I'm entered in the HuntingNet turkey hunting contest and curious if someone can explain the NWTF scoring rules on beard length. What are they looking for as far as beard length........the length to where the beard gets thin down to 3 or 4 strands? I have a bird that has the bulk of it's beard ending at 11". But there are 4 strands at 12" and one single one that goes to 14 1/4". So what exactly am I supposed to used for my score? I saw no exact definition on their scoresheet. Thanks.

You measure the longest strand, that is if it is intact. So, that one strand at 14" would be the official measurement.

That's sort of what I thought, but is obviously very deceptive. My first bird had two strands on the 2nd of 4 beards I didn't even include. They are visible in my contest photos but have since broken off. This 2nd bird's is intact.

superstrutter is correct on the scoring.

Yep; it doesn't matter if it's one strand or all of them. Each beard is measured by the length of the longest one in that group.

Ya I scored my last one that way. Just seemed like cheating to post a 14 1/2" beard for one strand. The rest of the beard is still a nice 10"-12".

I have the #1 bird right now in the HN contest and I didn't even include a few of the real long strands that one had. But they are in the photos. Probably another 3" between 4 beards.