We take alot of bucks off of the ranches each year, most of them being mature "management bucks". I can only remember 4-5 spikes being killed that were 2 1/2 or older. Now this is over a long period of time and thousands of acres of land. Spikes will normally always improve in years to follow. But alot of people (myself included) believe that a spike will never produce the same size of antlers as a buck the same age, but who had multiple points his first year. Most of the 1 1/2 year old bucks we see are 4-6 pointers with some being 8 pointers. On most of the land that I hunt, we pass on 1 1/2 year old spikes, but I believe that we end up killing most of them in future years as "management" bucks. Meaning even though we gave them time to mature, they still didnt turn into our defintion of a trophy buck.

I wish somebody in south Texas would do a long term study on free ranging 1 1/2 year old spikes. Use a helicopter to net the bucks, ear tag them, put a chip behind there ear for ID reasons, then turn them loose and see how many turn into "trophy" bucks after they reached there prime of 5 1/2-7 1/2 years old. I bet they would find most of these deer to be 8-10 pointers scoring less then 140" (which in some areas would be a heck of a buck), although I'm sure there would be a few that turn into really nice bucks.............