A freezer full of venison has always been a badge of honor among most deer hunters, and although lately there has been even more emphasis on hunting for meat, I still suspect every whitetail hunter at some point in life wants to kill a big buck. We may proclaim that we can’t eat antlers, but our dreams aren’t filled with huge hindquarters. I don’t know any hunters who have ever regretted shooting a buck because it had too many points or its spread was too wide, tines too tall, rack too heavy. We’ll take as big a buck as we can get, and we either apply skill and effort in an attempt to find a trophy or hope luck puts one in our shooting lanes. Either way, if we’re honest, size matters. It may not be the focus of the hunt, but it matters.
The question is, what defines a big buck? The answer varies among hunters, and the assessment can be relative. It can also change depending on experience level, prior success and location. I grew up in Pennsylvania, where during my first 10 years as a hunter I considered any buck with 8 points and a spread as wide as its ears to be big. Just about every one of my friends did, too. It was a straightforward set of measurements, and bucks of that size were not common, at least not to us. Now that we’re older (much older, judging by the various shades of gray under our caps) and have taken a few deer in that class, we’ve
