I have a good amount of really nice farm and creek bottom habitat on my property.  Have hunted here for almost 30 years and never had an issue taking two 1.5 to 2.5 year old bucks every season.  That got boring-ish to me so I started QDM, hunting smarter, improving habitat, letting immature bucks walk, etc.  For 10 years.
Heck, even had Jeff Sturgis from Whitetail Habitat Solutions out.  To his credit, I've not been able to do everything he advised due to our farming.  Side note, I HIGHLY recommend Jeff.  Awesome guy and an absolute wizard of his craft.

Biggest since then was a 151" buck quite a while back .  Shooting a 130" class buck (my personal limit for now) the last couple years.  A few 150 to a bona fide 170 have been seen and or taken within a few miles of my place in the last two years.  Hunting pressure here on the surrounding properties is very high.  Many of these hunters think a year old buck is fine, not that there's anything wrong with it I guess.

So my question for you all,  what is your reasonable expectation on size in your area year to rear with consistency?

Shoot straight and good luck!

I've gone full circle: shot the first legal thing I saw in 70s and 80s. Got very selective in 90s and early 2000s.
Now just shoot whatever I feel like, usuall try to save nicer bucks for kids, friends, and family.

One problem, couple nearby farms got cut up and sold amd developed last few years now more people hunting close by so little point in letting them walk. Usually hear shot 10 min after they pass

I am in NE Iowa. the big bucks here are massive beasts and have generous racks on them. They are legit trophies, but i prefer a big Doe when i hunt for the quantity of meat and fat. I haven't shot a buck in 6 years and that was a 130. I took him because he was about to run me over on a drive.

The benefits of living in corn country I take it?

-Stooxie

Bear in mind that I bowhunt around 40 days a year, and have for more than a couple decades. I gun hunt and muzzleloader hunt deer also. I'd guess well over 90% of the really big bucks I've seen have been bowhunting. At this point in my life I won't shoot a buck unless I think it's over 140. I always get opportunities for at least a few 130-140 class bucks every year, and for around the last 5 years I've not taken them, except for one that didn't quite make 140 when my brain told me he was bigger in the few seconds I had to make a decision. Over the last 54 years of bowhunting I've seen a good number of very large bucks here in SE Ohio, a few that looked like the ones in the record books in mass and number of points. Most, if not all of the truly monster bucks were running does. More than one of them was plenty close but they wouldn't stop. A few were just out of my self imposed range of 40 yards. Since I started hunting the edges of the nearly impenetrable thick stuff I've been seeing more 140+ bucks, and a good number of them well over that. It's not that unusual for 2 1/2 YO bucks to hit 140 around here.

We eat a lot of deer burger and are limited to 2 tags for rifle season.  I typically target the biggest bodied ones of either sex.  The neighboring property was purchased by nonhunters and "leased" to an "outfitter".  There is almost zero hunting pressure on it now making the spot we've hunted for 40 years much less desirable for deer. Used to be able to watch groups of deer hop the fence as hunters push them around every day.  Now you just hope something comes through.  I hate to shoot too many of the resident does as they keep bucks coming through.

But normally, we have around 10 bucks on camera. A couple basket rack, 60% in 120's, and a couple 130-140s.  The bigger ones always show up at the end of october checking does.  They're normally 2.5 to 3.5 years old.  I don't think we've ever killed or seen an old deer on the property.

Taking my son on his first hunt this weekend. Hopefully we can get him a buck.

This guy showed up last week.
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Upstate New York.. corn fed deer..

LOL, man those corn-fed bruisers are the stuff of my dreams! I can't complain because even though our deer are smaller here, their plague-like numbers make up for it. Still, I'de love to bag me some hog-bodied buck that 2,300 ft pounds of bullet energy can barely make through to the other side of the rib cage!

I love it when the legs look like tiny tiny stilts under some huge cow of a deer!

-Stooxie

In my area, a 130" deer is really good. 150" deer are around, but not very often. The biggest deer anyone I know has killed was pushing 180", but it was a non-typical with 3 beams on 1 side and 16pts total. The biggest typical rack was around 160".

I've killed the biggest deer that I'm aware of on 3 properties I hunt or have hunted. They were all 115-120". Last year, I killed the biggest buck anyone has killed on my lease in at least the last 3 years. It was a 5.5 year old 115" 7 point. I'm really working to see what I can do with the bucks at my house (my other hunting spot). The bucks seem to have improved since we moved in at the end of the 2016 season. Hopefully there will be a nice jump next year, since I've started mixing in protein pellets with the corn in the feeders.

For the area we hunt there are some really good 140-150 score bucks on average.  My brother in law got a great buck that was in the 160’s a few years ago. Last year a kid that leased his in-laws property beside us got a non-typical that was close to 200.  It was a once in a lifetime buck for sure.  
I’m happy taking a grown or mature buck.  I shot a young cull buck about 3 years ago because it was my last day to get to hunt.  He was a small antlered lop sided 7 pt but he was big in the body and tasted good when we ate him.  For me I’ve never shot anything bigger than the 150’s class.  I’ve shot a lot of what I consider good deer.  However my schedule limits the amount of days I get to hunt a year, I try not to be super picky if it’s outside the ear span on rack and 8 points it can be a shooter.

Here is a sampling of a few of the decent ones we have seen or harvested around us.  There are many others, some bigger that I have seen over the past 15 years.

My son missed this guy last Junuary.


Had this guy come by after I already shot my buck the week before.  


Had this guy at 100 yards during gun season and my muzzleloader didn't fire.




Neighbor got this guy.


181" Booner


Got this guy during muzzleloader a few years ago.




Ended up getting this guy after hunting him for 3 years.  Love the split brows and mass.

I've seen several over the 50+ years I've been deer hunting that looked like the ones near the top of the record books. Since we moved here to SE Ohio 25 or so years ago I'd guess I've deer hunted 30-40 days every year. The biggest buck I've seen was fighting a large 10 point with a doe standing nearby. Probably 100 yards away in the open woods. I looked at them with my binos really hoping the doe would lead the biggest one my way. Each beam had a diameter about as big as I've seen anywhere, with nearly straight main beams angling out of his skull and so many points that it would have taken a good while to count them. He knocked the 10 point down, and that buck gave up the fight, and the doe led the biggest buck away from me.

North east Iowa isn’t all cornfields. Agriculture and bluffs, coulees, valleys depending how close to the river you are. SE Minnesota and Eastern Wisconsin are the same way. Very rugged terrain with a lot of hardwoods and corn and beans. Paradise for deer. The terrain is very hard to hunt. You could have 6 people on 30 acres and deer will still go by unseen.

NE Florida, where poaching at night is an institution, the daily bag limit is 2 a day every day, and the hunting season is about 6 months long. Putting aside the human element, the habitat dictates the average mature doe size at 75-80lbs live weight and the average mature buck size 120-140lbs live weight.

So any "mature" buck is a trophy around here. If he's 3.5 or older, and he has any spread out past his ears, he's a trophy.