Im using Bucklers in Morrowind by PikachunoTM -

http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/44339/?

Atm Im just using the mesh replacer instead of the full ESP file.... I wanted to use the iron shield buckler mesh to make a bear shield buckler.... so I renamed the iron shield mesh and used that.... When I equip a bear shield I get a buckler but it still has an iron shield texture... why does this happen if I only used a mesh replacer?

Wait a moment... so you want to make the bear shield a buckler, replaced it with the iron buckler and now are surprised to see the iron buckler ingame? Did you expect it to change the texture to the one from the bear shield? Ok, maybe you are not aware of that, but it is specified in the mesh itsefl which textures it uses, and no matter what you use this mesh for, it will always use the same texture paths unless you edit them in the mesh itself.

Fortunately, the solution is quite simple: Open the mesh in NifSkope, expand the "BucklerTop01" NiTriShape and the NiTexturingProperty inside it to get to the NiSourceTexture node and replace the texture path with "A_Bear_Shield.dds" or "textures\A_Bear_Shield.dds" (it doesn't matter in this case). Then do the same for The NiTriShape "BucklerBase01", only now insert "A_Bear_Shield2.dds". Save the file and you are done.

I didnt know that the mesh itself determines texture paths, I'm just used to replacing ugly texture with better ones I thought the two were seperate.

Can I just rename a bear shield texture to that of the iron one and drop it in the relevant folder?

You certainly can, but then every iron shield will look like the bear shield. What's wrong with the solution I gave you? NifSkope is not that difficult to use.

Nvm Im a bit OCD when it comes to installing software that I will have minimal use for.

https://github.com/niftools/nifskope/releases don't need to be installed, just extracted. But anyway, NifSkope is useful for a great number of modding purposes, it certainly can't hurt to have it. But as you wish.