Doe harvested in western Minnesota aged at 16-1⁄2; how rare is such a deer?

Every year that a wild white-tailed deer lives in Minnesota likely means it survived a few close calls.
There’s the threat of a tough winter, as well as encounters with predators, vehicles, and hunters. There might be changes in habitat, along with other curveballs that nature might throw at wildlife. For a whitetail to live well beyond a decade, what obstacles must it have overcome? That’s the first thing that came to mind for Alexandria’s Sam Schmid after he received aging results from a doe he shot with his bow last year. It was determined to be 161⁄2 years old.

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