Thanks for your replies.

trmichels,

none of the bucks that have been taken are younger than 2 1/2. A few have been 3 1/2 and a couple have even been 4 1/2. A few bucks had pea sized testicals, some of them had absolutely none (we have disected them to see if they just haven't dropped). None of them had any scars or anything that would indicate some sort of injury. The one buck this year that had testicals had full sized testicals, horns still in velvet, and he was definately rutting.

Taz,

I hunt in the Hill Country in Texas West of Austin in Llano County. We have this phoenomenon every year. This year is just a bumper crop of the furry heads.

Up until now, we didn't think these deer could damage our genetics because they don't breed. We thought they were just eating all our food, but now that we killed the one that was rutting we are not so sure.

We have even kicked around the idea of maybe these deer are injesting something that is causing this. We have an Emu ranch next door to us and we thought that maybe that rancher feeds his Emus some sort of hormone or something that would cause this in deer because before this season, every one of the stags were taken in the same area on the ranch (near the Emu ranch). This year, they are all over the place.