I drew a Wyo moose tag last year and spent a great deal of time researching shiras...calling techniques, field judging/scoring, etc. One thing you'll find out in a hurry is that spread is only a small part of moose score and you would be amazed at how many moose hunters get caught up in spread and their bull won't make B&C.
If you are looking for B&C if a bull doesn't have forking brows on each antler there is about 85-90% chance he won't make book. There are a slew of 45-50" bulls that don't make B&C because they have 1 or 0 forking brows. There are probably just as many 40 to 45" bulls that made B&C because they had forking brows. With forking brows you get additional palm length on each antler which usually adds an additional 9 to 13" to each palm length...multiply that by 2 for each side and that's an additional 18 to 26" to a score with forking brows! As you are probably aware it takes pretty much everything to make B&C but this additional measurement usually makes or breaks a B&C score.
On my particular hunt I passed up several gorgeous bulls because they didn't have forking brows. In fact I passed up a bull that was very close to 50" but he had super thin paddles and only 1 forking brow. More times than not the forking brows was the only measurement a couple of them were lacking. The average guy would likely not know better and would have considered them outrageous bulls. There are a lot of B&C bulls that aren't nearly as impressive as some of the bulls that don't make book. When I took my bull to the taxidermist he wasn't NEARLY as impressive as one another hunter had just brought in but mine scored about 10 pts better.
One thing you may want to do is look through some of the B&C record books and look at the minimum measurements of book bulls. Also look through some of the photos of bulls w/scores and add up the measurements in your head. You'll soon see that most shiras booners have at least 9-10 pts/side, 9-10 wide palms, 32" palm length (forking brows), 43" spread.
If you have the chance try to video a bunch of bulls prior to your season. This will get you familiar with scoring and what size bulls are in your unit. It also is a lot easier putting a score on a bull once you are at home and can look at the video in great detail!
I hope this helps? If you want to get in touch I'd be glad to answer any questions via
[email protected] Have a great moose hunt!
