Rack ‘em: The art of scoring

What do you get when you mix main spread, beam and point length, and circumference together? The ingredients for typical white-tail and Coues’ deer antler scoring system.

In March, Osceola’s Taaffe Caligiuri, an official scorer with the Boone and Crockett Club, held an informational session at the Clarke County Conservation Education Building to discuss the club’s history, explain how antler scoring works and give a demonstration.

Boone and Crockett is North America’s oldest wildlife conservation organization, established in 1887 by Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell and founded by hunters dedicated to wildlife conservation. At the turn of the 20th Century, wildlife numbers in North America had seen great reduction through hunting and poaching, leading members of the Boone and Crockett Club to pioneer laws dedicated to the conservation of wildlife. Such laws included the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Lacey Act, Wildlife Restoration Act (known as the Pittman-Robertson Act) and the Federal Duck Stamp Act; the new laws also looked at how conservation would be paid. Work by the club also helped efforts to save national parks and inspire other wildlife conservation organizations to form.

It was through the Boone and Crockett Club that Caligiuri had the opportunity to go to the Roosevelt Memorial Ranch in Montana and over a five-day course learn how to score animals.

“Essentially, you wake up every morning and start measuring stuff, and you dream about tape measures and all that kind of stuff for five days,” he said. “You get pretty well-versed on all the different [North American] species.”

In the Boone and Crockett scoring system, they only look at species found in North America and only those taken in “fair chase.” Fair chase is defined by Boone and Crockett Club as “the ethical, sportsmanlike and lawful pursuit and taking of any free-ranging wild game animal in a manner that does not give the hunter an improper or unfair advantage over the game animals.” Any animal taken in an enclosure from which it cannot escape is ineligible for Boone and Crockett record books.

How to measure

With a variety of different North American animal antlers, horns and skulls that can be scored, Caligiuri spoke primarily about white-tailed deer, as those are what is most commonly found in Iowa, including typical and non-typical deer. Before beginning, Caligiuri said it is important to have a measuring toolkit ready to go: two different types of measuring tapes - one a folding ruler with extenders and one a steel ring end tape, a flexible steel cable with a hook, masking tape, two different colored electrical tape and a pencil.

“These are some of the tools that you will want to have just to make your measuring process go a little bit easier and a little bit more accurate,” Caligiuri said.

Ready to being scoring the antlers, Caligiuri explained the steps in the process:

• To start, measure the inside spread. This is the largest distance perpendicular to the skull.

• Next, measure the main beam. This is where the flexible cable is used, held or hooked at the base of the antler beam (where the bumps are), and staying in the middle of the beam working up to the tip. Then, measure the length of the cable. This will be done on both the right and left antler.

• After the main beams are measured, it is time to look at the length of the first point, also referred to as brow tines, G1, etc., but the first and lowest branch on the antler.

“After you’ve done the main beam, you’ll want to go through and… put little pieces of tape - like masking tape or painter’s tape - around kind of the base of the tine in order to get a true measurement of what the length of the tine is going to be,” Caligiuri said. It is also recommended to put tape on each tine before beginning and remove when the measurement of that tine is done. This helps keep track of which tine you’ve already measured.

To find the tine length, on the outside edge find where the tine leaves the main beam, the point where the tine would stop if it never grew out; the spot can be marked on the tape with a pencil to preserve the antler. Measure from that point outside up to the tip of the tine.

• Repeat for each tine. A tine must be an inch or longer and longer than it is wide to be counted.

• There are four circumference measurements for each side, regardless of how many tines are on the antler. These measurements are done in the smallest places between the burr and first point, first and second points, second and third points, and third and fourth points. The measurement can be done using the flexible cable or the steel ring end tape.

“Whenever I’m measuring circumference… I might move it around two or three times… and whichever the least amount out of those three times, is where I’ll stop,” Caligiuri said.

• Repeat the circumference process on both sides.

• Find the gross score - the total of both the left and right sides - with the difference between the two noted as “deductions” from the total score. Everything is measured in eighths - 1/8, 2/8, etc.

The Boone and Crockett Club scoring sheet has a spot for number of points for each antler that don’t necessarily have to be filled out, but one does want to fill out the greatest spread. The score sheet includes a section for the county, state, legal name, how the animal was hunted, any abnormalities, etc. Pictures will be taken of the animal head-on and side profiles.

While a person can score antler themselves, an official Boone and Crockett scorer must do the scoring in order for an animal to be submitted to the Boone and Crockett record book; the scorer can either submit the paperwork or the individual can. There is normally a $40 entry fee, but this year Boone and Crockett Club will not be charging that fee as donation was made to the club from a benefactor in the hopes of reducing financial barriers to submitting entries.

Matters to note

The Boone and Crockett Club has a strict 60-day waiting period after harvesting before an animal can officially be measured and scored.

“It’s the same across all animals, whether it’s white-tail, mule deer, whatever the case… from the day you shoot it - even the time, they’re very critical about this - if you measure it on the same day, you better make sure it’s later in the day because they will check,” Caligiuri said.

Caligiuri explained this is due to the shrinkage that occurs over those 60 days.

“It puts a level field for everybody to go through that same standard for that 60-day drying period,” he said.

One doesn’t necessarily have to have taken the animal themselves to get it scored. If a deer is found hit on the side of the road, a salvage tag can be requested to obtain the animal without the need for a hunting license. Then, as the “owner” of that deer, it can be submitted to be scored. Salvage tags in Clarke County can be obtained through the DNR, county sheriff or Clarke County Conservation Director Scott Kent. Kent cautioned there is no official rule about who can or cannot receive a salvage tag, and is up to the discretion of the person issuing it.

When asked how scoring works for animals that have been transported, such as from a hunt in another state back home, Caligiuri said that generally a skull can still be scorable if it is put back together, as that is not considered a repair. It’s also not considered a repair if a tine breaks off of an antler, is found and reattached. Using a different tine to replace the missing one, however, would be considered an alteration.

For the records

For a white-tail deer to end up in the Boone and Crockett Club record books, any antler that scores at a net-160 goes in the records for a three-year period before falling off. To stay in the all-time records, a white-tailed deer would have to have a net score of 170 or greater. Any contender for a top spot is scored by a panel of three official measurers. In the event of a disagreement, the scorers talk through their measurements to reach a decision as opposed to taking an average.

Some other clubs, such as Pope and Young, have a lower minimum on the same scoring system, but will only accept animals taken by bow and arrow while Boone and Crockett will take any fair chase animal. There are also other clubs that score animals from all over the world.

The current world for a typical white-tail deer is held by the late Milo N. Hanson of Biggar, Saskatchewan, Canada. The white-tail he took down on his own farm in 1993 scored 213 and 5/8 inch. The world record of a non-typical white-tail deer is held by the Missouri Department of Conservation. That deer was recovered in 1981 in St. Louis County, Missouri, and scored 333 and 7/8 inch.

Personally, Caligiuri said he has two antelope in the all-time records book.

Finding a scorer

Interested in having your white-tail deer or other animal officially scored? Use the official measurer locator on Boone and Crockett Club’s website to find a scorer near you: www.boone-crockett.org/official-measurer-locator.

The Boone and Crockett Club’s website offers downloadable score sheets of North American animals, questions and answers and more.