3 blacktails in velvet

[Nailed it]

Sultan

[pd]

Nice photograph!  Those three bucks don't look particularly large, but their antler growth is very nice.  In particular, the buck in the middle already has distinct eye guards; in my (limited) experience, eye guards only come out on 4x4 or better bucks.  If so, the buck in the middle will split again and become a solid 4x4 with eye guards.

Well done, Nailed It!

[fishnfur]

Nice bachelor group shot!  Looks like they're telling locker room stories about all the does they bred last fall. 

PD - there are bucks with spike antlers that have brow tines.  I believe that formation of eye guards is just an inherited trait - kind of like male pattern baldness.

[pd]

I'm
PD - there are bucks with spike antlers that have brow tines.  I believe that formation of eye guards is just an inherited trait - kind of like male pattern baldness.

Good to know. Thanks.

[MLBowhunting]

Nice pic

[Pete112288]

For the most part I have seen the same, a good 3pt or better is almost the only ones I had seen with eyeguards like that. Then my step son shot this spike in 2013. Thought it was interesting, this is what I am thinking fishnfur was talking about with spikes with brow tines.

[Axle]

that looks like an older regressing buck........maybe? 
was the body big or small? seems to be plenty of grey in the face.

[Pete112288]

It was a small bodied deer, smaller than my first deer that was a spike as well from the same area. I shot about a 2 year old doe that same year with a 2nd tag I drew and we got about the same amount of meat from his spike as I did that doe.

[Nailed it]

I think it's all genetics, all three deer were about the same size in the body, two two points one without eye guards, one with double, then the third, a two by three with one eye guard.

[fishnfur]

I posted this vid a week or so ago.  Just past half-way through, there is a small buck, probably a two-year-old that you can clearly make out his brow tine forming on his right side.  He has what I believe is a fraternal  twin brother (I believe they're related.  They travel together, they're the same size but with different noses, but have almost identical antlers, right side brow tine more well formed than the left.  Though I am certainly no expert in aging deer, I don't think there is any way in the world these bucks are 3 year-olds.