Just got this in an email and thought that yall might like to see it.

I thought you might find this interesting. Last Friday, November 30, while out in Brady, Texas on business, I had the opportunity to run out to the hunting lease with Jeff Cox for a little while. We were going to Jeff's blind to do a little fix up and I just happened to take my gun along. When we walked up to his stand I heard a grunt noise and thought it was hogs, but Jeff happened to look over a ridge and see this deer standing there. I decided to take it since I didn't know whether I would have the opportunity to hunt any more this season. I was able to walk about 15 yards to the edge of the ridge without the deer spotting me and as the deer walked away I made a mew sound to stop it. After shooting the deer with my .270 rifle, Jeff continued working on his stand and then we walked across a small valley to where the deer piled up. To both of our amazement, it was a true nine that had two tines broke off while fighting. The tips of the main beams where covered in blood from a brutal fight with another buck. Then we noticed something not quite right about the deer. Its musk glands on the hind legs where snow white. When we lifted its back leg up we were shocked to find that it was a doe!!! This has to be better than any trophy buck I will ever kill. We did not score it, but I
am having it mounted.

This may sound like a stupid question.......

But....does the absence of testicles automatically make a deer a doe?

Don't look like it's got a wee wee either, GMAT. Thats a really cool kill!

Now.....since you put it that way......disregard my previous post.

I AM STUPID!

i bet the fawns were awfully confused...

NoI wouldn't say the absence of testicles makes it a doe but the deer doesn't even have the "twig" to go with the berries. And this year the bucks in most of the state were rutting pretty hard then and this deers tarsal glands are white.

I think it has to have the correct "parts" to make it a buck before its classified... Weird... diddnt that Preacher kill one this season too??

Ryan.

The cool thing is that this deer was killed about thirty miles from my ranch. Man I would love a crack at something cool like that.

thats pretty crazy, alot of time when you find an antlered doe the genetics will have the antlers all screwed up, but in your case they are very typical, thats awesome.

Even more unusual that it is a hard-horned deer. True antlered does stay in velvet. A deer needs a high testosterone level for the antlers to shed velvet which would require testicles. When you field-dressed it did you find the uterusor happen to check for undescended testicles? More than likely it was a buck with malformed reproductive organs or a hermaphrodite (both sex organs). Here's some info from a DNR website:

What about "does" with polished antlers? For the velvet to die and the antlers to become polished bone, a second surge of testosterone is necessary. Reproductively functional females will not get the second surge. Deer that appear to be does with polished antlers are almost always reproductively malformed males, which will have a second testosterone surge that causes the antler velvet to shed. Postmortem research on these deer shows most are cryptorchids, hermaphrodites with male organs predominant, or pseudohermaphrodites (animals with external female genitalia but internal male reproductive organs). Because its antlers were large and polished, Tom Schneider's 13-point deer likely was a pseudohermaphrodite.