Breeding Ol School ?

Good question! Granted I'm a newer deer farmer but I grew up on a large hog and beef cow operation. So I'm not a rookie when it comes to breeding and genetics. My opinion on your question is Not so much old genetics but new genetics. It seems like the last few years there are about five bucks that most people have been breeding with. Don't get me wrong I don't think that's necessarily bad thing. But in my opinion kind of like you said we need to mix it up a little. There are plenty of good breeder bucks out there that don't seem to get the recognition they deserve. In my opinion to keep making money in the future you have to think outside of the box!

By the way rawhide is a awesome looking buck!!

I guess it all comes down to what you are breeding for. We love predictability of big wide frames, so much of our herd is from Barkley Young. He's been consistently producing some of the best framed deer in the country for years.

And you know we are outside of the box Wayne!

R&L You are 100% right on that. There are so many breeding with pretty much the same line over and over again. There are a Huge number of bucks and does that have not got their due respect for what they are producing. I think that will be changing soon. I know some of the lines that have been used for years are still working to a point but some of them seem to be going backwards. There are some no name breedings out there that are doing better,Growing bigger,better looking bucks and making does that are producing also. As someone has said in the past.. You can go with the hype and spend alot of money on the big names or you can use some of the no name stuff that are making deer just as big for thousands less. Thats one of the best thing in deer. You can pick many different trails to get to the end result(Shooters) it all depends what its gunna cost ya to get there!!!

I think you have to do both some of the old and some of the new. I know what look I like and will use that type of buck be it an old timer or the new buck on the block. I think it just depend's on what your goal is. I realy look more for what I think is best to use on this doe and that doe. So it has more to do with what I think is right to use to make the best offspring that I can, for what I am wanting from that doe. Right now I breed every doe looking for a better doe fawn from her. I may pick a buck to use today because I want to use another buck out there on the offspring from that breeding still looking for the doe that will be produced 2 and 3 generation's down the line. Not all that concerned about the buck's that result from those breeding's just yet. For me at this time it's all about the doe, if I think a buck from 10 year's back is what I need to use and I can get semen I will or if I think it's a 2 year old out there that I need to use then that's what I will do.

That is why we still have some of our Jack the Ripper daughters. We have crossed them with a lot of top bucks and gotten great results. The father of Ballistic is HyJax who was a High Roller/Jack cross. Our bucks So Big (Blue Mt. Bill/Jack) and Rex (High Roller/JAck) are more examples. We had some awesome 2 year olds this year out of Avalanche/JAck and Geronimo/Jack. Those does are nearly 10 years old but produce for us every year. We like having different genetics than the rest of the crowd. I agree that when you look at an auction book it looks like most people have the same thing.

Wayne, When you say old school bucks and use the term clean up our new bucks I assume you are wanting to breed for clean open frames.

Over the last two years I have made it to more of the auctions than in the past. I hear everyone saying we like big open clean frames. Our bucks are getting to trashed up. They don't look like Whitetails anymore. BUT then the auction starts and the clean huge open framed buck bring about half the price of the bigger new day bucks!?

I have always been a fan of O La Jo's deer. Lamar was one of the top breeders 3 or 4 years ago. As I sat back and watched when Lamar bought Absolute and started marketing him. We can all agree Absolute has the great open clean high scoring frame we all talk about. He then purchased Leffie and Wow what a frame just like we talk about. We would all love to have these two bucks in our pen. Right!

Well the last two auctions I went two I watched Absolute does bred to Leffie or Plan B go for less than $3000 while trashy bucks still brought $5000.



If we are going to set on here and talk about Old school cleaner frames and then go to the auctions and buy trash for more why should I breed old school buck?



Mark Sipes has the same problem. Free Agent was to trashy and Satisfaction doesn't bring the same kind of Money.



I like clean frames so I will have trouble selling my doe fawns and my shooters will bring a lower price. But that is a decision that I make for my farm. BUT I have to say that tongue in check because I plan on using three of the larger breeder bucks this fall to add some inches to my typical girls.



This is a great discussion and until we are ready to pay more for clean smaller inches the market as a whole will produce a lot of extra points and inches.

AHHH And the clean over inches talk goes on. Matt you are right and i say it still comes down to the farm selling the deer. There is all kinds of double standards that goes on. Absolute has one of the best looks ever. Old School over New School. Pedigree over look Typical over Non Typical. Everyone has there own likes and dislikes and it all comes down to what hunters want but as i said in my opinion there are a huge number of awesome looking bucks with decent pedigrees that look 3 times better(in my opinion) than some of the top pedigreed bucks out there. Thats bad news for the owners of those bucks because they dont bring what they are worth but good news for guys like me that are not to worried about a pedigree in a shooter buck. You want auctions breed for pedigrees, You want to make money breed for look(Shooters). Thats the great thing..

There are choices and different directions to end at the same place.(Shooters)

I followed a article John Swank wrote about in breeding-line breeding and

cross breeding.The article was Breeding for Predictability. It was cross breeding a half brother to a half sister using the same dad but each had different moms.I tried it with amazing results the first year and waiting the results this year.

Wayne, you say besides Mike, Barkely and Cole Young but their are many more they just choose not to say anything. For Example The man behind the Rathcet line Mickey Goodman and Andy Foor the man who used rathcet and h10 and many others to produce blood lines that many use today and have not a clue who was behind them or were they come from. Another name behind some of the best old lines is Jim Loree ever herd of Crab claw, Big john, or 50/50. These blood lines mostly originated from PA wild deer Like J44 from PSU. So their are alot more than five original lines. Each state out there probly has some good fresh lines that came from their wild deer population back when it was aloud. Its just there are about five lines that have been more publicized than others. Some of these old school lines is just what is needed to get new blood in the herd. Look at Texas Tea He has almost all PA wild genetics except for 1/4 Texas out of a dugger doe and bam look at him. I think the same thing could be accomplished with some of these other old lines crossed with some new stuff.

virgil said:

Wayne, you say besides Mike, Barkely and Cole Young but their are many more they just choose not to say anything. For Example The man behind the Rathcet line Mickey Goodman and Andy Foor the man who used rathcet and h10 and many others to produce blood lines that many use today and have not a clue who was behind them or were they come from. Another name behind some of the best old lines is Jim Loree ever herd of Crab claw, Big john, or 50/50. These blood lines mostly originated from PA wild deer Like J44 from PSU. So their are alot more than five original lines. Each state out there probly has some good fresh lines that came from their wild deer population back when it was aloud. Its just there are about five lines that have been more publicized than others. Some of these old school lines is just what is needed to get new blood in the herd. Look at Texas Tea He has almost all PA wild genetics except for 1/4 Texas out of a dugger doe and bam look at him. I think the same thing could be accomplished with some of these other old lines crossed with some new stuff.

Click to expand...

I agree Virgil, but like Wayne said, unless you talk about it and show the production no one will know about it.



As for Texas Tea, it's slightly more involved the just some wild PA genetics. Barkley and Cole refined those original lines through years and years of very specific line breeding. This in turn has produced the incredible consistency of big wide frames that Barkley is known for. We bred specifically with Stickers because his bloodline further increased the line breeding through Redoy Ben/Mickey Goodman line, and put it right back on top of Hannah. It doesn't always work out, but Texas Tea turned out to be exactly what we were trying to produce. While its not an exact science, PROPER line breeding dramatically increases your odds of getting exactly what you want to produce!



We are greatful for all of the "old school" breeders that moved this line forward to such amazing production, and we will continue to support their efforts any way we can.

I may not be 100% for sure what everyone look's at as an old line, I just dont know. But there are buck's I look at as older that I would be more than glad to use but more so on a few of my older doe's. Some of the younger animal's that are from some of the more recent large sire's it would be harder for me to use a buck that was let's say in the low 200's when he was mature, even though there are several of them that I like. I just dont see what there is to gain by breeding them that way. Now I for sure dont know what is the right or wrong way to go about it, or even if there is a right or wrong way. All I know is that I sure would like to learn the right way if there is such a thing. It seem's that the more people I talk to the more way's I see that people are going about this. I guess if it were easy to know what is the right thing to do and if we all thought the same it would take the fun out of it all.

Here is how I look at the "old" genetics.

We dont know the heritability of a stag/buck untill we see his offspring & how their offspring perform.

We can look back with certainty,we can only guess the future.

I'll use a straw from a pure & proven stag collected 30 years ago before a current pop star with some vigour resulting from crossing types,who most likely wont breed true.Or I''ll use a stag from a closed herd for the same predictability.



Is this what you mean by "old school"?



Cheers Sharkey

Well I will offer something Wayne- I've already been scheming next years' breeding for some time. It might be my last AI for some time unless the industry demands otherwise. After this fall I will only be using sexed semen. It is the only way I can prove my doe herd. I say this because I will have what I want! I will be satisfied! This business reminds me alot of trading baseball cards when I was younger. Spend a lot of money trying to get what was hot, only to find out years later one or two are worth anything. Can we as deer farmers ever be satisfied? Enough about that, back to Waynes Ol School. This fall I will be breeding with Sunny Jr.,Savage,Maxbo XL,Xtreme-are these old enough? I feel if you follow your heart instead of the crowd you will be happier in the long run. You might not make the same money they are making but remember this- Everybody don't always want what the same farmer down the road has. Breeding smarter has its day!!!!

Jason, those are kinda old school but if we go back even further to bucks that produced well we can or could produce some mega bucks with different blood or different look. Those deer you mentioned are great producers but everyone already has that blood in their pedigrees. Pick up a catolog and what do you see.Would it not be nice to see some other giants with pedigrees that are not already on every page of the auction catologs.

Virgil, what deer are you calling Ol school that have production behind them? Be specific, were listening-

First of i would say Redoy Bill was a very proven old school line one of the best in my opinion. Don't know if one can still get his direct semen but he has some good offspring. One that i am going to try next year is RDM Gunsmoke a Redoy Bill son. Another old school line is the H10 line. This is were Legend and Noble came from. Another would be Mickey Goodmans Ratchet line were Texas Tea is out of and with many huge framed bucks at Andy Foors and the Youngs from this line as wll. Some more old school lines would be from Jim Lorees stock such as Crabclaw and 50/50. Another that I see and that I personaly like is the Theix Donner or Tex line they show up in the bottom of many producing pedigrees. These are just some off the top of my head that i personaly like but there are many more. Maybe some others could share some of their favorite old school lines that stand out to them.