Re: What ever happened to Western count on Whitetails?
I think it all depends on how you were raised counting points. Personally, being from Montana, I would say 90% of the whitetail hunters up here count all the points on one side including the eyeguards so counting the eyeguards that buck would be a 5x5 up here.
With whitetails, the eyeguards are often a very substantial part of the overall trophy quality of a buck. You can easily gain 15" of score on eye guards alone.
As such, why would you not count anything that would contribute to such a degree to the trophy quality of the animal.
If we were talking mule deer I could understand as eyeguards are generally insignificant on mule deer. A huge set of eye guards on a muly will be about 2 to 3" in lenght. This is nothing for a quality whitetail which will generally push 7-8 inches and often up to 10" in length.
Just another side note and not meaning this in any disrespectful way, but just because a gunwriter says something does not mean its written in stone, or even correct for that matter [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img].
Everyone has their way of doing things, to say one way is the correct way and all others is wrong is a pretty bold statement in my book.
Again, its just what people grow up using and what they are used to.
Personally, if a tine is a scorable tine(+1" on the B&C system), I count it in my count as do most Montana hunters in my area of central Montana.
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