Spike Bucks

My grand father taught me what I knew about hunting..His thoughts were this..if it's legal and it's for food shoot it.. If it's not for food then shoot does and mature bucks and let the young ones live to grow another season.

okchunter, so you think that spikes are young deer?

I tend to associate them with young deer more often then not but I don't just look at that when deciding if it's a young or mature deer. if it's a spike and it's a mature deer then yeah shoot em..but if it's obviously a young spike then I tend to lean towards letting em go unless like I said it's to put food on the table. I should have clarified that better..

My thoughts on spikes, if he looks to be older than a couple of years old and still a spike, he's toast. I've seen some spikes that had some pretty thick and long daggers so he's had time to grow out of it. If it's a young one that has a couple of pencils comming out of his skull, I'll give him another chance at growing some good head gear.

Does, unless I see a lil one still suckin' on momma, she's toast.

Definition of "toast"= I'll attempt to take said animal, thus the laws of Birds luck kick in and the animal is still realitivly safe.

I agree with okchunter.

I've seen several studies of spike deer. What the "experts" say is that a young spike is typically one that was concieved during the second rut. Bucks that were concieved during the first rut in Nov will normally have fork horns or maybe a small 6 point. Any deer that is 2 1/2 yrs or older that still has a spike will grow up as a spike. They showed pics of a young spike as he was growing(captive deer). He developed into a trophy deer in his 4th year. On our DMAP the Okla wildlife biologist tell us to take the mature does. Their first year they will produce a single fawn. If the buck to doe ratio is good it will be a buck. When a doe matures, she starts putting out twins, and will almost always be doe fawns. This is info from the biologist, not my personal opinion. Right now on our DMAP we have a 56-1 doe to buck ratio, and a 86-1 doe to fawn ratio. We improved on the doe to buck, but lost ground on the doe to fawn.

OK Dennis, that makes since to me. Thanks everyone for their thoughts.

On opening weekend Blackpowder I saw two bucks hanging out togiether. One was a fork horn and the other was what I'm told is a cow horn. The cow horn was a really long spike. His spikes were between 8" to 12" long. He had no mass, the horn's were about as big around as my pinky fingure. We think he should grow into something big.