cooold morning pays off-accura good on another long range backyard buck

[Rhino]

Congratulations William...great buck...I would have been a total wreck too.

[wtnhunt]

Congrats William! That buck is a beauty!

I had a similar situation with my muzzleloader a few years ago. I think i narrowed it down to the cold making the firing pin a little sticky & not hitting the primer hard enough on my bolt action. In my case it was about 20 degrees, and just like you it took three times for it to loosen up enough to fire. I must have gotten a little bore butter around it and it just got too thick when it was cold.

Don't think there was anything on the hammer/ firing assembly to gum or freeze up, but i will definitely check into that. Don't want that to happen again, doubt i will ever have a buck stand that long again.

Broke the gun down last night and Mud was right. The firing pin was sticky, don't use bore butter there maybe a little blowback? So it was NOT a primer issue.

[MUDRUNNER]

Sweet! Glad you got it figured out. I don't use bore butter there either, but somehow enough got in there to gum it up when it got cold. I actually haven't hunted with my muzzle loader since that happened lol. I'm thinking about shortening the stock & letting the kids use it with a little less powder for recoil.

[archerjg]

Congratulations on a great buck.

Archerjg

[dbHunterNY]

Nice buck William! very hard to tell from pictures of it on the ground. the cam pic is better but pretty far away and a little blurry. I'm going to say 3.5+ years old. could very well be older. definitely has a heavier front end and more typical rack size of 3.5+ yr old opposed to 2.5 years old. hard to tell how much the thickness carries into the hind end to tell if he's 4.5+. also hard to tell in the cam pic how far down compared to his shoulder/leg joint his neck connects or blends into his chest/brisket.

if you pull both lower jaw bones and take pictures from top and cheek side of each I could age it for you. I briefly looked at franks nice buck and came up with 4.5 years old. was going to look at it again and get some other reliable opinions but had a phone glitch and lost the pics.

[dbHunterNY]

many times older bucks too will have tarsal staining start to run further down there inside legs. doesn't really look to be the case.

[wtnhunt]

Nice buck William! very hard to tell from pictures of it on the ground. the cam pic is better but pretty far away and a little blurry. I'm going to say 3.5+ years old. could very well be older. definitely has a heavier front end and more typical rack size of 3.5+ yr old opposed to 2.5 years old. hard to tell how much the thickness carries into the hind end to tell if he's 4.5+. also hard to tell in the cam pic how far down compared to his shoulder/leg joint his neck connects or blends into his chest/brisket.

if you pull both lower jaw bones and take pictures from top and cheek side of each I could age it for you. I briefly looked at franks nice buck and came up with 4.5 years old. was going to look at it again and get some other reliable opinions but had a phone glitch and lost the pics.

Thanks Dan. I had posted a thread in this same room on aging the deer from trail cam pics and the guesses were all 3.5 or 4.5.

Here is another trail cam pic. Pretty squared body, definitely was no taper in the gut to indicate a younger deer. I had a pretty good look at the body before I shot him and thought I was pretty sure he was at least 3.5.

I looked at the teeth inside the deer's mouth as best as I could before taking him to the taxidermist and clearly was more than 2.5 and thought probably 3.5, but I could really not tell for sure.

Teeth were pulled by the taxidermist and were laying in his shop floor when I picked them up. I sent one side lower jawbone back to the college with my daughter from a deer I killed in 2013 along with the jawbone from the 10 in this thread. I have no idea if the taxidermist might have mixed them up with another deer or not, but the deer biologist where my daughter is at school(university of Tennessee Knoxville) said the teeth I sent with her were from a 2.5 year old deer. I met that biologist, she has something to do with working with the state folks on bear and deer, so pretty conclusive that the teeth are of a 2.5 year old. She had her conservation professor look prior to the biologist and he said 2.5. Both noted that tooth 3 was too sharp still to be any older deer.

Here are pics of the teeth. My daughter still has the other side at school, she has not been back home since spring break.

[dbHunterNY]

I'm going with 3.5 years old. So in the trail cam picture it's legs look just right length for body so 3.5. 2.5 they would appear to long. Neck blends into chest right at point of shoulder not above (2.5) or below (4.5+). Also at 2.5 it'd appear to have underdeveloped front shoulders and hind quarters. Your buck looks heavier in the front and not real thick in the back giving that race horse look.

[dbHunterNY]

For the jaw bone....

You can't go by sharpness alone. You've got to look at lots of stuff. So looking at 1st three teeth (premolars) you'll see some staining. At 2.5 they're brand new and would have even less unless he was in big woods of Adirondacks. Also at 3.5 he will still have "sharp" lingual crests. Back cusp of last molar at 2.5 will be still pointed. At 3.5 it'll be concave and at 4.5 it'll start to slope toward the cheek. Yours looks concave. Also you look at the dentine width compared to the width of the cheek side enamel on the first molar (fourth tooth back). If dentine's as wide and usually wider than enamel then it's at least 3.5. Go to next tooth back and should be the same to give you 4.5. Go back to last tooth, get the same result, and you're at least 5.5. Pending you pay attention to the other stuff, meaning it'd be an indicator.

So with everything I'm leaning hard at 3.5

Edited September 14, 2015 by dbHunterNY

[dbHunterNY]

another thing always pull both lower jaw bones and if it clearly appears to be an older deer, say a trophy of a lifetime buck, you can send out the teeth to know how old the deer is that you pursued successfully. deerage and matson's labs are two that you'd send teeth (the center or next further out incisors) to for cementum annuli analysis. not that expensive if you send teeth with other hunters' deer teeth as a group and split the cost. same price to send in 1 tooth as it is for up to around half a dozen. both are credible but matson's has been around longer I think and is used by state agencies. I've got a doe that's at least 8.5 years old and probably a bit older I've thought about sending teeth in for but at this point I think I'm happy just knowing what I know.

[wtnhunt]

Thanks Dan. Don't know that I would want to pay an excess amount to have them aged by that process under the circumstances on this particular deer since I am not 100 percent certain that the teeth did not get mixed up at the taxidermists, but I do have teeth from a few others aside from this buck and the one from the previous year. Will have to keep that in mind for the future. The more I looked after reading what you posted and comparing to more aging charts, I really don't think there is any way that deer was less than 3.5.

Christina told me she showed some of the trail cam pics to her professor. She said her professor asked her if the teeth maybe got mixed up because the trail cam pics she would more likely have put the deer at a 4.5 year old. So dunno, all I know to do is ask the taxidermist when I pick up my mount if there was any possibility there may have been a mixup with the teeth.

I would be interested in how a deer's diet might effect tooth wear and would be inclined to think an animal that eats leafy browse and grasses would probably have minimal wear opposed to an animal eating twigs and bark. Sounds like a potential research project for a college kid to me. lol.

[abrown]

I was always taught to focus on the first molar. Dentine vs. enamel on the first molar, then move back from there.

Edited May 6, 2015 by abrown

[abrown]

I was always taught to focus on the first molar. Dentine vs. enamel, them move back from there.

[dbHunterNY]

I was always taught to focus on the first molar. Dentine vs. enamel on the first molar' date=' then move back from there.[/quote']

first look at the third tooth back (3rd premolar) for replacement tooth which will have 2 cusps and indicate it'll be at least 2.5 yrs old. then that's the basic idea because the first molar (4th tooth back) is the oldest tooth and most used in the jaw. sometimes the dentine isn't clearly a lot wider and is a little subjective, so you look at the other characteristics when you're at all on the fence between ages and for further verification.

[dbHunterNY]

I'm coordinator for a deer co-op now of 11,000+ acres. all the local hunters check their deer in that is harvested on co-op participating land and take a minute or two to pull the jaw bone. from their we'll use that for age and a couple other things. each year i'll age 200 or so with another coordinator and then have an actual deer biologist very familiar with jaw bone aging look at them for a multiple opinion estimate. from there we can use that info for a lot of stuff management wise like assessing deer health or adjusting doe harvest. the goal being to change to brown it's down and screw you I got my deer mentality. try to teach a kid about what happened in a third world country long before they were born and get silence. teach them things like how to age a deer jaw from the deer they just harvested with their parent or older sibling and you get attention with lots of "whooaa"s, "cool"s, and questions.

[abrown]

Ya, I was thinking that was a givin, since there was not a tricusp. So you have it easy, managing private!