geedubya;
Good afternoon my friend, I hope that the day's being good to you down in Texas and you and your fine family are well.

Since you asked what we think that nice buck might be, here's my thoughts on it.

Up here we've got both mulies and whitetails, the species sometimes overlapping and sometimes sticking in some places more than others.

For example we'll see whitetails within a mile of our place reasonably often, within 2 miles regularly, but have only seen them in the yard twice in 30 years. Mulies we'll see usually weekly and now that it's hot out and we keep water pans filled for them, they're around daily. I've got a gimped doe bedded 20' from the front door in the shade as I type and there was a pair of spikes bedded underneath the deck this morning.

Here's what our mulie ear spread looks like when they're down and totally relaxed.

[Linked Image]

When I was initially discussing this with John Barsness back in '08 when our youngest shot this buck, he commented something to the effect that this was the widest ear spread he'd seen this far north and that it must get fairly hot here. It was something like that flavor anyways GW.

Then we can see that our "average mulie buck" up here would have more ear spread/bigger ears than your buck does. Seeing as it's nice and warm down in Texas, I'd guess that the "average mulie ears" are fairly big down there as well?

Brow tines sometimes come into the discussion, but in my experience they're also both genetic and regional. For instance in our valley it's an odd thing to kill a mulie on the west side and into the next valley - the Similkameen - that will have much of anything for brow tines. To the east of us however and into the Kettle and Christian valleys, about half or perhaps more of the mulie bucks will have brow tines.

The yard mulie bucks are typical "east side" mulies that are about 50/50 brow tines or not.

Way back in the day, the only buck I saw which I thought might be a cross was to the east in lower part of the Kettle/Christian confluence. It was a spike for antlers, but had a bit of a blocky face for a whitetail. It's tail was slightly short for a whitetail but far too long for a mulie, however there was a few wisps of black hair on it, which I've not seen on any other whitetail bucks I've shot over the years.

The ears were perhaps a wee bit big for a whitetail, but it was the tail which we thought was the oddest bit about it.

It had been shot in a whitetail buck only season and I'd have shot it and tagged it as that seeing it only in the field for sure.

What it truly was of course I can't say, but that's the only one I've personally seen in the flesh that I thought might be a cross.

If you can recall the tail on your buck in the photo, that may or may not tell "the tale of the tail", you know?

All the best.

Dwayne

The most important stuff in life isn't "stuff"