On safari in South Africa, the author’s plan for plains game—to have no plan at all—couldn’t have worked better. The plan for Cape buffalo, well, that’s another story.
Failure to consider all aspects of a pronghorn buck’s headgear could lead to ground shrinkage. Here’s how the “Rule of 6’s” and three important “X-Factors” play crucial roles when field judging hard-to-judge speed goats.
You see a buck, antlers slathered in velvet, across a field on a humid late-summer evening and think it looks staggeringly big. But the velvet, the buck’s skinny summer neck and the warm glow of light can lead to gross exaggeration in your mind.
A rifle hunter catches the bowhunting bug, becomes a better hunter and bags a fiancé along the way. Still, her hardest-earned “trophy” will be a mature whitetail buck.
Before you pull the trigger or release an arrow, do you know how to field judge a whitetail deer’s antlers? Those who hunt simply to fill the freezer, this is not really an issue. But for those who are hoping to shoot a buck with antlers that meet or exceed a certain numeric score, more often than not, overestimate the size of the antlers, leading to that common malady known as “ground shrinkage.”