Originally Posted by
CalHunter
That's interesting about your butcher not weighing the deer. Mine weighs them when he loads them onto the hooks to go into the cooler. I don't know if that's a legal requirement here or he's just being careful. Either way, it gives me a rough idea of what my buck likely weighed when alive. I figure the hanging weight is maybe half of the live weight with head, guts, feet, etc.
no butcher in my area will weight a deer unless asked by customer, and that ONLY happens IF they have the time to do so
many butchers in say rifle season, are just too busy to do so, and its too much hassle to be placing deer on a scale
yrs ago,(late 1980's) I bought my own scale, upgraded it a few times to better models, and I used to track weights of deer I shot, mostly for useless data to have LOL
but at a few of my hunting camps, we used to have deer pools for the heaviest deer every yr, so scales got used there a bunch, but was all for fun,!
one thing I DO know, is , its amazing how many times, hunters CLAIM a deer is heavy and when on a scale, there is a BIG difference in there guess and reality!(really big differences on BEARs too over deer, far too many think all bears are HUGE when odds are its not even close to there guess)
which might be why so few own and use scales
rather be guessing and saying they got a BIG one than knowing for sure ! HAHA!