How accurate is that QDMA aging chart?
 

Either they are using Ohio or Texas as a reference or I have A LOT of culling to do next season. The body proportions seem accurate in deer I have seen on camera or with my own eyes but those antlers are WAAAAAAY off. Im lucky if my 1.5 year olds have antlers that are above the ears. The headgear on my 2.5-3.5 year olds look more like the 1.5 year old. Do they make steroids for deer I can put out come April so my bucks actually look like bucks?

It is probably accurate for deer that are fed a top notch diet and experience little winter stress. For our deer, however, many if not most 1 1/2 year old bucks have 3-5" spikes and I suspect that many 6-pointers that look like the 1 1/2 year olds in the chart are 2 1/2 years old.

The only sure way to age a deer is through tooth wear and replacement on the bottom jaw. As a rule that requires a dead deer.

It appears pretty accurate to me. The guys at the QDMA do a fine job.

I would say that its accurate in some places (ie: midwest), not so much in alot of others. In our area, its not even close. We have had alot of our deer tooth aged by DNR and most of the 3.5-5.5 bucks don't look anything like that chart - rack or body.

I agree, the only way to accurately age is by teeth...

I disagree.Tooth aging is an inexact science. I took a buck jaw that I knew to be from a 4 1/2 year old buck to the QDMA booth at an outdoor show because they were tooth aging. The one expert told me I have a 2 1/2 yo deer and the other said 3 1/2. So much for that.

Looks spot on for my area.

As opposed to looking at pictures of corn-fed, genetically managed Texas deer.
The tooth wear method is accurate enough for most, if not all, game departments and biologists to use.
Tooth wear can vary in different regions due to soils and type of food source. More sand in the soil will cause teeth to wear faster than areas with loamy soils. But it will be uniform in that area. Perhaps where your experts were from, that would be typical wear for deer of that age they were used to looking at.

I think most of the age stuff has to do with body shape/size slants etc... which seem quite accurate, racks may change sizes in areas etc... but their bodies seem to grow pretty similarly.

teeth/jaw aging I think can be very accurate especially once you know how teeth wear down in your particular area.