GBhunter

I just developed a roll of film from my trail cam that was set looking over a spot that had a mineral mixture from Whitetail Institute. we got about 20 pics that had deer on them and this one small buck was the only buck on there. he used 4 pics on three different nights. i was just wondering if he would ever regrow his odd antler or if i should try to take him out of the gene pool this year. granted he only looks like a yearling and may have been injured. its kind of hard to judge size because he is alone in all four pics. what are you thoughts?

bigcat fhsu

Just my opinion but i would let him go another year or two to see what happens. The chances are that he wont be doing to much breeding with headgear like that anyway, and if i does you are already in trouble with the local gene pool.

timbercruiser

Looks like a yearling, just needs time. Probably broke the antler. Probably do your herd more good if you shot some of the does if this is the only buck in that many pictures.

Deleted User

[Deleted by Admins]

cardeer

If you kill him ,I can assure you he will never get bigger

Duse500

Just a newbie here but I agree with Timbercruiser... I have a couple pics of a yearling with a 6 pack rack(cute little thing)I figure if he makes it 2 more years it' s gonna be a monster rack.
That stand has 4 racks in it,none are mauture.And its in the swamp
Another stand has 6 racks,3 are mature(very hard to find around here).This stand is 200' off the road...go figure.I' m still expecting to pull a monster out of the swamp
A bonus to all this is they just outlawed clubs driving in this areaThese guys were brutal,Thier motto is...If it' s brown it' s down[>:]
Last years shotgun I saw they were starting a drive so I grabbed my weapon and jumpped in my stand .After the lead stoped flying (I heard 9 shots)I met up with them and they only had 1 yearling and a 6pointer.They said they wounded another but dident want to go find it
Sorry about getting off the topic

JeramyK

I' d let him go another year and see what happens.

BarnesX.308

When people take management deer, how do they find and kill specific deer. If you pass up a buck this year, how do you know you will be able to find him the next year, identify him as the same buck and see how the progress has gone? There are a lot of woods out there with a lot of nasty cover. If you can go out on any given day and pick the deer you want to remove, is there a lot of challenge left? I don' t think I could find the same deer twice on our property unless it was feeding at night.

timbercruiser

From GBhunter' s brief information it sounds like the buck/doe relationship is way out of wack. The harvest of does would be a lot more helpful to the herd than the harvest of a yearling buck. Same amount of meat, the only thing missing is a small rack that nobody would put on the wall. You don' t know if you will see that specific buck in two or three years, but if you shoot him now you definitely won' t see him with a trophy rack.

txhunter58

Leave him and take does. The only question is whether or not he might have a permanent injury to one of his legs. That would cause a deformity of one antler every year. If he is walking well, I would let him walk.