Some statistical thoughts on the 2007 contest so far...
(Added in edit: I left out some recent data in my original postand modifiedthis post accordingly)
Since most of the major gun seasons have or will be starting around Thanksgiving, there will be a significant fall off in entries.

2006 avg buck score: 101 inches (410 participants), std dev ~38
2007 avg buck score: 109.5 inches (490 participants), std dev ~30

That's a significant improvement in quality of bucks being entered - either more bigger bucks are available and/or hunters are holding out for better deer. Also note thathunters are posting the components of scores -several errors were caught (e.g. the 4 circumference measurements), and part of the increase could be due to better scoring technique. The smaller standard deviation for 2007 means fewer racksare much bigger or smaller than the overallaverage).

Ifhunters are holding out for better racks, we may see a drop in the ~26% "success" ratefor 2006.The number of 2007 entriesto date is103; the expected number at this point in time is 117 entries to maintain 26%average success. There were 98 entriesat this point in time for the 2006 contest - remember that there are80morehunters in the 2007 contestthan were in the 2006 contest.

Here is a chart showing the total inches reported on a weekly basis (there's that same Oct lull!):



One caution in this type of chart: hunter effort is not equal from week to week! Of course the fat lady has yet to sing; but based on past contests, I think it is likely that there will be less than 15 moreentries from nowuntil the end of the contest. (Or any given team has only a 1/3 chance of scoring a new buck - disregarding any bucks acknowledged in team threads but not reported in the scoring thread, of course).

So with the tight race, do not expect any dark horse team to come out of nowhere and take over.

-fsh