I hunt a place near you, a little north of harrisonburg. We sure aint seen anything like that, not even in any pics. We're really not seeing a whole lot. I dont have a clue about the history behind the mulies, but would sure like to know myself. Cant tell in the pics, but what happened to his rack?

Pat, you will usually find this in a place that is overcrowded with deer, and/or poor nutrition for antler development. One place that comes to mind quickly is Cat Island above St. Francisville in the 1970's. I remember opening morning of the 76-77 season, on the big bean field. I saw 76 deer at daylight,with only ONE that had visible horns about the size of a white bean. He was cropped. We hunted all season & killed 4 bucks with visible antlers. Was nothing to see 100 deer in a weekend, all females and bucks with no horns.Too many deer, not enough nutrition for antler development. The soybeans made em fat, but the antlers just didnt make the grade.

Dude, I'm not really a deer hunter, but are you saying this is a mule deer (buck) in full rut with no antlers? I have never heard of this. Is this some sort of genetic anomaly?

They are refering to the Mlue Deer Males that revert all the way to BIG Spikes in there Old age! Also Black Tails do the same thing! Im not to sure about White Tails, but it seems as though they being Deer might do the same thing ! Merry Chrismas Capt Bob

LSU and LDWF are actually about to start a study on antlerless adult bucks, but their research is going to focus on the Racourcci Island Area in Pointe Couppe/West Feliciana area. Seems this phenomenon has become more and more common there in recent years.

Pat did you take any closeup pictures of his head? Did he have pedicles or was he slick like a doe?

How do u count that on your season limit....tagging is not needed this year, but what if it was???the definition of a buck is visable antler..I say it records as a doe...what say u all???

The tags read Antlered and Antlerless so I guess it would be tagged as an Antlerless deer.

all i could find out is that you do see these in areas with a lot of does. apparently if it requires it to be homozygous of both recessive genes. My belief is that with too many does all the bucks get a shot at the gene pool, therefore increasing the chances of this happening. so, that's why we should strive to keep our buck to doe ratio 1:2 or 1:1. This would allow only dominant bucks to breed. but, that's a whole other can of worms. allowing this buck to walk and breed only increases the chances of this happening again.

I have been searching for the last 30 min. for a set of articles I read about two years ago on this very issue. What I can remember of the articles took place on the King ranch in South Texas in the 70's. A study on the ranch found these "mulie" bucks as we call them are actually gentically inferior bucks. on several ocassions these deer were killed in there prime from 4 1/2 to 6 1/2 years old. Some had large base nubs no longer than 6 inches and some had no horns at all. Of the deer with the nubs they tended to be very brittle and a lot of them were broken. They began a choice to remove all of these at any time they are seen by a hunter w/ no penalty to that hunter. To this day that rule is still in effect. As of the time I read the article 2 years ago they had not had a mulie killed on the ranch in at least 7 years and no one had seen one in that time as well. Tissue samples they had taken from the "mulies" showed the inability for those animals to produce a certain protein with similarities to calcium that helped grow and harden the horns. I forget the name of this protein. When normal bucks tissue samples came back these protein levels were normal to above normal. So I guess in the end it is a great idea to harvest these animals from your herd to keep from spreading this deficient mutation

We hunt a little area West of Basile La. and actually killed one this year. The deer was rust colored and we assumed it was a big doe. This deer was seen the previous three seasons by a few of us. This year one of the guys was watching this buck and several other does in a field when he noticed the stubs on the head and made the kill. It looked like a perfectly healthy and quite large doe from afar but this is the first time anyone was able to get a good look at the deer. Now we know that we will have to pay a little more attention inorder to cull these from the herd.