The Other Auction Buck and Results to Field Judging Poll #4

I cheated on this one. 

I already know the measurements. We took this buck on the Arizona auction tag with John Koster just a few days ago. Obviously, we thought he was big enough for a Special Commissioners Tag, but I'll share with you the results of the poll, what my thoughts were before we killed the buck, and what his actual measurements were. 

First I'll post the average of the crowd sourced votes:

Length: 15 0/8
Prong: 6 0/8

Base: 7 1/8
1st Q: 7 1/8

2nd Q: 4 5/8
3rd Q: 3 2/8

Score: 86 2/8

You can guess that we thought this buck was much larger than the crowd since we opted to hunt him with the Special Commissioner Tag hunter. My guess for this buck was 90 6/8. Like always I try to guess on the low side of possible outcomes. Here are the body measurements I used to formulate my guess.

Eye: 1.81
Ear: 7.16
Face: 7.67
Eye to Eye: 5.43

Most of these measurements appeared low to me given that the buck is from Arizona and appeared to have "Dumbo" ears, but they averaged out nicely and encapsulated a wide range of possible outcomes so I used them. Also, even though they appeared to be low they still gave the buck an overall score of 90 6/8!

Length: I had the buck at 16 2/8, 1 2/8 longer than the crowd. You can see from the chart below that almost everyone guessed him at 15 4/8 or shorter. I believe the major discrepancy here lies in the fact that he looks very short from the front view. In fact, when we first saw the buck standing there looking at us we thought he looked like a heavy 13 inch buck. But when he turned sideways things changed a lot. We could see that his prongs were as high up as his ears were long. This meant that if his ears were 7 1/8, then his TP would also be about 7 1/8. He also kicks back quite a bit on the length past the prong. It's definitely over an inch longer than the TP measurement - maybe as much as two inches. 

This is one of those bucks that you have to completely disregard what you think about his length from when he's looking at you. All of this bucks length is seen from the side view and none of it from the front view. 

Prong: I had the same guess as the crowd on this measurement. If you've been following along you'll probably notice which of the measurements on pronghorn is the easiest to get right by now. It's the prong! I guessed 6 inches based on his left prong, which I felt was a bit shorter than his right prong. 

Bottom Mass: I guessed the bases at 7 5/8 which is half an inch larger than the crowd. I actually thought the bases looked larger than that. From the side they're clearly half an inch wider than the eye is across. And from the front they look as wide as his nose! They basically looked like 8 inch bases. The reason I gave them "only" 7 5/8 is because, of all the 90 inch bucks ever killed in Arizona, only 5 bucks have had bases as large as 7 6/8 and only one has ever had an 8 inch base. That means that 8 inches is very rare territory. So rare that it's almost never even been done.

Top Mass: I had the buck at 8 1/8, the crowd had 7 7/8. Not a huge difference here.

If you add all my measurements together they total 90 6/8. 

Boy was I wrong! 

I don't know why the crowd was so far off, but I know exactly why I was - his short ear was 7 5/8 and his face was 8 (his long ear was 8 inches - third longest ear we've ever measured). His eye was 1 7/8, his chest 17, and his eye to eye 5 4/8. This was a giant bodied antelope! 

His horns were larger than we expected, but exactly what we were hoping for.

As ridiculous as the following photos look, the buck seems even bigger in person! 

The moral of the story is this: I see hunters on the forums always tell other hunters that they'll "know a big one when they see one". It's simply not true. When 80 different people, on average, under judge a buck by 10 inches, you know these creatures are one of the most difficult to field judge in world. Sometimes a big one will look big, but sometimes it will basically be a World's Record and you won't even know.