ORIGINAL: Insatiable
They had a great article on this in the Fall edition of Pope and Young Newsletter/Magazine.
The people who came up with the scoring system did so to rank how "perfect" a rack is according to their vision, which was one wide but not too wide, and symetrical tines, and mass.
There is no such thing as a gross score, only the net counts. It is not listed on te\he B & C or P&Y score sheet anywhere. Only the net value. We only invented the term gross because it gives total antler lenght regardless of symmetry.
The net score is the ONLY way you can realistically compare two racks.
I agree with you pretty much on everything you said. That article was by Glen Hisey in the P@Y News letter, it was a damn good one! I talked with him on the 26th of December when I had my buck scored from a P@Y measurer down in Chatfield. Glen told me straight out he gets some pretty threatening phone calls on this, how pathetic can someone be to go as far as threaten someone over ways the P@Y scores there racks. Glen and his son Kevin and his wife run the P@Y museum in Chatfield Minnesota, they are some great people! By the way B@C now puts the gross score in the books along with the net score. The Net score still is the only one that counts. I didn't know that either until Fraley (One of the guys on HNI Forum, He's a good guy!) told me about the change of B@C doing both, it started back in August I guess.