My BIL retired from the Wisconsin DNR and while I can't stand him (know-it-all) he does know his technical stuff as he was a biologist up in the northwestern corner of Wisconsin (where the real monsters are). He claims the only accurate way to age a buck is look at their teeth and you usually have to slice back on the mouth to do it correctly.
During the rifle season he would usually have to help a couple of days at the local registration station and he registered a buck that weighed over 200 lbs. field dressed and the rack met the minimum for qualifying in the Boone and Crockett book.
He aged the deer by the teeth and it was only 1-1/2 years old! Now how many of these "experts" would call that a 5-6 year old deer? All of them? And they wouldn't even be close.
