In Oklahoma all deer are weighed when they are checked in. You recieve a carcass tag at this time .

I have never weighed a deer. To me, it's either Big, Small or Medium. My son is concerned about the weights so I bought him a "Moultrie Deer Scale" for Christmas at Gander Mountain. I would like to find one of those little cheap Postal Scales , wrap it up and give it to him and say "when you start shooting the Big ones ,I'll get you a bigger scale "!

A friend of mine has an elaborate boat winch, cable, and pulley system mounted to his garage wall for the sole purpose of wieghing deer. I bought a Moultrie 440 lb scale at Walmart for $20 this fall so I could weigh deer myself. The local registration stations don't typically have scales. The good news is that buying the scale didn't jinx me. The first deer I put on the scale pushed the needle to 258 lbs before field dressing. The only problem was that I hurt my back getting him weighed the first time and couldn't weigh him dressed. A winter project will be to put the winch, cable, pulley system in my garage so I can weigh them far more easily. I got 117 lbs of meat back from this buck and one shoulder was bad because it had a broadhead in it. A lot of deer don't weigh 117lbs on the hoof.

Every deer camp should have a scale to check the health of the heard and to use as a "de-liar" for the "optimistic" hunters in camp. You would be amazed how many 160 lb does and 200 lb bucks turn into 120 lb does and 150 lb bucks when they hit the scale.

Two of the local bars have big buck and big doe contests. Good one to make some money. I think last year both pots were around $500 a piece. They run a contest for each of the two seasons. Usually takes a pretty big deer to win since there are so many people in them.

I weigh my deer each year if for no other reason than to see how far off I am on my guesses. My guesses usually get higher in weight the longer I have to drag the animal...

I have weighed a few out of curiosity but we judge our deer by rack size.It seems that the people that talk the most about weights are those that live in areas where antlers are generally much smaller than those where I hunt.

I weighed the only one I've gotten so far. 130# 7pt, (gutted only, head on, hide on.) Gave me 55# of meat.
Hunters in our area almost always quote points AND weight when talking about their kills.

I had mine weighed by the butcher for 2 reasons...
-1- to get an idea of the body size of my deer in comparison to those I've heard about here and elsewhere.
-2- and to see if got back the expected meat yield or if I was getting shorted. After all, I'd never used a butcher for this and I had no idea if I could trust the one I chose to cut m up my first deer. It was a test.
My buck only had one arrow hit in the top of the spine and one through both lungs, so I shouldn't have lost any meat. It was a good one to use to get the feel of meat yield.

We weigh and age all deer harvested on my lease. Very good information when you are under a management program.

And although we don't have any bonnies on our ranch, we score every rack buck harvested.

I always weigh mine. Just like to know how big they are. We have a local big buck contest that goes by weight. An average deer around here is somewhere between 130 -140 lbs+/-.

upstateny

I just guesstimate. I usually arrive at telling everyone that every deer i shot was over 200 lbs. Takes all the guess work out ya see?