Coues Deer Hunting Judging bucks on the Hoof Jay Scott

Scoring Coues Deer with Jay Scott

 

Show Notes:

Even though I know how to score deer, I don’t feel confident telling people how to score Coues deer. So I brought Jay Scott on for an expert’s opinion on how to score them on the hoof.

 

For the novice or intermediate hunter, Jay recommends that you get as many antlers or horns in your hands as possible with a measuring tape. A lot of scoring just comes down to experience, so you’ll need to look over a lot of deer before you can get a better understanding of what a deer is on sight.

 

Measuring mistakes can add up quickly. If you’re a half-inch off on everything, then that’ll distort your final number. For hunters who are used to hunting in the East or the Midwest, scoring the Coues deer will be a different experience. When you break down deer, there are 4 main parts of the scorecard.

 

1. Point length
2. Main beam
3. Mass
4. Spread

 

For most people, they talk about spread like it’s the most important factor in scoring, but for Coues deer, it is not. You want to be looking for a minimum length of 15-inches on the points and then everything else builds around that.

 

You can follow Jay on Instagram for some practice seeing pictures and comparing your guess to his. If you’d like one of his charts that will simplify the scoring process, you can email Jay at: JayScottOutdoors@gmail.com.

 

 

What’s Inside:

• The difference between Midwestern and Western point language, and why that matters.
• For a buck to be a hundred, your point length category needs to be in the 15-inch range.
• When beams wrap around the front, the size is going to naturally increase.
• How white antlers are going to distort your perception of size.

 

 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Days in the Wild on iTunes

Days in the Wild on Podbean

Phoenix Shooting Bags Save 20% with code: johnstallone

Days in the Wild

Bushnell.com Save 15% on everything at Bushnell with code: STL02

Primos.com

Jay Scott Outdoors podcast

Jay Scott Outdoors on Instagram

 

Short Description:

How accurately can you score antlers from a picture? If you’re an expert like Jay Scott, you’ll be able to get within an inch or two of the score. For the rest of us, Jay’s going to walk us through the four main parts of a score, plus some factors that trick hunters into overestimating size.

 

 

Tags:

Coues deer, scoring coues deer, measuring deer antlers, coues deer score card, how big are my deer antlers?, how to measure deer antlers