moose spread

[Ridgerunner]

How do you determine that you are looking at a 40" bull, or a 45" bull, or a 50".  I realize a 50 would have the WOW factor, but I'm seeing plenty of pics of 40" bulls and they look pretty impressive as well. 

[jdb]

I just was reading this morning in one of shockey's books about an 80" winter kill!

[robodad]

How do you determine that you are looking at a 40" bull, or a 45" bull, or a 50".  I realize a 50 would have the WOW factor, but I'm seeing plenty of pics of 40" bulls and they look pretty impressive as well. 

I posted this before but here you go, an approximate measure you can use in the field is the ears, figure they are 10" each and there is approximately 10" between them so around 30" overall. It is not scientific but a general measurement and a pretty good guess !!!

[boneaddict]

anything over 40 has wow factor. 

[PA BEN]

How do you determine that you are looking at a 40" bull, or a 45" bull, or a 50".  I realize a 50 would have the WOW factor, but I'm seeing plenty of pics of 40" bulls and they look pretty impressive as well. 

I posted this before but here you go, an approximate measure you can use in the field is the ears, figure they are 10" each and there is approximately 10" between them so around 30" overall. It is not scientific but a general measurement and a pretty good guess !!!

Just talked to my Taxidermist in Colville and she said the same 30" between ears.

[PolarBear]

So, how wide would the average old 200"er that are so common in parts on NE Wa. be?

[boneaddict]

about 72 inch I suppose...at least 60 +

[popeshawnpaul]

I never really figured this out.  You'll just know when you see it.  I'm not sure I buy the 30" ear thing.  The smaller moose just posted on the 49 degree moose thread has horns outside his ears by quite a bit and he isn't over 38"...

[PA BEN]

So where do you measure from? Outside to outside? Inside to Inside? And what part of the rack do you measure across?

[boneaddict]

Dads moose I have on the wall is 30 inches from ear to ear.  I think I did all this measureing for Jack a year ago.  I think my wash moose is also about that.

[boneaddict]

I WARN YOU GUYS.  Don't get all caught up in the spread thing.  If its a nice moose SHOOT IT!
This guy is 30 inches ear to ear.  When he came around the corner in front of Idabooner, do you think I was concerned about how wide he was.  I did check for split brows, but you know what, I don't think it would have mattered.   SHOOT

[huntnphool]

Okay Bone/Pope how about this. If the inside spread of the paddles is wider than the ears, framing if you will, would that put him around the 45"-50" mark in most cases?

[Intruder]

Fronts and paddle size are just as important (probably more) than spread. 

When using the ear reference remember it's based on ears being flat.  Generally you are gonna see em w/ their ears up a little.... so adjust accordingly.  I would guesstimate that when you look a a bull w/ his ears up they're gonna be around 24" give or take.

[popeshawnpaul]

Yeah, stop worrying about the spread and start figuring out the paddle size.  The more white paddle area you see the better.  Kind of ignore the points, they don't mean much.  Is the paddle area big and long or is it small and round.  This is where the points will throw you off.  You measure the flat palmated portion of the paddle, not the points. 

I took Bone's moose and drew a few lines on there.  You take the overall spread in red.  The palm length is in yellow and you measure it from the back side of the horn, not the front side I drew it on.  IF, Bone's moose only had a single brow point you don't get to measure the palm length to the fork in the brow palm.  You only get to go down to the front of the main palm where the brow tine sticks off.  That extra 6-8" you get from being able to measure up to the fork in the brow palm is what really helps your score.  The width is important too.  My bull was about 9" wide, Bone's here looks bigger.  The width is the blue.  You measure the widest part.  The green dots are points.  You get 1" for each point.  So all the points only add up to 11 on the left side and 13 on the right on Bone's moose.  So let's do the math:

Width:  45
L palm length:  24-28?
R palm length:  24-28?
L palm width:  10"
R palm width:  10"
L points:  11
R points:  13
L circumfrence:  7?
R circumfrence:  7?
--------------------------
Total:  155 gross? 

I don't know if tha't's close Bone, but the best I could do from a picture.  Now, if this bull only had single fronts, then he would score about 7" less on each side and would be about 140" gross.  With deductions it would not meet the B&C minimum.  He would look big and be big, but the score would suffer.  So do you see how a 45" or 50" bull only matters by about 5" of score.  It's not as important as other scoring factors that add up.  As near as I can tell, this moose is the same size as mine only it has more points on each side.  I think mine had only like 7 on one side and 8 on the other.  Now those points are huge.  Bone's moose has small points but lots of them, which helps the score.  One of them is near 18" long but you only get 1" for 18"...  That's what I think is crazy.

So decide what you want.  If you truly want a B&C moose just know what you are looking for.  If you just want a big ass moose, shoot one that impresses you.  Like Bone said, if you are concentrating on score too much you may miss out on a big moose.  The scoring system sucks, but if you want a B&C moose that's the gig.  In my opinion, the palm length is the most important thing to look at when you look at a moose if you are going for a high scoring bull.  Think yellow line, not red.

[robodad]

How do you determine that you are looking at a 40" bull, or a 45" bull, or a 50".  I realize a 50 would have the WOW factor, but I'm seeing plenty of pics of 40" bulls and they look pretty impressive as well. 

I posted this before but here you go, an approximate measure you can use in the field is the ears, figure they are 10" each and there is approximately 10" between them so around 30" overall. It is not scientific but a general measurement and a pretty good guess !!!

Another thing you may use in the field is the face length measurements to compare to the palm length and a rule of thumb here would be 23-25" on average between the bosses and the tip of his nose. So if you run accross a bull with paddles longer then his face he would be a pretty good bull. Like I said before it is not scientific just a general rule of thumb !!