Coastal Deer

Can you age Coastal Deer like you can other Inland Deer? I have had a hard time aging deer that we have on our trail cams near the Altamaha. I think they are 2.5 and then the next year they still look immature and skinny. Just wondering what others experience has been.

Picture aging is almost an impossibility unless you already know the health and habits of the animals in that region.
Even at that, it's a guess at best.

Dental aging of deer from the coast is also going to differ from those slightly further inland.

An extreme example would be inspecting the teeth of deer from barrier islands.
Tooth wear is going to be much faster due to the sand grit at almost every feeding.
I have witnesses biologists argue a full 2 year difference in a deer based on tooth erosion. Other physical and local factors were then combined to arrive at a real age.

Back to the picture aging,
You are at an inbetween of the barrier island and inland deer influence. You are going to need to take that into consideration.
Simply based on that you can easily be a year off one way or the other.

That beach tan makes it tough to tell their age.

I remember having a deer checked by a biologist that was adamant that I did not kill the deer where I stated.
In his experience "that size deer with those antlers and that age teeth could not possibly have came from around here". It wasn't until I produced two witnesses he started talking to me about his claim.

This deer was very young with exceptional genetics which (at the time) was not consistent with the deer population within 30 miles of where I had killed it.
The biologist was very good and had a great understanding of what the combined environment, food source and genetic material could produce over time. This was long before any of the QDM lunacy.