Lou-lou - I understand your dilema......I took a buddy on his first guided hunt for trophy whitetails and he ended up shooting a 109" 9-pointer. Initially, he thought that he had harvested the next state record. After paying the $500.00 fine, he realized he hadn't.

I'm going to give my "general" rule-of-thumb technic that was taught to me and has worked extremely well for me:

First - This rule applies to field scoring a typical 8-point buck.

Guestimate the length of the G-2 & the G-3 on either side and then add them together (The distance between most men's index finger and thumb when extended completely is approximately 8") You will need to practice this step to become fairly accurate because this is the hard part.

Then, multiply that number by 2 (example; left G2 = 10 inches, left G-3 = 8 inches = 18 inches x 2 = 36)

Put a 1 in front of that number (136)

You will have a "fairly" close gross field score.

Now, things to take into consideration; If the rack is spindly, you should subtract upwards of 10-20 points off the total. If the deer's eye guards are very short, you should subtract 5-10 points.

If the bucks rack has good or great mass and good browe tines, you could add up to 10" or so. If he has additional points, he will score higher.

This is not an exact science, but it will get you relatively close within a few seconds.

It is extremely difficult to hunt an area that can or will produce multiple big buck sightings for the first time!!! I did it four years ago and just about went bizerk! Fortunately for me, my cousin is the ranch foreman and I was able to doe hunt this property several times before my buck hunt. The second time on stand I had a 170-175" buck under my stand for 2 hours, 29 minutes and 54 seconds. I'll never forget that!! Like he said - YOU WILL KNOW when it is a shooter. If you second guess him, don't shoot. It's that simple.

The other thing that I would highly recommend is hours of video footage from a company that will post the gross scorings of the buck after the harvest. Practice scoring the deer quickly before the hunter harvest the deer, wait to see the gross score and see how you did. Monster Buck videos are an excellent choice for this. I was able to guess within about a 5" margin every single buck harvested on Monster Bucks 10 with this formula.

Good luck and I hope you shoot a big one!!