I don't know about Mississippi or Kentucky, but here in Oklahoma deer can be several basic colors ranging from gray, gold, red, brown and dark brown. Like Forest Gump said, "you never know what you're going to get." Our deer heredity can come south from Kansas, west from eastern Oklahoma and Arkansas because of early transplanting, and north from Texas. Texas deer tend to have short hair which tends to be gray while northern deer tend to have long hair which tends to be more gold in color. Dark deer come from both groups. A long hair gold cape in good condition is like fine oak furniture. When I see a buck cape I immediately think either Texas deer or Dakota deer. As you said, young deer have more shine and glow in their coat while old deer hair is drab in color. When deer get old their faces tend to get gray and in some cases the forehead gets dark brown or redish brown. I do some taxidermy work so I pay particular attention to deer capes. In the pictures shown by Nature Boy it's plain to see the deer are related as the old one could have sired the younger buck. It looks like marksman13 has a short hair gray buck which usually don't change much as they get older. You made some good points.