Help with jawbone ageing

Jeff H

Jeff H

Well-Known Member
I'm interested in knowing the age of a deer that I shot last night. Jawbone ageing seems less subjective than a general visual guess but I have little knowledge on what I'm looking for. He's at the processor now and I will get the head back for mounting but tell me when you guys think of these pictures of the upper/lower jawbone.

Upper jawbone. Not a lot there. 1/16th in or less. Note: the rigid part showing on the lower are not teeth, that is the lip.
upload_2018-10-22_13-23-18.png

This is a horrible picture but it was 1 am and I was pooped! Lower jawbone. The area between the incisors up front and the molars in the rear (not in picture. I could not get the mouth open far enough) is devoid of anything, just gum. The area is about 3 inches of gum. I could feel the molars further back in the mouth but could not see them much less get a picture of them.
upload_2018-10-22_13-32-15.png
 
To properly age you almost have to cut the cheek back to the eye where you can see the jaw teeth well. If it's a deer you want to mount, better to have the taxi save the jawbone. Deer have no teeth in the upper jaw except for the front ones and no teeth between the molars and the incisors in the front. You can pull the front two incisors from the bottom jaw and send them to deerage.com for a closer age result.
 
Tooth wear is a guessing game after 2.5. Cementum annuli is the way to go for accurate age determination.


Rusty
 
rusty1034 said:
Tooth wear is a guessing game after 2.5. Cementum annuli is the way to go for accurate age determination.


Rusty
Click to expand...
No such thing as accurate aging via any method unless they are tagged at birth. Everything else has error.
Regardless, we definitely can't estimate the age based on those pics...Need to see the teeth.
 
Gator said:
No such thing as accurate aging via any method unless they are tagged at birth. Everything else has error.
Regardless, we definitely can't estimate the age based on those pics...Need to see the teeth.
Click to expand...
Thanks Gator. I'll get the jawbone removed and likely take it to a biologist with the Dept of Conservation.
Thanks for all the replies and forgive my ignorance on the matter.
 
Jeff H said:
Thanks Gator. I'll get the jawbone removed and likely take it to a biologist with the Dept of Conservation.
Thanks for all the replies and forgive my ignorance on the matter.
Click to expand...
No worries hope it didn't come across as harsh. Top down view of the teeth. For jawbone aging, having a bunch of jawbones from the same area to compare definitely helps solidify the ages. As someone already mentioned, from 2 up the difference starts being the wear of the teeth that is shown by how much dentine (spelling?) that you see
 
Not harsh at all Gator. I had a biologist age a couple does last year by pulling a tooth. No idea how it works but she said it was more definitive than anything else. She knew in seconds by inspecting the tooth.
 
Good example of pictures required.

e108f855e954858cc08940d596578d81.png



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As rusty said, simply aging by tooth wear is really a guessing game beyond 2.5 years. Sure you can get a good estimate but there are too many variables such as diet. For example, let's say you have a younger buck that lives deep in a swamp. He tends to be elusive and stays in cover most of the time never really making his way out into the fields where beans, clover, and other soft foods are consumed. His diet might consist of mostly woody browse and other hard mast. Now let's say you have an older doe that lives in a cutover near some ag fields or food plots. She consistently eats soft mast from the fields, food plots, and orchards. The amount of tooth wear on the buck might actually be more than the doe who is older than him. Now if she is 7.5+ and he is 3.5 you would likely still be able to see a difference but if they are only 1 or 2 years apart, his jaw may actually appear to make him 5.5 whereas she only looks 3.5. You get the idea.

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Yeah, I was taught aging by tooth replacement and wear in my wildlife degree. I have no faith in this method. Anything over 2.5 is a guesstimate. Waste of time in my opinion


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pinetag said:
As rusty said, simply aging by tooth wear is really a guessing game beyond 2.5 years. Sure you can get a good estimate but there are too many variables such as diet. For example, let's say you have a younger buck that lives deep in a swamp. He tends to be elusive and stays in cover most of the time never really making his way out into the fields where beans, clover, and other soft foods are consumed. His diet might consist of mostly woody browse and other hard mast. Now let's say you have an older doe that lives in a cutover near some ag fields or food plots. She consistently eats soft mast from the fields, food plots, and orchards. The amount of tooth wear on the buck might actually be more than the doe who is older than him. Now if she is 7.5+ and he is 3.5 you would likely still be able to see a difference but if they are only 1 or 2 years apart, his jaw may actually appear to make him 5.5 whereas she only looks 3.5. You get the idea.

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Click to expand...

I agree. Now throw in the deer that pick up acorns (corn) after a rain on sandy ground. You know that sand coated morsel has got to have an effect on tooth wear.
 
Not a waste of time everywhere. I didn’t have a single buck estimated over 3.5 last year (trail cam pictures). This method would at least most likely confirm 1, 2 or older.


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weekender21 said:
Not a waste of time everywhere. I didn’t have a single buck estimated over 3.5 last year (trail cam pictures). This method would at least most likely confirm 1, 2 or older.


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Click to expand...
Agreed. It's good to give you a general age structure for those first couple years but after that a jaw that looks 3.5 could really be 5.5 and vice versa.

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Drycreek said:
Deer have no teeth in the upper jaw except for the front ones and no teeth between the molars and the incisors in the front.
Click to expand...

Wow is that confusing and if that's what you meant to say, its incorrect.
Deer do not have upper teeth in the front and the molars and pre molars on the top match the bottom...in quantities and location.
The only front teeth are on the bottom jaw.
 
Last edited:
Molars and premolars on top and bottom jaw.
e72aa605c423a7d0c69530b19eea867a.jpg


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Gator said:
No such thing as accurate aging via any method unless they are tagged at birth. Everything else has error.
Regardless, we definitely can't estimate the age based on those pics...Need to see the teeth.
Click to expand...
Aging by tooth WEAR has an element of error, but aging by tooth REPLACEMENT is accurate. Fawn teeth are easy to age. Yearling teeth have a different structure (for lack of a better term) than fawn teeth. Yearlings do not have adult premolars yet. They have very soft premolars that wear extremely fast. Some guys see those well worn, flattened premolars and mistake it for an older deer. At 2.5 years old, the juvenile premolars are replaced by permanent premolars and will generally show very little to no wear. At 3.5 and older, aging by tooth wear is subjective. We can generally place them into age classes...middle age, fully mature, or old age. But nailing deer age after 3.5 is a bit of an educated guess.
Cementum annulai is not 100% but its not bad. Its the best method we have.
 
Tap said:
Aging by tooth WEAR has an element of error, but aging by tooth REPLACEMENT is accurate. Fawn teeth are easy to age. Yearling teeth have a different structure (for lack of a better term) than fawn teeth. Yearlings do not have adult premolars yet. They have very soft premolars that wear extremely fast. Some guys see those well worn, flattened premolars and mistake it for an older deer. At 2.5 years old, the juvenile premolars are replaced by permanent premolars and will generally show very little to no wear. At 3.5 and older, aging by tooth wear is subjective. We can generally place them into age classes...middle age, fully mature, or old age. But nailing deer age after 3.5 is a bit of an educated guess.
Cementum annulai is not 100% but its not bad. Its the best method we have.
Click to expand...

While I agree it is the best, it's been proven to have +-1 year as well (at least it did the last I researched it). If you keep records, aging by tooth wear is also possible. 100% agree on fawns, yearlings, and 2 year olds. A yearling has the 3 point molar versus the 2 point molar that replaces it (no clue what the real word for that is). A 2 year old for us will have sharp pointed molars where the white is much wider than the black portion. The older they get, the flatter the molars become and the wider the black gets compared to the white enable. Again, that's 20 years of data from the base I hunt, I'm sure it varies according to location but the general idea is consistent.
 
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