One of Adair – Casey / Guthrie Center High School’s ag classes learned something different about wildlife recently.

The Natural Resources class learned the Pope and Young Club official scoring system for whitetail deer, with the help of some mounted heads and antlers that were brought in for the purpose. When looking at a typical whitetail deer, there are some basic instructions for scoring the animal. First is the number of points on each antler, then the tip to tip spread of the main beams and the greatest spread between perpendicular tines.

There are also points awarded for total length of abnormal points, length of the main beam, length of normal points and circumferences. A typical whitetail has a minimum score of 125, while an abnormal whitetail has a minimum score of 155. The Pope and Young scoring system also has scoring categories for bears, caribou, bison, cougars, elk, various other deer species, antelope and several species of sheep.