Estimating a Buck's Rack in the field

[Vogt_51]

hey guys, i posted this in the deer hunting forum, but figured i would post it here also because of the amount of knowledgeable hunters here too....
"i was wondering who here is pretty good with estimating the score of a deer's rack. i was just wondering if maybe someone could give a little tutorial or some sort of guide/helpful hints, or whatever to someone new to estimating a deer's score in the field. heck it would even help if you guys wanted to post a picture or pictures of deer that you guys have got and what there score was. any help would be really appreciated by me and probably quite a few others. THANKS"

[cardeer]

Tough to do over the puter.
First the width. If the rack is the same width of the tips of the ears ,then that is a 16 inch spread. Get ahold of some racks and just start measuring them .It takes practice and getting good at judging what a inch looks like on a bone.

[Angus74]

I usually look for the antlers to be at or past the ear tips, as cardeer said youll be looking at about 16 inches. I also look for at least 8 points, and the g-1s to be 3 or more inches, and g2s to be maybe 8 inches, with these sizes and some decent mass, you are probably looking at a deer in the 120s. If you see all of these or more on a deer, it is probably a shooter for most guys with a bow, unless they are in a really good spot where they know there is better. Its just something you have to look at lots of racks and get some ideas of general rack size and more inportantle "frame" size, I generally look at the frame of the rack than the number of points. Try to attend some deer hunting expos or somewhere you can look at lots of deer of all sizes, and get an idea of what you would consider a shooter. Hope this helped.

[Vogt_51]

definately guys, lots of help....so its pretty common from ear to ear to be 16 inches?? that would help a bunch in judging how many inches things are, based off of that. thanks guys.

[TeeJay]

Ya judge them just like ya judge yardage....you know when its a 25 yd shot because ya know....ya knoe its about a 125" class buck just cause ya know....i dont think any one can actually say the g1 is..... the G2 is ...... the spread is....and then compute this in their head.....ya just know !!!!!

[Tuffbroadhead]

Great advice..... And yes its a pretty common measurement .. And its a great starting point to field judgeing a deers rack..

Start with the inside spread (even with ears around 16 inches) if its outside of ears its easy to get a close guess how wide he is by starting with that 16 inch and adding to it for total inside width. Then look at each tine, and guess the lenght, by using that inside spead as a gage

Say you see a deer even at his ears.... 16 inch spread
Deer has brow tines that look like a 1/4 of that spread, 4 inchsx2
Deer had g-2 tines that look like they are half of the spread... 8 inches x2
Deer has g-3 tines that are one third of the spread....say a bit over 5 inchesx2
Say deer looks like each main bean is the same lenght as the spread is wide....16 inches x2

Then here comes the guess, you have 4 mass measurements on each side one at the smallest area around the base, one between the brow tine and g-2, one between the g-2-g3, and one more measument between the g-3 and the main beam point..
say you came up with 30 inches of mass, now add all that up in your mind...

16"
4" x2
8" x2
5" x2
16" x2
30 " of mass

And now you have a deer's gross score of 112 inches, it takes a while to get good at it , just look at a lot of racks!!

Once you see alot of 100 inch racks you can forget about alot of the adding, it will come natural to you...

[Vogt_51]

awesome!! thanks for the advice!!

[BOWD UP]

i assume when your trying to score one that hes decent.
i imagine holding a tine with my hand with my thumb up ( like the fonz)from bottom of the tine totowards the top.this is almost 7 inches on my hand. using that i try to quick score whats pointin up.
ex g1- say 8in g2 say 7in g3 say 4in, brow - 3in= 22inchs ,
if hes almost symetrical ---double that------44 inchs if there something extra on one side quickly add that or subtract if its missing.
then look at overall rack, if hes a decent buck , i will score as follows
add for
ex wide& thick --120 inches------------so above points will score164
ex wide or ex thick --110 inches-------------------------will score154
avg width and thickness--100 inches---------------------will score144
no width or skinny-- 90 inches----------------------will score 134

so add the inches of points sticking up then add overall rack size and you got a approx.quick score when i first started doing this i would quick score every rack i seen then get actual score and have gotten where its pretty accurate for gross scoring.