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Feb 25, 2021
10:35:55am
HiLife All-American
This is definitely the case for deer in some of the Utah units
My extended family has hunted Northeastern Utah for many generations, and I've seen a lot of old photographs with harvested deer and elk. The bucks and bulls in those older pictures had heavy, gnarled antlers with long tines, and big Roman noses. The deer and elk that I'm seeing harvested out of those very same areas today have much thinner horns and facial structures.

The genetics in deer have definitely been altered over the years. I think that some of it can be attributed to the old 3-point or better regulations that existed in certain units. The mature bucks would be harvested, leaving the little willow-horned bucks to do the breeding. When I was visiting my parents this past Thanksgiving, my dad and I took a drive up to the Diamond Mountain area that is Northeast of Vernal. This is a limited draw area, so hunting pressure is definitely managed. We saw well over 250 deer on that short drive, and well over 50 bucks. Many of the bucks were large/mature 4-pointers. They had fairly wide and tall horn structures, but their horns were thin and weird. Many larger bucks didn't even have brow points, and many of their antlers had crab claw tines rather than longer tines. I saw multiple bucks that had tall, 25"+ spreads, with one single spike on one side and 2-3 points on the other.
HiLife
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Peggy Fan
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