When it comes to judging whitetails, maturity or age, and scoring how have you learned to do it? Dad? Mentor? Experience? Or have you found information and studied it etc?

Below is a link to B&C whitetail judging.

http://www.boone-crockett.org/pdf/FJ_Whitetail.pdf

Watching lots of deer in the fields.....I'm an overachiever & can judge them in the woods too.

All the above. Judging on the hoof can be tricky at best. What works the best is just plain experience. Teeth don't lie, but then it's too late. It seems we misjudge at least one every year. That's the breaks.

My advice is age every deer you can and verify with the teeth if you can. Remember a 3.5 buck you pass on in early season will look way nicer during the rut. Use a combination of indicators to verify not just one or two. ie. saggy belly thick neck etc. Also good scouting will help. Tall rubs and four tracks are a real good indicator that shooter bucks are in the area.

Shoot the deer of your dreams and who cares what anyone else thinks! Field judging age is nearly impossible....considering a group of biologists were way off in a recent study, no way am I gonna be close. If it looks mature and it's a goo looking deer, shoot it...or don't.

Get a copy of the book "Observing and Evaluating Whitetails" by Dave Richards and Al Brothers. It is an excellent resource for learning how to visually judge a whitetail.

X2

Knowing your woods is one of the biggest things.

No one way to do it, because each regional zone has deer with different body features.

Scoring deer in northern oklahoma/ Kansas is different then scoring deer in Mason county TX.

24 yrs of working with deer. Picking up sheds to use as a basis for averages on a particular piece of property, judging deer in velvt/hard antlers in TC pics, judging them when you see them live, then picking up any sheds from bucks you have judged to see how close you are and finally when you get a buck killed how close were you to his measurements.

So a 10" tine in Oklahoma or Kansas is not the same as a 10" tine in Mason County. Well I be danged if that don't answer a lot of question

Apparently so because the only deer you end up waffling on are those from above the red....


Body features size.....ears, head, neck...are different.

150 class north of the red is going to appear different then a 150 in mason county.

Yes an inch is an inch but when your use to using a deers body features to give an idea of what 4-5" is, a bigger body deer will play tricks on you

Seems to be a trend with the guys north of the Red also...they get confused judging yardages on larger bodied animals also, not just racks..

Ha,ha,ha. 900lbs is very deceiving.. With a bow

Yeah, I know 30 yrds north of the Red is different than 30 yds south of it

45 and 55.

I know your not use to looking that far with out your rangefinding lecia geo 10x binos with your old eyes though.

If I could not hit a 900 lb animal vital area at that yardage without ranging it I would be embarressed so badly I would quit bowhunting.

He was screaming in my face for thirty mins after I ran amile and 900' of elevation to get in front of hIm though.


It's ok...... I have a mulie and elk tag this year

Yeah that 24"x24" target zone is not very easy to hit on an animal that size. Sounds to me like you were out of shape for this hunt

You mean you get to miss two times this year

I could of underestimated my level of conditioning. Let me tell you though those vitals shrink quickly

For the record I didn't miss last year, never got past half draw

And I for sure didn't miss the first year

They only shrink when you misjudge the distance it seems

Well lesson learned.... Aim high

You didn't?

Nope Technically I didn't miss why I was done hunting after the first day and after 3 miles of blood trailing...

How do you technically not miss and not kill an elk? If it ain't dead then it was a miss no matter how you sugar coat it

Outfitters aren't real keen on you knicking more then one animal