BAD genes, cross breeding, shoot him.

thats what i was afraid of! thanks for the input deerman!

Its more likely, in my opinion caused by food. It is an older deer 31/2+, but many things can cause a one tine drop in growth, maybe he got injured last winter. To me, that is a good deer to test these theories on because he's easy to tell apart, every small 6or8 looks kinda alike. So if its possible to let him go till next year, you might just learn which theory is the truth for your deer. Even if it is genetic, he's not gonna breed enough does in one year that he hasnt bred in 3, so watching him for another year could teach u a lot.

I probably should give more details about the habitat, as well as the other pictures I've gotten from other deer in the same area. As far as the habitat goes, there are three cut overs that have been logged in the past three years that have good vegetation and some new vegetation in the most recent cut over. All of these areas are within 1/4 of a mile from each other or closer. There are also a couple large fields that have not been maintained lately and have grown up in brier patches and other vegetation that deer seem to browse on for different nutritional reasons (I'm a college student with many biology courses under my belt but in shape or form am I a biologist). As far as other pictures go, I have a group of does that look very healthy and some young bucks that have very promising racks that I look forward to mounting in a couple years. I also have the return of an old bruiser (I have been chasing for a couple years) that has yet again produced a nice rack and added what looks like thirty more pounds to his girth! Sorry I didn't include all this initially, let me know what you think!

Given those facts then u and deerman are prolly right. Deer need a lot more browse than most people think. Acorns and other mast are seasonal, browse feeds them all year, esp. when their horns are growing. However, native browse is low in protein and they need more than that, but good luck getting even finding big bucks when their horns are growing, much less get them to eat feed. I dont even worry about my big bucks, i just make sure the does and yearlings have what they need.La.Miss.game and fish mag recently had an article where a biologist said after katrina they expected better hunting because of more habitat. But in fact they found they just had more poor habitat, so there was very little change in deer size.

I think it is only a 2.5 year old deer. I would let him walk another year to see.

I watched and episode on the Oudoor Channel that covered a deer with a poor rack. The report was that something had happened to the deer during rack growth that caused it to be deformed. They decided to wait till the following season to harvest the deer and it turned out that the following season it was a great looking 10 point. The reason they were able to tell it was the same deer is because it had a split in one of it's ears. The show was just to inform people that it's not always genetics that causes that. If it were me and you have other bucks you are targeting already I'd not use a tag on him this year and just see what he looks like next season. That's just my opinion.