At our club we have a VA game biologist come in every year and talk about our kills from the year before. The question seems to always come up with new biologist and they all say a spike is not always a spike. It is just a deer with inferior genetics but may still grow to be a decent deer. On the other hand a "cow horn" is an older deer with long spikes say 10 inches or more, this is a deer that needs to be taken to get the genetics out of the area. It will probibly not be anything more then a "cow horn" deer.