How big are your deer

[Riflemanz]

Here in SE Wisconsin farm area i hunt we have some nice deer.They feed on soy beans,corn,alfalfa,apple orchards.This is my biggest but i did see a huge doe 2yrs ago.

[Shotnbeer]

i hunt PA and the best i've got was 160. but they are getting bigger. That was a sweet buck your son got.

[Chris Dillard]

The heaviest deer I have taken was the 8 pointer in my avatar. He was 190 lbs dressed and very tasty

[DuckHunt]

Here in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia and Northern Virginia most mature bucks are in the 140 to 180 pound range. Maybe one out of twenty mature bucks will creep up to or over 200# but most won't live long enough.

Our mature does are normally in the 100 to 140 pound range on the hoof. I did take an old doe once that had to be in the top five largest deer I've taken including the bucks. Quartered up she wouldn't fit in a 48 quart ice chest.

The weights above are for mature deer. A lot of the deer taken around here never make it to a mature age so they weight a bit less. Northern Virginia has an overpopulation so the liberal seasons and bag limits are geared at taking all deer. There are a lot taken that don't weigh 100#. They taste great though.

DuckHunt

[rayman]

OK, its time to make fun of Florida deer because that is what people do. Makes them feel better about their own deer I guess. Mature buck in my neck of Florida will go 120 to 170 live on the hoof. Occasional 180 to 200 pounder or better. Does 80 to 110. People here rarely if ever field dress a deer. We skin and debone them on the hanger without gutting. Some gut and quarter. Anyway, nobody ever knows what the dressed weight is.

[flightattendant100]

Y'all may laugh! Here in my part of Texas ( where everything is bigger, right? ) A mature buck will be in the 135-145 lb range. The bucks most guys shoot ( 3 1/2 yr. )will weigh around 110-120 lbs. Does, 75 lbs is a pretty good 'un. We have some decent horns where we are but body size is sure nothing special.

[Lake shooter]

That goes hand in hand with the climate: north/south thing again. In most areas of Texas the winters aren't really cold and the cold snaps aren't months long! I would bet that the whitetails north of Amarillo are way bigger in body size than those down by Laredo.

My home town is Corpus Christi and I'll always be a Texan, but I've never hunted there. My uncle still lives there and as always with that area. A yearly frost is not common and a hard freeze is fairly rare.

[rayman]

A deer's body and antler size is a function of age, genetics, and nutrition. There is a lot said about the rule of the farther north you go, the bigger animals are, on the North American Continent anyway. There are exceptions to that rule, but most evidence seems to support it. The best way to affect nutrition is good habitat management including timber cutting, burning, so forth - artificial feeding programs have to be very large scale to have much effect. Also reducing the number of deer by shooting excess does - Daddy like!! Hard to have much control over genetics in normal hunting situation - I'm not going to let the biggest buck walk. Can have some control over age if so desired.

Deer farms control all of these factors by practicing artificial insemination and keeping papers on all deer, and by using formulated feed with worm medicine. Nothing left to chance.

[Lake shooter]

Rayman, with all due respect and no offense intended; saying that "most evidence seems to support it", with the "it" being the relation of body size to latitude is like saying that most evidence seems to support plate tectonics. Even though the scientific world still uses the term "theory of plate tectonics", it is a proven fact, just as is the other point in question. If you took the biggest Key deer buck that you could find and transplanted it to northern Michigan it would be dead already!

I'm not even considering antler size here, antlers don't keep of buck from freezing to death in Saskatchewan or dying from heat stroke in Yucatan! Of course there are and have been exceptions to the body size/latitude thingy, but they didn't last long in the past and won't in the future, which is why those deer with the genetics to make it in a specific geographic location still exist and continue to thrive.

Much of the reason for the sometimes fairly great variance in body size in many parts of the US is because of Fish and Game agencies importing deer from other radically different areas decades back to build the heard after decades of slaughter, almost to the point of extinction in some areas, as was the case here in Arkansas. Still, this doesn't mean that seeing a huge bodied deer in Florida or the opposite way up north is genetic, or natural for that matter. Peace brother!

[IronNoggin]

We have some Mighty Big Deer in Alberta, Saskatchewan and BC.

Ma's HUGE Saskatchewan Non-Typical Muley would have run a little better than 400 pounds on the hoof:



Pa's Whitetail from the same Province was over 300:



And the Alberta Mulie I guided him to went over 350:



Another Guided BIG Whitetail - ran over 300:



Here on the Island, our deer are Blacktails, and rather small in comparison. It is VERY unusual to take one that runs over 150. That said, here is an old Retrograde I took with the Exomax last season - He was 225 on the hook. Biggest bodied Blacktail I have ever seen...



Cheers,
Nog

[Lake shooter]

Congrats on all sir, VERY nice indeed!!!!

[rayman]

Didn't mean to get your whitey titeys in a knot there Lake, just enjoying the discussion. Don't know much about them there plate technicians.


Beautiful deer Nog!!!

[Lake shooter]

No knots anywhere on me friend, that's why I was overly polite! I've come and gone from more than a few forums when a few folks started "peeing on the tree" just because I disagreed with them or pointed out something different from their view, beliefs or opinions.

I meant what I said "with all due respect", and that's all I ask in return.

[Masboy]

Noggs got the biggest I ever seen! anyone hunt the small sika deer in southern Maryland or know about there size. my son was down hunting them last week an said they heard them but did not see any.

[Zap]

270 dressed is the biggest that I have killed.



My son and the 270# buck.

Put a tape as he laid in the truck bed and it was almost 8' from his butt to the bloody tounge.