Quote: "For what it's worth I have only ever had one buck aged, the guy said 6 1/2 yrs. That means the first set of sheds I found from him with 44" mass and 185 gross score would have been him at 2 1/2 and the 75 single the landowner gave me from the year before would have been his first set of antlers."
So are you saying that you found the 185" sheds from your 6 1/2 year old buck 4 years before you shot him and the landowner's shed was from 5 years before you shot him? Or are you just saying that if he was a 3 1/2 year old when you shot him, those sheds would have been his 2 1/2 and 1 1/2 year old sheds? That just has me a little confused because you said he was aged at 6 1/2. Was the buck aged by tooth wear or cementum analysis?
Quote: "I think the key to both links is "estimate" b/c it is never more than that."
It is only an estimate if the buck was aged using tooth wear, even the best tooth wear agers can easily be off by one year or more especially on older bucks. But with cementum analysis, there is no guessing, it's pretty much 100% accurate, confirmed by testing many animals of known age. Too bad more top end bucks aren't aged by this method. Every buck my brothers, dad, and I ever shoot will be aged by this method, we have learned so much from getting them aged by cementum analysis the last 7 years.
I'm not saying that all monster bucks are young 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 year olds. Most of them are fully mature 5 1/2 to 7 1/2 year olds. But there are some bucks with truly world class scoring racks shot each year that are only 3 1/2 years old and I'm pretty sure these bucks have racks at age 2 1/2 that are larger than a lot of bucks have at 4 1/2 years of age.
