Thanks guys, its good to know there are others around who view this issue the way I do.
The reason I brought it up was that last week I had an amazing hunt which resulted in my taking a real nice bird. You can read about it in my 4/16 post " unbelievable" . Even after all the really interesting events of that hunt, the first thing most guys wanted to know was beard length, etc. Yawn.
When I took the bird to be checked in I was told the bird weighed 21#, had 1 1/8" spurs and a 10 1/2 beard. When I questioned the beard length which I thought was between 8" and 9" he pointed out that ONE HAIR was 2" longer than all the others and that he was instructed to base his measurement on the longest single hair. Can you imagine having your bird judged to be the " best" bird in some contest based on a SINGLE HAIR?? He asked me if I wanted to enter it for a citation....I said I' d think about it.