Deer develop differently: A yearling spike buck stands just as good a chance of growing into a quality buck as a yearling counterpart with six, eight or 10 points. Kroll made that determination after an 11-year study of free-ranging whitetails.
“Deer are like people,” he said. “They develop at a different pace. The kid who is smaller than his classmates in the first grade may be the biggest kid in his graduating class. Besides, young bucks disperse from their home territories at an early age. In our spike buck study, we were only able to recapture 12 percent of the bucks that we collared. The others wound up on the neighbor’s ranch. The neighbor gets your bucks and you get his bucks.”

"We divided all of the yearling bucks we captured into two categories," Dr. Kroll continues. "Yearlings that had only spikes or 3-point antlers were in one category, and yearlings with four or more antler points on their first set were in the other. We did this because we reasoned that these two classes of yearling bucks are easy for hunters to identify. We got some very interesting results on the 2 1/2- and 3 1/2-year-old bucks that were recaptured, but the age of 4 1/2 is where the results were the most dramatic.


"Studies repeatedly have shown that whitetail bucks do not reach maturity until four years of age, and by the time the bucks in our study had reached 4 1/2, there was no significant difference in any of the antler measurements, no matter what the buck started out with his first year. The antlers were just as wide, just as heavy and had just as many points. Furthermore, there was no significant difference in gross B&C score," he says.

Many of the bucks that had been yearling spikes had grown 130-inch racks by age 4 1/2. Ironically, the average B&C score of all bucks killed across Texas each year is about 131 inches.


"It appears from our data that the spikes and 3-pointers are genetically equal at birth to multi-point yearlings for antler growth potential," Dr. Kroll concludes. "It just seems to take some deer a little longer to show their capability. The trick is, you have to let them grow up before it becomes obvious. Genetics certainly is an interesting aspect of whitetail management, and fun to debate around the campfire, but genetics is the least important of all the factors leading to the production of quality bucks."


So should spikes, or, for that matter, any bucks, ever be culled from the herd? According to Dr. Kroll, perhaps in some cases.


"...culling bucks is a very complicated issue," Dr. Kroll says. "In our opinion, instead of trying to cull bucks, landowners and hunters are far better off focusing their attention on things they can do something about, such as nutrition. Today the question of shooting more does is the only issue that generates as much controversy as that of what to do about spike bucks, and that's a no-brainer. We should all do our part in trying to shoot more does. It's essential for the welfare of the herd."