buck weigh

The old-time deer hunters didn’t care what a buck scored, all they wanted to know was, “What did that sucker weigh?” A lot of hunters still want to know just that, especially up in Maine where a 200 is a much sought after 200-hundred pounda.

Here’s simple math for estimating a deer’s live weight. Pull the guts out of your animal, hang it and weigh it on a scale, pull up the calculator on your Smartphone and multiply the deer’s field-dressed weight by 1.28. That will give you a good ball-park. For example, a 150-pound gutted buck would have weighed about 192 on the hoof, give or take 5 pounds.  A 120-pound doe would have gone about 154.

What is the heaviest buck you’ve ever shot? My biggest was a 320-pound Saskatchewan monster. I know that is legit because three of us lugged the brute onto a cattle scale and weighed it guts-in. How or why we wrestled that 320-pounder up into the truck bed and back to the farm before gutting it I don’t remember.