How to Correctly Score Your Buck's Antlers

Sunday, October 20, 2019

How to Correctly Score Your Buck's Antlers

Learn how to score your trophy buck's rack after a successful hunt

Are you a professional trophy hunter, or maybe a person who only goes once a year? Either way you're probably somewhere in between if you are interested in this blog. Read the article to learn how to score your buck's antlers the Boone and Crockett way. 

Each year millions of hunters around the country stock up on equipment, put in an exhausting amount of work, and prepare themselves for deer season, just to have a shot at harvesting that trophy buck they've been chasing. And once you finally get to harvest the meat from that animal, now what? This is a confusing time for most people. They want to be able to tell their friends how big their harvest was, yet they don't know how to score the buck. Others will pay a professional taxidermist to clean, score, and mount their deer. This takes time and hundreds of dollars. I prefer to clean, mount, and score my harvests myself. But now that it's time to mount the antlers of your monster buck, let's find out how big he really is. 

To do this we are going to use the Boone and Crockett measurement scale. This scale is known and used by most people who clean and mount their own trophy bucks. In this article I will explain and teach you how you can also score your own "Bruisers".

This is an image of a whitetail buck's antlers. They are identified by hunters with the letters and numbers above

What Is The Boone and Crockett Scale? 

Let's start with getting to know Boone and Crockett. The Boone and Crockett Club is a non-profit organization of big-game hunters founded by Theodore Roosevelt in 1887. Its purpose is to help hunters score and compare buck antler sizes. This organization was created in an effort to help hunters remember how big their bucks were with a precise and honest measurement. The Boone and Crockett Club produced a record book that is added onto continuously. Every three years new "Booners" are added to the Awards genre. Every six years the biggest scores of the deer in the Awards category are added into the All-Time record books. These books keep true statistics of the deer's size, who shot it, and where the deer was harvested. Although this Club is for trophy bucks, not everyone will shoot a deer of that caliber in their life, which is why they created the Boone and Crockett scale for everyone to use. This scale allows everyone to measure their "trophy" deer, no matter the size. And I am going to show you how to apply it to your hunting repertoire. 

How Do We Actually Use the Scale?

So now you've killed your mature buck and you want to tell your buddies how big he is. The first step in establishing the Boone and Crockett measurement is to allow the deer skull and antlers to air-dry for sixty days. This allows them to shrink to their actual size after the deer has passed. 

You will need a list of materials to get you going, such as:

1. Your buck's skull and rack

2. A flexible tape measure

3. Yard stick

4. A flat surface (preferably a table) 

Once you have allowed the skull to air-dry and gathered all your materials, you will first measure the "spread"of the buck's rack. The "spread" is the distance from the tip of the front right antler to the tip of the front left antler. 

Remember you must make sure all the measurements are rounded to the one-eighth inch to ensure proper scoring. 

Then, find the "greatest spread" which is the widest distance between the left antler and the right antler. 

Next, you will find the length measurement for the main beam. The two main beams are the longest, widest part, of the deer's antlers. 

You will now measure up all of the abnormal and normal points on the antlers. The normal points are the tips sticking off of the antlers. Abnormal points are the tips sticking off of the normal points. 

After that, you will measure the circumference of both sides of the rack between each point. 

Finally, you add up all of these measurements in inches and round to the nearest one-eighth inch. Now you have your trophy buck's accurate Boone and Crockett score. 

Here is a professional showing you how to measure the "spread" of this trophy buck.

This is how to measure the length of the main beam, a major part of the buck's score.

Look here to see a picture of the taxidermist using a tape measure to measure the circumference of the deer's main beam. 

Go chase that buck of a lifetime!

Hunting has been apart of the world for as long as we can remember, and being able to compare trophies with your friends is apart of what brings hunters together. As we know, trophy hunting is not what hunting is all about, but it is a rewarding part of managing a deer population. The Boone and Crockett Club is a great organization, and teaching others about how to hunt and score their own trophy bucks is something I know I personally enjoy. Going into the woods with my best friends and trying to see who can bag the biggest deer, not just for the antlers, but also for the meat is very rewarding. If you do get the chance to kill a trophy buck, now you have the knowledge to know the buck's score, and the ability to brag to your buddies!

Sources used:

“The Best Way to Score a Buck - Step by Step [Illustrated].” Shootingtime.com, https://shootingtime.com/hunting/how-to-score-a-buck/.

Person, and wikiHow. “How to Score Deer Antlers.” WikiHow, WikiHow, 29 Mar. 2019, https://www.wikihow.com/Score-Deer-Antlers.

J.r., and John Hafner. “How to Score a Buck on the Boone and Crocket Scale.” Realtree Camo, 9 Oct. 2017, https://www.realtree.com/deer-hunting/articles/how-to-score-a-buck-on-the-boone-and-crocket-scale.