a degree of confidence. For example, a certain buck may come back as age 4 with a 90% confidence. I do trust cementum annuli as the most accurate method (short of your own years of history with a buck). I definitely don’t trust my ability to judge random 4+ year old bucks based on sightings or trail cam photos. You can tell when a buck is really old or really young just from sightings, but it is really hard to tell, with any confidence, exact ages just from seeing them a couple times. Good luck. (11-26-21)
