deer racks gentlemen.. deer racks

i brought this up on another site and got limited responses (probably due to the title) anyway, about how many inches on the average will a rack lose (inside spread im assuming) will a buck lose after the 60 day "drying" period??

most dont lose more about 10 or 11 alltogether, in my experience with mine, my brothers, and dads bucks

i dont think they loose much at all...an inch or so at most in my experiences

It really depends on how thin the skull plate is cut. The thinner the skull plate the more the inside spread will shrink. All together on a typical 125" buck I would say in that 3" mark the rack might loose, that includes the inside spread and the rest of the rack. The bigger more inches your buck is the more it will loose, more rack to shrink.

This is what I've noticed.

I'm betting thee is a default in your scoring and then when you take it to be officially scored its that much less. I'm guessing thats why you think yours shrink so much................ I as well noticed they don't hardly shrink at all exspecially if you cut the skull properly, maybe an 1/8 to 5 or 6 8ths. When you cut the skull you need to cut down about mid eye socket and takethe back of the skull towards the middle of the back edge of the eye socket. This will keep that bone between both sides of the rack (not the skull plate) and the eye to brain in tact and keep the spread from shinking much at all vs. just having the skull plate on the baseand nothing else.WCL

I had my rack measured in Nov. about a week after the kill, it was 226 2/8. The official measurement on Feb. 1 came out at 225 4/8. Same fellow measured it both times. I left the skull whole until after the measuring.

Who measured it the 1st time, was he an official measurer? How did you store the rack in the drying period?

The guy who measured it both times is an official B&C measurer. I kept the rack in my shop, wife wouldn't let in the house because of the smell.

I'm surprised it didn't shrink more then it did, specially considering all the rack it had. My 8 point scored 140 1/8 and it shrunk 3" in 60 days. Both times it was measured by a P@Y official measurer. That blows me away thats all your rack shrunk being that size of rack, thats not too common from what I've seen.