- Hello everyone, welcome to "Michigan Out Of Doors".

I'm Jenny Ciolek and we've got a brand new show headed your way this week.

I was able to sit down with an official scorer from Commemorative Bucks of Michigan to show you everything that goes into scoring a whitetailed deer.

You won't wanna miss that story.

And speaking of deer, Jimmy and Jordan have a winter deer hunt in store for us this week.

- Well, that's right, Jenny.

We were able to get out and do a little late season doe hunting.

Jordan and I got out there with my wife Missy along and I tell you what, we had a ton of fun and some success as well.

We're also gonna have time for a bragging board on this week's show, so you stay tuned.

I'm Jimmy Gretzinger, it's time for "Michigan Out Of Doors".

♪ From the first spring rains to the soft summer breeze ♪ ♪ Dancing on the pine forest floor ♪ ♪ The autumn colors catch your eyes ♪ ♪ Here come the crystal winter skies ♪ ♪ It's Michigan, Michigan Out Of Doors ♪ - [Jimmy] What a beautiful day in the woods.

♪ Someday our children all will see ♪ ♪ This is their finest legacy ♪ The wonder and the love of Michigan ♪ ♪ As the wind comes whispering through the trees ♪ (dog quacking) ♪ The sweet smell of nature's in the air ♪ - Couldn't do it without you.

♪ From the Great Lakes to the quiet stream ♪ ♪ Shining like a sportsman's dream ♪ ♪ It's a love of Michigan we all share ♪ (gentle guitar music) - [Announcer] "Michigan Out Of Doors" is presented by.

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(upbeat music) (air blowing) (upbeat music) (water bubbling) - [Announcer 3] Jay Sporting Goods trust the tradition.

(gentle country music) - We're in the late doe and we are hopefully grocery shopping tonight.

We are about out of venison and so we're hoping to get a nice big doe tonight.

We can see deer coming in here as the, really it's the first nice day we've had for a while here, kind of at southern Mid Michigan area.

It's actually right around freezing, which has been pretty warm for the last week or so.

We'd pump some deer coming in, which we figured we would, but we've got the best guide around (chuckles) and we'll see what happens.

But just a beautiful night to be out.

- Right there.

- On the left.

- Yeah.

You may remember, I know, last year's opening day had one of the best spots I've ever been in in my life.

And my wife, Missy, who's here with us hunting tonight, she shot her first buck last year at this phenomenal piece of property.

Great deer camp.

It's one of the coolest, you know, best hunts I'm ever gonna be a part of.

I shot a buck right after she shot hers and so that's what was she was used to.

So I said, "Well we're gonna have to do something different a little this year."

So I took her to Sheboygan County state land, Pigeon River State forest area where I grew up hunting and we have a little hunt and shack up there and, and a buddy met us up there and we hunted for two days and I saw one deer.

So she was able to see like the best of all the hunting experiences that you can have and then kind of the state land hunt where you can find deer for sure up there but they're few and far between where our cabin is.

So we were like, well we need to do some grocery shopping, which is what we're basically doing here 'cause we're out of venison and we need to refill the freezer here, so we're gonna hopefully get one doe if not two.

Well things were looking up, we had plenty of deer in front of us, but mostly all yearling deer and we were trying to shoot a mature doe.

We finally did have one getting closer and closer.

We just needed to be patient and let her make her way to the food pot.

Finally the deer gave us a good look and Missy was able to take her time and get ready to take the shot.

Oh pretty steady on it?

- [Missy] Yeah, I think so.

- [Jimmy] There but you're gonna wanna be pretty tight to the shoulder.

Just put it right on her shoulder.

On the shoulder between shoulder and neck.

Like right above her leg.

- [Missy] Do you want me to take her?

- [Jimmy] Yeah, I think so.

Put it right on her shoulder and let her have it.

Go ahead.

(gun bangs) She's hit I think.

- Did I get her?

- Put your safety back on.

That other doe is still there if you wanna try for another.

Where's that one at?

I think it's to the right there of that doe.

I'm not sure.

Well fortunately the deer were not too startled by our 350 Legend.

So we singled out the other more mature doe and instead of shuffling around in the blind, I attempted to shoot left-handed and got ready to take the shot.

I never shot one lefty.

Let's see if they clear.

All right, I'm gonna shoot it.

I'm gonna shoot it lefty unfortunately I think I can do this.

(gun bangs) I saw it come here and a sudden right, go through.

I had to shoot that lefthanded.

(laughs) Well let me get the safety on here.

I gotta get it out.

Okay, well that was pretty exciting.

(laughs) This is a just a fun time here to hunt.

Jordan's got a couple fields here where they're just quite a few deer coming out, but just like last time for what?

An hour or more we had nothing but fawns.

Last time we were here, we just had a couple bucks that came out, but we finally waited.

I don't know how long Missy had the safety off waiting for that doe to clear.

What do you think?

Couple minutes?

- [Missy] Yeah, yeah.

Too long.

- You did great.

- [Missy] Thanks.

- [Jimmy] Yeah, that's not easy set up.

All the mother deer coming, you know, in around her and yeah, the right angle.

- I had to wait for them to pass so many times.

- [Jimmy] Oh, I know.

It's just keeping track of which one was which.

And we decided there was one more mature doe in there.

I think it was only about a year and a half old.

It wasn't a huge doe, but, but that was kind of fun for me because I couldn't, I couldn't really get situated over that far so I, I had to shoot it with my left eye on my left shoulder with right-handed.

- [Jordan] A new 350 breaking it in.

- [Jimmy] Yeah.

Yeah, let's go see how it did.

But yeah, I think they both look like they had pretty good shots on 'em.

- [Missy] There it is.

- Yeah, that's a nice doe.

Beautiful.

Boy, it took a while for something with the long nose to come out tonight, but yeah, nice doe.

That bullet performed perfectly, exited, had some nice blood coming through the snow.

That's perfect.

Well thanks Jordan for letting us come sit one of your blinds.

- [Jordan] Absolutely.

- [Jimmy] All right, well sill got one more to go.

- [Missy] Want some?

- [Jimmy] We hunted with Jordan a few times this year and had a ball.

This hunt was just about perfect.

The weather was great, the sun was setting.

We got to take a couple of nice does to fill the freezer and hunting some state land up north was fun.

And it was good for Missy to see the difference between some state land hunting and some private managed land.

We had a couple of nice blood trails to follow now through the fresh snow.

It was about as good as it gets right here in "Michigan's Out Of Doors".

- Commemorative Bucks of Michigan is an organization here in our state that is the official record keeper and scorer of whitetail deer.

I sat down recently with John Ohmer to see exactly what goes into scoring a whitetail.

(upbeat music) - We're at John Lombardo's Taxidermy by New Haven today scoring some deer.

I'm gonna show you a little bit about how to score deer and just give you some examples I guess.

First thing we do is we mark the baselines and by doing that we put a piece of tape against the point like so.

And then what you wanna do is you wanna imagine what the beam would look like if that point had never been there, okay?

That's your baseline.

And then you wanna cite down the center of the point and make an intersect at the base so that when you measure this point, now you're gonna be coming right down to here.

That's gonna be seven and five eights, okay?

You wanna make that intersect point because the more a point angles, the more it can affect your score.

Like say if this was the shortest, it's got a matching point on the other side.

If this was the shortest one, if you were just take the center of the base, you'd be up here.

You'd lose at least an eighth of an inch, which would cost you a quarter inch in your net score.

Okay, so you always wanna come down to the center and get the whole thing.

So now I'm gonna take a minute and mark all these baselines so.

- [Jenny] John has been an official scorer for Commemorative Bucks of Michigan for 35 years now and has seen a lot of unique antlers over the years.

He chose this non-typical rack to score for us to show how some of the extra points are measured.

- Now this is a, as I'm doing this, I wanna explain one other thing.

Like you see these points, I marked them on the outside because normal points on a deer curve inward.

And the longest side of the tine is the true length of the tine.

So these upright tines, I'm gonna do that way, but this non-typical point, if you can see it looks like an S, it's got a curve.

And whenever it's not obvious, which side is longer, all you do is measure both sides.

It takes an extra second and an extra piece of tape.

But the longest side is the true length of the point.

The first thing on the score sheet is we score the main beams.

All right, and this is one of the reasons that we mark these baseline first because you line up the two beams when you can't see the other one, you start at the center of the base of the side towards you.

You come up the outside of the antler with the cable and by the time you get to the G2 you can see the bottom of the rack and the base of the tine, that tells you where the cable has to lay.

It has to lay right in the middle all the way to the tip.

Okay?

So that's what we'll do next.

It was kind of funny a couple years ago with the Outdoorama, I was doing this and they teach the new measures to lay tape across as they go along and then check and make sure it's right.

And one of the new measures saw me scoring a deer and they told one of the other guys there, they said, "How come, how come Ohmer doesn't tape it, you know, as he goes along?"

And the guy told 'em, he said, "Well, when you've scored 30 or 40,000 deer, you could probably do it that way too."

(Jenny laughs) In 2007, I entered my 1000th entry in the Michigan record book.

- Wow.

- And I average over a hundred a year since then.

- [Jenny] All right, so you use kind of a wire, flexible wire.

- It's, it's, it's specifically made for scoring deer, but you can use a bicycle brake cable.

It's got a lip end and it's flexible.

It's also good for, well like that, that really curvy point over there.

If you've got one that's really crazy, you can follow it with the cable 'cause it's flexible.

Okay, so now we've got 24 and seven eights.

We're right on the seven eights.

That's another thing.

This is a dry score.

So if this was, if this was 24 and 15 16ths, we would be able to go up to 25.

We round up on a dry score.

If we do a green score, we always round down because they shrink.

Normally a circumference can shrink an eighth of an inch.

And the inside spread, the wider they are, the more they'll come in.

The most I've ever seen on one was in the 60 days was an inch.

Okay, so the left main beam is gonna be 18 and five eights.

Now we're gonna do the inside spread, which is part of the score, okay?

And we use a cabinet maker's ruler 'cause it slides like this and see how this one is curved inward.

Sometimes probably one out of 20 you'll get a deer that the beam is shaped like that.

And this way you can get right into that center.

- [Jenny] Get the widest part.

- Get the full thing.

And you wanna be, the rule book says to be perpendicular to the axis of the face.

But to me that just means parallel to the face.

So you get the widest spot, which we're gonna be 17 and six eights.

So we don't forget it, we go right down to this miscellaneous part.

It doesn't, it's not part of the score, but if we don't do it now, we'd forget it.

So we count the number of points.

We've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 points on the right.

And we've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 points on the left.

That one, this one, I will not count.

These two I will, and the reason for that is it has to qualify to be a point before it can be counted.

And you come down the center of the axis of the point to one inch.

And at one inch it has to be less than an inch wide.

Where you can see here at one inch it goes right across the whole point.

So that is not big enough to score.

This one will be, and this one will be, and these two, one of them will go all the way back to here.

Probably this one here, this one will be a branch off of this point.

- [Jenny] Okay.

- So and these are both non-typical points, as are these.

That's something else I wanted to explain and mention, typical versus non-typical.

A typical point comes off the beam like teeth on a comb.

Okay, anything else is a non-typical point.

A point coming off of another point, a point coming off the beam at an odd direction.

This is actually a third main beam with a separate pedicle.

Just for information Michigan and Pope and Young just count as a non-typical point from the side of origin.

Boone and Crockett determines it to be a freak and won't allow it to be entered.

So, but, so this one has got 1, 2, 3, 4 non-typical points altogether.

Okay, then the next part on here is the tip to tip measurement.

It's still also miscellaneous.

It's gonna be 11 and six eights.

The next thing we score are the typical points.

So we wanna score the brow tine first.

For right brow is six and six eights.

- [Jenny] Now you're just going from the very tip down- - Yep.

- To where you made your pencil mark.

- Right.

Go the tip down to the mark where it intersects the baseline.

- [Jenny] While John measures the rest of the tines and his wife Olga writes down the numbers, it's worth mentioning the amount of knowledge John has about whitetails.

We won't have time to get into it today, but he shared lots of interesting information on deer biology, rut behavior and more.

- This one is, this S curved one that we're gonna do from both sides.

Here we got six and one eighth on that side.

Okay, so now we'll come to the other side.

Yeah, see it's only five and five eights there.

So six and one eighth.

That's a half inch longer on that other side.

- [Jenny] At this point, John and Olga will measure and document the length of all of the rest of the non-typical points on this rack, taking the time to find the longest side of any curved points and documenting it on the score sheet.

- Now the next part that we do is called circumference, the mass of the deer.

And you've got four on every, every rack.

One between the burr and the brow.

The brow and the second point between the second and third and the third and fourth.

If you don't have a fourth point, you go halfway between the center of the base of the third point and the tip and use that measurement.

If you've got a six point without either one of these, you go halfway from this point to the tip and use that number twice.

- So you always do four.

- Always have four.

A spike horn has four.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

Okay, so anyway, we'll start with this.

And this, you see all this burling on rack?

How rough it is.

What we do is we use a steel tape and it has to lay flat.

You take the smallest circumference.

So even there we're at five and a 16th, so we're gonna call it five and one eighth.

So as long as we do 'em all with that quarter inch wide steel tape, we do 'em all the same.

Then it's fair.

Four and six eighths.

Four and two eights.

Okay.

- [Jenny] Is that all the measuring?

- That's all the measurements.

Now I just added up.

Okay, we've got it all added up.

Anyway, it grossed 182 and five eights with 13 and three eights deductions.

So the net score is 169 and two eights.

- Commemorative Bucks of Michigan publishes Buck Fax Magazine with a website of the same name.

John pointed out that both on the website and in the magazine, there's a list of all of their official scorers across Michigan.

Here at "Michigan Out Of Doors", we work with CBM to get in touch with our Big Buck Night participants.

Unlike the old days, we have our invite list well before our Big Buck Nights take place.

Special thanks to the owners for showing us how to score a whitetail rack and to John Lombardo for letting us use his place for the day.

(gentle acoustic guitar music) They thank you so much for joining us this week for "Michigan Out Of Doors".

Make sure you check in along the way.

Lots of great things headed your way in the next few weeks.

And on Thursday, February 19th we will be in Novi at Outdoorama for Big Buck Night East.

Make sure you come by and say hi if you're in the area.

And if you'd like to see where we are on a daily basis, you can always do that online.

- Well, that's right, Jenny, online is a good way to see what we're up to.

You can always check us out at Michiganoutofdoorstv.com.

Full episodes of the show there, as well as some old recipes.

And you can check out our merchandise section as well.

Lots of good stuff happening around the state.

Make sure you get out and enjoy it.

And if we don't see it in the woods or in the water, hopefully we'll see you right back here next week on your PBS station.

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That's Outdoorama in Novi.

- [Announcer 5] Close captioning brought to you by Doubled D Ranch Foundation, a nonprofit 501 C3 foundation working to make hunting and fishing accessible for those with disabilities.

(upbeat country music) ♪ When I wander far away ♪ A dream stays with me night and day ♪ ♪ It's the road that leads to my home state ♪ ♪ I am a Michigan man ♪ Changing seasons paint the scenes ♪ ♪ Like rainbow trout in hidden streams ♪ ♪ The whitetail deer and the tall pine trees ♪ ♪ I am a Michigan Man ♪ I am, I am, a Michigan man ♪ Ask where I'm from and I'll show you my hand ♪ ♪ Lord above, I love this land ♪ I am a Michigan man ♪ From the Keweenaw down to St.

Joe ♪ ♪ Kalamazoo east to Monroe ♪ Sault Ste.

Marie and back again ♪ ♪ I am a Michigan Man ♪ I am, I am, a Michigan man, ask where ♪ (gentle music)