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Short in the Tooth

Short in the Tooth

By Bob Humphrey

Whitetails in the wild usually have a short and dangerous life.

QUESTION: I got a deer last fall, and while caping it out I noticed the teeth were very worn. Someone told me that means it’s a very old deer. My question is, how old do deer get? — J.T.

ANSWER: Much depends on where they live. In captivity, whitetails can live 20 years or more, and captive does have been recorded producing fawns at age 22. In the wild, they have to contend with predators, hunters, disease and winter severity, among other things. In heavily hunted areas, bucks especially often live only two or three years.

I’ve had the good fortune to take several very old deer. One was a mature Alabama buck that sported only 3 points, and the property manager estimated it to be 8 or 9 years old. Another was a Wisconsin buck that was aged at 9 1/2. The third was a doe that dressed out at 140 pounds, and I estimated her to be 7 1/2. The landowner had been complaining about nuisance deer, and the problems ceased as soon as I removed the doe.

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