Buck or doe? ID tip

[Tap]

Okay, I'll apologize for yet another long post.

Senario:
You're in your best stand with prime weather and perfect wind and it's the rut. You are confident that the mature buck you've been watching for months or years is gonna show.
You see a deer, or even maybe multiple deer, coming in the brush. You're excited. It's gotta be Mr Big, right?
But the brush and cover that you've worked so hard to develop is really hard to see thru. You struggle to see that deer's head thru your scope or binoculars. Your heart is pounding while you are trying find antlers in your binocs. You look ahead for a hole in the brush so you could possibly get a look at the head. You are fully engrossed on that animal.Your attention just might be on the wrong animal. Other deer, or even the one you want, are out of your attention or binoculars field of view. He might even be walking into bow range but you don't realize it...you are mistakenly focusing on the wrong animal because you can't really tell the sex of the animal that you strain to identify.. Been there, done that.
STOP LOOKING AT THE HEAD AND LOOK AT THE HOCKS!
Hocks are a dependable indicator on buck identification and even the maturity of a buck when other body and antler characteristics are not visible.
We all want to see and identify the rack... count points and even get a clue on his score. I'm as guilty as anyone. But sometimes we need to concentrate on other body characteristics to identify the animal. Hocks are a huge "finger print".
Pay attention to hock staining anytime you watch a deer!

If you start looking at the other end of the deer, t's pretty easy to sort out bucks from does and even individual bucks from other bucks by just looking at the hocks. In cover, sometimes stained hocks are easier to see than antlers.
By rut time, very few immature bucks have hocks that are very well stained and almost no does will have staining.
I've come to realize that a stained hock is actually easier to see and identify in heavy cover than antlers.
And for sorting out multiple bucks, we loose track of which animal is which....my buddy shot a yearling buck this year because he lost track of their heads. He failed to look at what he could see... the hocks, and he shot the "wrong" buck.

I watch it from my home almost every day during the rut. I see does scurrying away and I know there is a buck harassing them. Then I see the buck coming (this happened again today). My instinct, like most of yours, is to look for the antlers...nothing wrong with doing that. But antlers aren't always easy to see in brush, so, the harder they are to see, the harder we look and we fail to focus on other body parts like the hocks. We end up focusing our attention on that stupid little yearling spike when we should actually be looking around the perimeter for other deer.
Stop looking for the rack.

It's easy to get locked-on to watching the head.
Sometimes we can learn a lot more by lookin at the other end of the animal.

 

[DocHolladay]

I've learned to look at the back of their hind leg to help with age. Most of the time, a dominant buck or older age class buck will have staining all the way down the back of their leg and not just on the tarsal.

 

[Tap]

I've learned to look at the back of their hind leg to help with age. Most of the time, a dominant buck or older age class buck will have staining all the way down the back of their leg and not just on the tarsal.

That's only part of my point. So many of us get so focused on looking for a rack. Myself included.
Watch the hocks.

 

[Chainsaw]

If we are hunting does and we see one alone we assume it is a buck and do not take it. Most of the time here a lone deer is a buck.

 

[Steve Daniel]

Okay, I'll apologize for yet another long post.

Senario:
You're in your best stand with prime weather and perfect wind and it's the rut. You are confident that the mature buck you've been watching for months or years is gonna show.
You see a deer, or even maybe multiple deer, coming in the brush. You're excited. It's gotta be Mr Big, right?
But the brush and cover that you've worked so hard to develop is really hard to see thru. You struggle to see that deer's head thru your scope or binoculars. Your heart is pounding while you are trying find antlers in your binocs. You look ahead for a hole in the brush so you could possibly get a look at the head. You are fully engrossed on that animal.Your attention just might be on the wrong animal. Other deer, or even the one you want, are out of your attention or binoculars field of view. He might even be walking into bow range but you don't realize it...you are mistakenly focusing on the wrong animal because you can't really tell the sex of the animal that you strain to identify.. Been there, done that.
STOP LOOKING AT THE HEAD AND LOOK AT THE HOCKS!
Hocks are a dependable indicator on buck identification and even the maturity of a buck when other body and antler characteristics are not visible.
We all want to see and identify the rack... count points and even get a clue on his score. I'm as guilty as anyone. But sometimes we need to concentrate on other body characteristics to identify the animal. Hocks are a huge "finger print".
Pay attention to hock staining anytime you watch a deer!

If you start looking at the other end of the deer, t's pretty easy to sort out bucks from does and even individual bucks from other bucks by just looking at the hocks. In cover, sometimes stained hocks are easier to see than antlers.
By rut time, very few immature bucks have hocks that are very well stained and almost no does will have staining.
I've come to realize that a stained hock is actually easier to see and identify in heavy cover than antlers.
And for sorting out multiple bucks, we loose track of which animal is which....my buddy shot a yearling buck this year because he lost track of their heads. He failed to look at what he could see... the hocks, and he shot the "wrong" buck.

I watch it from my home almost every day during the rut. I see does scurrying away and I know there is a buck harassing them. Then I see the buck coming (this happened again today). My instinct, like most of yours, is to look for the antlers...nothing wrong with doing that. But antlers aren't always easy to see in brush, so, the harder they are to see, the harder we look and we fail to focus on other body parts like the hocks. We end up focusing our attention on that stupid little yearling spike when we should actually be looking around the perimeter for other deer.
Stop looking for the rack.

It's easy to get locked-on to watching the head.
Sometimes we can learn a lot more by lookin at the other end of the animal.

Yep... Check the Tarsal Glands. Also... look to see the ears in relation to the antlers... Are the antlers taller?
Do the antlers stick out past the ears.
Next thing to think about... A mature deer's head will appear smaller than a yearlings.
DO YOUR LOOKING QUICKLY.
As soon as you determine you want to shoot the Deer, start looking for the right time to shoot the deer. Don't let him walk away while you are waiting on the perfect shot. (I've done that) Shoot when you have a clear shot. It may be the only shot your gonna get. Lastly... pick out a tiny spot in the kill zone to aim at. People that miss either shoot at the whole deer, or get excited and yank the trigger.
TRUE STORY... A buddy of mine (RIP) always got so excited before he shot that he would fire 5 shots at every deer. (He hunted for many years with little luck...) I doubt he cut much hair. I taught his wife to deer hunt... She shot one time and you started walking toward her. She always hit her deer.

 

[Tap]

Yep... Check the Tarsal Glands. Also... look to see the ears in relation to the antlers... Are the antlers taller?
Do the antlers stick out past the ears.
Next thing to think about... A mature deer's head will appear smaller than a yearlings.
DO YOUR LOOKING QUICKLY.

I think that you're missing the point of the thread.
My point is that when the animal is in cover and the head cannot be seen, to stop trying to see the head and look for dark, stained hocks.
Looking for antler spread or head size might be okay when you can actually see the head but sometimes the head is just plain impossible to be seen. Maybe 90% of the deer is in the wide open but the head is obstructed by something. Sometimes that deer may stand there with it's head hidden, for minutes at a time. Sometimes we can only see the deer from the belly down, maybe just the legs going thru that hawthorn thicket. We often place our undivided attention looking and hoping the deer will take just one more step so we can see the head. Meanwhile, we ignore seeing the condition of the tarsals and we waste time and attention looking at a non-target animal. That can be valuable time down the drain. We should be looking at the hocks or in perimeter areas for other deer instead of looking for an obstructed deer's head that can't be seen or may never be seen. That deer floats through the cover and disappears and we never get to see the head or neck. But right there in front of our eyes were the hocks and we never even glanced at them.

I gotta tell you, when I see a coal black, stained to the feet, hock in the brush, I get excited. I know that's a buck and he's not a yearling.

All summer and early in the season, hocks are not dependable sex indicators, but by mid October, most all (except for yearlings) will have progressively stained hocks. By peak rut and throughout the winter, the hocks of middle age and older bucks remain stained.

Observing hocks is also valuable after antlers have dropped. By that time, it's often difficult to tell the difference between a big doe and an average size buck. Look at the hocks and you'll know 95% whether that's a doe or a buck that has shed his antlers.

Am I the only one that looks at the hocks for sex identification?
This concept is something I've realized for several years now and I've only heard or read about observing tarsal staining in one other place.
The excellent book "Observing and Evaluating Whitetails" by Dave Richards & Al Brothers talks about using tarsal staining for field aging bucks, but it doesn't talk about actually looking at tarsals strictly for sex identification purposes.
I thought this thread would be a "light bulb moment" for a lot of guys.

 

[Drycreek]

I gotta say no, you're not the only one. Been doing that for several years, even when I can see the deer clearly, but it's not infallible. I saw a yearling four point just two days ago with heavily stained hocks. He also had an injury to his right front leg, and wouldn't put his foot down. All I could see with 10 power binos at 75 yards was a swollen knee. Did he get it fighting ? Don't know but the stained hocks tell me he at least wanted to be a breeder, so.....maybe.

It won't always work for sexing deer either. I've seen does with heavily stained tarsals. Not always, not even most, but enough. I don't try to identify bucks I will shoot until I can see the whole deer unless it's a jaw-dropper and I can see the kill zone also.

 

[Tap]

I gotta say no, you're not the only one. Been doing that for several years, even when I can see the deer clearly, but it's not infallible. I saw a yearling four point just two days ago with heavily stained hocks. He also had an injury to his right front leg, and wouldn't put his foot down. All I could see with 10 power binos at 75 yards was a swollen knee. Did he get it fighting ? Don't know but the stained hocks tell me he at least wanted to be a breeder, so.....maybe.

It won't always work for sexing deer either. I've seen does with heavily stained tarsals. Not always, not even most, but enough. I don't try to identify bucks I will shoot until I can see the whole deer unless it's a jaw-dropper and I can see the kill zone also.

I'm not advocating that we should shoot based solely on tarsal staining. And I also agree that scrutinizing hocks is not 100%. But it is a very high percentage method of sex identification. Yeah, I've seen does with stained hocks, but never stained to the same extent that middle age and older bucks produce.
I've talked on a few other threads about the number of yearly deer sightings that I get to see from my home. In the last 33 years I've lived here, I have literally tens of thousands of deer sightings. Based on that number of observations, I'll stick by my tip...tarsal staining is very reliable for sex ID. It's a little less reliable for estimating age, but for sex, like anything else with deer...it's not 100% but it's pretty darn close.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk