The apple doesn't fall far from the tree? A whitetail never roams far from home?

I posted a couple pics of this years whitetail buck in the 2019 picture thread and gave the story on how I got him. I thought this was interesting enough to warrant its own thread though.

The skull in the pictures is from a buck I shot in 2016. The head is the buck I just shot this year. I got them from the exact same stand, just 3 years apart.

They were similar size, similar build, and the antlers are unmistakable. I always assumed the 2016 buck had suffered an injury that caused the mismatched antlers, but now that I have a 2nd one from the same area with very close to the same rack I'm thinking its genetics.

This years buck was tagging along with a group of 5 does. I wonder if I will see more of these in the future?

I have a stand over a 55 acre beanfield that belongs to some friends, and I am only allowed to take one buck per year per ohio regs. I try to shoot mature deer but I don't worry about trophies. With the number of people hunting around here on small parcels I don't think anyone is going to have any significant effect on the quality of the deer herd.

I keep the skulls of any bucks I get and hang them in my barn. I have the whole range from a basket racked 6 point up to a 13 point that scored 143 gross and weighed about 250lbs. These 2 guys just add to the collection and make it interesting to me.

I am about 1.5 miles from a metro park that encompasses about 20 square miles where hunting is off limits. My theory is that I see the less dominate deer that get pushed out to farther ranges. I can pretty consistently tag deer that dress out around 150lbs, but seeing anything truly big only happens every 3 years or so. The most common thing to find is groups of yearling and 2 year old does that group up and come through in groups of 5-10 this time of year.

Jeb Stuart said:

Yes that is interesting. I once shot a buck with a similar set of antlers. One side had three points, the other just a large spike. On one leg was a scar tissure and a very swollen leg joint where he was either wounded earlier in life or perhaps tangled in wire or something. Seems all the calcium etc. went to heal the wounded leg rather than grow the antlers on one side.

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The 2016 buck has a small cut/hole near the base of the antler and I always assumed that he had hit a fence wire or something as it was growing and caused it to end up like it did, but seeing that the base on this years deer has almost the exact same shape leads me to believe it actually just grew that way naturally. I do my own processing and didn't find any signs of previous injury on either deer. I will be looking closer next time I see a buck with mismatched antlers in this area for sure.

WestKentucky said:

That spike side has a very telling feature. The one small spit of an antler comes off at the same spot, the same direction, and is in a weird spot because it’s on the wrong side for a brow, and wrong location for anything else.

I let a few similar mismatched bucks walk over the years and ended up with this guy. As unique as he is, a friend shot one very similar 3 years earlier on a farm across the road.

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I'm not a good photographer but you picked up on the same spots on his antlers that I did. There is a lot more in common than both just being basically a spike on one side.
That deer of yours is neat. Don't get me wrong I like a nice big typical rack, but I'd shoot a buck like that any day around here.

ridgerunner1965 said:

if you want to learn about genetics, simply talk to a serious cattle rancher that keeps good records.

for instance a cow that routinely produces mediocre calves will produce heifers that routinely produce mediocre calves.

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I train horses and have done some breeding. I am not a bloodline junky and don't know as much as I should about genetics but there are certain bloodlines I won't even look at due to traits that get passed on. Some horses pass their traits on very definitely and others don't. Some broodmares always have a foal that looks like the sire and others seem to drop the same thing no matter who you breed them too.
I should relate that to the deer, but when they are breeding on their own and traveling wherever they want, it seemed unlikely to me to have such a noticeable trait show up show up and stay in the same area over a period of time.