Should I shoot this buck?
 

I set up my camera looking over my bean field to try and see if the 2 bucks I have been seeing were worth shooting. When I was looking through the ones from this past week I came across this deer. He only has antlers on one side and at first I thought maybe one side just fell out. Then one of the videos showed him bending down to feed and it looks like its growing all messed up. If hes got some kind of genetic defect will it grow deformed again next year? Was wondering if this deer should be harvested?

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If you want to shoot a deer, shoot it. Who made the determining factor of whether a deer is worthy of living or should be killed the size of its antlers? The coveting of big antlers is not what hunting should be about. Big antlers do not make you special, if you kill a deer with large antlers it only means you were in the right place at the right time, it does not make you a great hunter. If that is your motivation, find another hobby!

Quite often the reason for a misshaped rack on one side is that the deer has sustained an injury on that side of the body, i.e. a car injury. In that case, it would have nothing to do with genetics. It looks like a young buck. Who knows what it will be like if it grows older.

What are your deer management goals on that property?? How many antlered tags are you allowed? Is that a buck you want to fill one of those tags? The question soon becomes should you NOT shoot that deer. Last but not least how hungry are you? :sign0016:

He looks young, I'd pass and see what he looks like next year...... unless you just want meat!

+1

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think im gonna give him another year. he does look very promising but I just couldnt figure out if the lost antler was due to an accident or deformity because from one angle it looks broken off and then another angle looks like its growing backwards. Also what is a antlered deer tag? We have doe tags in South Carolina but nothing for antlered deer. In fact im pretty sure SC doesnt have any sort of limit on Bucks at all for a season. Im pretty sure if I wanted to kill 50 bucks there would be nothing stopping me, legally that is.

Oh, here in Kansas we are only allowed 1 antlered buck per year which includes button bucks with visible antler. We need to be selective about which buck we harvest cause once you shoot and tag 1 you are done for bucks for the year. Good luck this hunting season!