Bull doodoo. The genes stay the same through old age. Horns go down hill because lack of nutrition and the bodies weakening state couse of old age. YES that deer will pass good genes on even if he looks raggy in his old age.

I spent 3 days at a Deer Farming Seminar this March. This is one of the topics that was discussed heavily. The quality of offspring the deer will produce declines after about 6.5 years of age. As soon as the antlers start going down hill so does his offspring quality. Reality is though this conversation is a mute point in most places. The deer don't live long enough to ever degrade and with out truely controling what deer is breeding with which other deer the young deer will typically breed more deer than that older deer anyway. While the older deer is busy defending his doe the young ones are just running around servicing anything they can.

NO.

Because the replication process gets compromised after trillions of reputations the genes are NOT the same. Very similar but throughout the rna there will be many miss matched pairs (at a bucks older age) and can actually be bad for the off spring. I can give you a freak nasty buck, or a still born.

buttom line is that the genes do and will change with age, but how it directly effects the off spring is not known exactly because there is no way to for see which genes end up coded wrong.

I agree its bull pucky!! My brother was born when my parents were 20 and I was born when they were in their late 30's.
Are you saying I have different genes and DNA than my brother.
LAMO!! It doesnt matter if a buck, horse or even a human is young or old they have the same genes!! Why do you think that they put great horse racing champions out to stud when they are retired from racing. Pike

Last, but certainly not least, a Buck gets 50% of his genetics from his Mother.

Yep, but already pointed that out in my intial post of this thread.

""""""""""""""""sarge unless your hunting in a fenced in area you cannot change the genetics of a free ranging herd by harvesting inferior bucks or protecting superior bucks.
The average male fawn will disperse between the ages of 3 months to 18 months old and travel a distance of 3 to 40 + miles. How ever the average female fawn will live its entire life with in a couple miles of where it was born. And since atleast 50% of the buck in your examples genes come from its mother and the fact that the majority of doe fawns spend their entire life with in a few miles from where they were born you would have to exterminate every doe that currently lives in the area to have any influence on your herds genetics. Pike""""""""""""""""""""

I think you're missing the concept. Genetic material has to be replicated in new reproductive cells. Eventually, there are going to be mutations and variances. In other words, things can go wrong in the replication process. It gets worse as time goes on. An older deer has a much better chance of having some anomally show up in the genetic material it's passing on than a younger deer in its prime.

The reason they put old studs out is that they are still capable of passing on ideal genetics for racing champs. They may not be capable of winning races, but that doesn't mean they can't sire a winner. The chance of passing on a defective set of genes gets increasingly greater, though, as the horse ages and its replication process, like all other bodily functions, breaks down.