ipscshooter

You were hunting in the Hill Country. The deer are generally quite a bit smaller there. I hunt near Fredericksburg, which is in the same general area as Junction. If it's a good year with plenty of rain, a good sized buck in that area will get to about 150-170 lbs. Does will average about 90-100 lbs. We had couple years of drought in 2005-2006, and deer weights were down 15-20 lbs in those years. We do year round supplemental feeding on our lease, and that seems to help keep them healthy in bad years. Generally speaking though, in addition to the fact that deer seem to have larger bodies further north, there is also a huge difference between deer who live in a desert climate like the Hill Country, and deer who live in a virtual smorgasbord of corn and soybeans...

Deer are much larger in other areas of the state. South Texas bucks will hit about 250 lbs, as will deer in the panhandle area.

Texas8Point: I never heard of Coues deer in Texas, and certainly not as far east as Blanco. I thought the Coues was an Arizona/New Mexico/ Mexico deer.

caza

the deer in the texas hill country tend to be smaller than in most of the state acct nutrition, genetics ect but they also have the highest density persqr mile. you take those same fawns where thenutrition is better and they grow bigger. Texas land owners mostly understand that larger deerequals more lease money so deer are managed as a cash crop and a matter of pride on many ranches.

Lanse couche couche

Kind of wild nowdays to see Illinois being held up as some type of deer Mecca. When i was growing up in the 1970s there weren't even that many of them, especially big ones. But this year there were a bunch of bucks in the 10 to 24 point range taken just within a mile of my land.

sonnys

How would this size up for Texas!

Jim_IV

Just look up some info on the web about mature and immature whitetails. There are plenty of sites that will explain that a mature bucks head is more "block shaped" and that a immature bucks head is "longer".

And we don't have Coues deer in Texas, if you did see and kill one than you were breaking the law.

We have mule deer and whitetails

SHOTARYE

Howdy from an ex-Illinois boy! I grew up in LaSalle county, and we fed-em the best corn and soybeans deer have ever seen! I've seen 200-250 lb. doe's and 300+ lb. bucks come out of LaSalle andBureau counties. I now live in SC, and they grow-em small here too, but as a deer hunter, I appreciate the deer no matter how big or small.Texas/Illinois/SCor wherevever, theirALL smart as heck, and every one of them is a trophy. A realtor friend ofthe familyjust sold a 300 acre farm in Pike county Illinois for 1.6 million to 3 major league baseball players just for whitetail hunting. And to think my brother-in-law sold his 300 acres about five years ago for a song!

Ryan Campbell

This is very true. You dont see Moose sized animals in South America.
Deer in TX and IL are different types of the same species. For that matter, deer in Zavala County TX and deer in Brazos County, TX are different sub-species. Different antler growth, diffent body mass, color phoses...etc.
The monster deer you see coming out of TX are almost always out of South TX, free ranging ones anyway.
Look at the size of Canadian Whitetail, their body mass is often bigger than Muledeer.

texas8point

Well hell, I sure thought it was a coues deer, or at least thats what I was told....(taxidermist, meat guy, normal joe hunter).......I musta shot a freak buck. It was probably 10 years ago and I shot a pretty dern good buck.
AND then i started looking at him.......he had a reaal short head, legs, body.......funny looking. But he was fat and had good horns.........hmmmmmmmm. Any ideas ?

Edcyclopedia

Sounds like your describing me!
5' 5" - 178 pounds, although my mother says I'm handsome, but all mothers think that of their children!
I guess I got the short stick again, fortunately it's not my horn!

antlerridgehunting