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Better deer scoring system

meyeri

PMA Member
I was listening to a Steven Rinella podcast the other day and he briefly mentioned scoring deer racks by water displacement. I would love to see a better scoring system like that.

Mainly I'd love to see that because there are a ton of bucks that have large quantities of antler that don't get scored because the antler mass is wrongly shaped, or in the wrong place. The current tape system really favors typicals and a spindly, long tined buck will score better than a massy, short tined buck; they could very well have the same amount of total antler mass though.

Any thoughts on this?

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I have also thought about that. I like it. You get credit for the total mass not pick and choose what gets counted.
 
Ive said the same thing for as long as I can remember... Cubic inches instead in linear inches, or maybe C.C.'s instead to be more precise
 
This was talked about many years ago in North American Whitetail long before the internet.
Interesting concept for sure
 
To put more emphasis on mass, main beam cross section area could be used with the current P&Y scoring system instead of circumference. To get an idea of the impact mass would have, each circumference measurement could be converted using this formula A = C2 / (4 π).

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Agree!! I’ve seen spindly young deer with tons of points score like crazy. Then- older bucks with more mass & for sure have a “more impressive rack” score the same. Most of us have seen 170’s that look “nice but young” & we’ve also seen 170’s that u say “holy cow that’s a beast!!!” I like the water displacement method.
 
Being an engineer and valuing good data/numbers for comparison, I have to agree a method like displacement would be a better comparison in my eyes. But this is still a lot of beauty being in the eye of the beholder. For example, is assymetry still a deduction? I for one don't care about it. What about spread? It adds nothing in he way of antler, but I think it is more impressive with a wide spread.

Don't get me wrong, this is a good conversation and I do score my deer, but when it comes down to it I shoot the ones that I think are cool and I mount the ones with the best look or memory.
 
Being an engineer and valuing good data/numbers for comparison, I have to agree a method like displacement would be a better comparison in my eyes. But this is still a lot of beauty being in the eye of the beholder. For example, is assymetry still a deduction? I for one don't care about it. What about spread? It adds nothing in he way of antler, but I think it is more impressive with a wide spread.

Don't get me wrong, this is a good conversation and I do score my deer, but when it comes down to it I shoot the ones that I think are cool and I mount the ones with the best look or memory.
I totally agree with that statement. Score doesn't matter nearly as much to me as the pursuit, story and character of a particular deer. I just think it's a flawed system that rewards specific traits.

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I totally agree with that statement. Score doesn't matter nearly as much to me as the pursuit, story and character of a particular deer. I just think it's a flawed system that rewards specific traits.

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No argument here, but I do think you have me intrigued enough that I might have to make a couple spread sheets to see if I can come up with my favorite scoring system. If a bunch of us come up with the perfect system we can lobby to replace the P&Y system with the IW system .

Or if something goes horribly wrong we can call it the BMB (Bieber's Muddy Bonker system)
 
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