Interesting how many guys agree that the gross score is important. My dad has said for years they should score deer somehow in a water tank and see how much water displacement it gives.
Ok that's just plain funny.
I think I like your dad already.
I'll be perfectly honest. Size doesn't matter as much to me as it once did, neither does the number of points.
I've killed some very impressive almost perfectly symmetrical deer with high numbers and they don't mean near as much to me as some of the smaller oddballs.
I have a 12pt that only scored 138 and change but with double split tines, an 11pt with two pairs of crab claw tines, a little ten point that won't score 130 but he's cool as hell because he also has a third main beam with two additional points, one being a downward drop tine and the other pointing to the rear.
The older I get the trophies are a lot less about adding up points and inches as they are about just being rich in character.
When I sit and look at them I'm not trying to impress myself or others with how big they are, it's the story behind how each of them ended up on the wall that gives them value.
One day I'll be too old and too crippled up to put any more on the wall but I'll have these guys to trigger my memories of how they got there in the first place. That is what really matters.
last week after I finished my hunt I stopped by the local taxidermy shop. I don't have a lot of friends but most of my local friends can be found there in the evenings just hanging out.
While we were there a Spanish guy in his sixties drives up with a little ten point in the back of his truck. I do mean, "little ten point", he won't score 120 but this guy is beaming from ear to ear.
He starts in telling me his story. He's worked his butt off for the last forty years in the HVAC industry as a small business owner. Now that he's in his sixties he bought a place east of town because he'd always wanted to hunt but like most of us who are self employed, when he had money he didn't have time and when he had time he had no money.
He bought the place over the summer and spent his weekends getting it ready for hunting season.
That night he killed his very first deer, that little 10pt.
He had two of his sons and two more grandson's with him, all were beaming with pride and every one of them will remember that hunt every time they look at that deer on the wall for the rest of their lives.
That is a trophy.