how old do whitetails typicllyget in the wild, and do you have a pic of an old deer, im wondering what those final year deer look like, espically bucks...
can a buck be abig 10 pointer at 4.5 than lets say he gets to 7 or 8 and is only a spike or sumtin?

THe bucks around here only get to be around 4 1/2 or so because the wolves get them. And yes they can get smaller, I've actually seen a nice 8 pointer 2 years ago and the next year it was a small one.

WV DNR states the average buck in West Virginia does not live past 1.5-2.5 years.

I sawa documentary thatsaid they can live to be 20. But they had no proof or picture of what one that old would look like.

Here in michigan Public property is 1 1/2- 2 /12 then privat land goes up to 2.5 - 3.5 and then theres this sweet piece of property that i hunt that hte deer on average are probably 3.5 and i dont care how old they are just wont shoot yearlings or fawns anything under 175lbs (estimate) just sint worth it

Up here most bucks don't make it past their first three or fouryears. Those that do generally do allright but they never die of old age. In addition to dodging bullets during the hunting season all it takes is one bad winter or injury from the rut and the coyotes will get them.It's a hard life being a buck and those that make it to maturity have truly beaten the odds.

As for telling age, the deer up here (and in general i think) tend to gain more mass and non-typical junk as they grow old. The trade off is that their tine length suffers. Also, as a deer ages his pedicles (antler bases) will get further apart from each other to the point that on an old buck they will be almost on the side of his head.

In 4 years of hunting cental nebraska (mainly mule, but some whitetail) deer, the average age of the deer I've taken has been 4.0, but the hunting pressure out here probably isn't what it is in more eastern states.

Nate

i talked with a guy about a white doe once and he said he knew for a fact that hes been watching it for 14 years.i can't back this up but can't prove otherwise either.

http://www.ranches.org/Swampdeer.htm

i did a google search and found that.

I shot a doe in 2004 that the DNR man aged it at between 9 to 12 years old. He showed me what little teeth were left in the does mouth. That doe dressed out at 150#. It was a big one for our area .