On my ranch, and the ranches that I manage, I will not allow any 1 1/2 year old spikes to be shot. If we see a spike that we believe is older then 1 1/2, then we will shoot it.

Every year we kill anywhere from 3-7 spikes that are 2 1/2 or older, but we hunt on tens of thousands of acres of private land. A ranch down the road from one of ours killed a 6 1/2 year old spike this past season. He won the "Spike division" at several of the local deer contest with a combined total of over 40". Meaning that each spike was over 20" long.

My main reason for letting 1 1/2 year old spikes walk, is because they do very little breeding. It seems like the young spikes are normally the "outcast" of the herd. All the bucks and the mature does all seem to pick on and harass the spikes. So the fact that the 1 1/2 year old spikes dont normally breed, is the reason why I let them grow another year to see what they turn into.

Most of the time spike bucks will grow bigger antlers, they hardly ever stay a spike for the rest of there life. But a buck that had spikes as his first set of antlers, will never grow the same size of rack as a buck that is the same age, but who had a forked rack as his first. Meaning that a 1 1/2 year old spike will never grow the same size of rack as a 1 1/2 year old 8 pointer, even if they both reach there full potential at 6 1/2.

We normally harvest 50%-75% more "cull bucks" then we do "trophy bucks" each year. On the ranches that I manage, a cull buck is "defined" as:
2 1/2+ year old spike
4 1/2+ year old buck, that is 8 points or less
6 1/2+ year old buck, that scores less then 140"+

This method really seems to work for us. Any buck that does not fall into one of the above catagories, is allowed to mature. We will not shoot any buck until he is 5 1/2 years old, but we prefer to hold off until they are
6 1/2+ years old.


I know that alot of the above post have said that "it has been proved over and over again, that spike bucks will turn into "wallhangers" because of studies done on captive spikes". But it must be rememberd that most of these captive deer are put on high protein supplemental diets. Which means they have all the high protein feed that they could ever want, which is rarely the case for non captive bucks. These deer are also held in small enclosers either by their selve or with a few other deer. Which means that these deer do not have to compete or travel for there food. And bucks that are held in "solitude" in a captive enviroment, tend to gain alot more weight and horn size because they turn into "lazy couch potatoes" because they have nothing to do in life other then eat and sleep.