younggun308

My impression was that one can judge by looking at the degree of wear on the teeth; I do not know if they make charts for these sorts of things online---but no, I doubt you need to send it somewhere for carbon dating.

super_hunt54

lmao@ "carbon dating" That was funny!! No younggun I don't think Jake meant trying CD. He was meaning having the jaw aged by Biologists using teeth wear and jaw size. Kind of like rings on a tree, the jaw of a whitetail can be aged to a fairly close accuracy of within a few months.

Oldtimr

They use tooth wear for the most part and on very young deer if all they have is the jaw bone, which teeth have erupted. However, it is a little more complicated than just the tooth wear and the amount of dentin exposed, they would have to know where the deer came from, sandy soil erodes the teeth faster than clay or loamy soil. I used to have a chart that gave examples of wear and age with pictures of jawbones, I no longer have it. Each year in PA, teams of biologists and biology techs go around to cooperating butcher shops and age the deer heads before they are sent to the rendering plant to get a pretty good idea of the make up of the herd ages. I haven't tried but I would bet you could find such a chart on google find.

younggun308

Here's one that goes as far as 5 years in the South Carolina herd, profiling the side of the jaw:
http://www.dnr.sc.gov/wildlife/deer/pdf/deerjaw.pdf

This Indiana site has some good shots from above the teeth that give lots of details on tooth wear:
http://www.in.gov/dnr/fishwild/2739.htm

rockport

Very different animals for sure.

WV Hunter

That is a whopper. Congrats! She's 1.5x bigger than the mature bucks where I hunt, and 2x our big does. QDM site has some good info on aging also. Its not that hard to look at it and get close. If you want absolute, you need to send it off. I've never done that, I just go by the wear.