Muley antlers

Continued from page 4 by 5.5 years of age,” French said. “That’s younger than often thought for mule deer.

I’ve heard most of my life that they hit their peak at age 7 or even 8.”

The bucks were found to hold onto those scores for a good while, though.

“There was little evidence of a crash on average,” French said. “They reach their peak earlier, but hold on to the peak longer.”

As might be expected, there was a lot of variation in the individual results.

“Some bucks peaked at 3 and fell off,” French said. “There was about a 20-percent variation with how early or late they peak.”

French said some of the conceptions of when mule deer peak could be a result of the difficulty of aging mule deer on the hoof.

“It could be we were aging wrong all along on the hoof,” he said. “We used mule deer biologists and showed images of bucks and gave them 30 seconds to estimate age. They were only correct one out of four times. There was a tendency to age to the middle.”

French said the study was the first of its kind in the Trans-Pecos.

“Levi Heffelfinger at CKWRI did some research in the Panhandle with similar results,” he said.

Selective harvest also was examined in the study.

“Culling really doesn’t work to improve antler quality in mule deer,” French said.

What should wildlife managers do?

“You can manage to the habitat and nutrition,” French said. “If you don’t like a certain buck and if there are good numbers, take it and leave more resources for the rest of them. At the least, selective harvest increases access to resources for the bucks you like.”