At BBSC, we wanted to have a system for scoring turkeys that was fair, trouble free, and easy for bowhunters to use. Because we wanted to be fair, we chose not to factor in the weight of the turkey. That would have limited highest scoring gobblers to the few areas of the country that produces the heaviest turkeys. Not factoring in the weight also made it trouble free because finding certified scales and someone to weigh a wild game bird can be a difficult task, especially in the more remote areas of the country.
Then we came up with a formula for scoring beards and spurs that bowhunters could relate to because it produced scores similar to those of whitetail deer in the same age group. In other words, taking a typical gobbler that scores in the 180’s or a non-typical in the 220’s is a tremendous once in a life accomplishment, just like taking a whitetail of the same size.
How to Score your Bird
To enter your bird, you only need to measure each spur and beard length to the nearest 16th of an inch, and we will calculate the final score using the following formula:
(Combined spur lengths x 40) + (Beard lengths x 5)
The following is a conversion chart to help calculate your scores:
1/16=.0625 2/16 or 1/8=.125
3/16=.1875 4/16 or 1/4=.25
5/16=.3125 6/16 or 3/8=.375
7/16=.4375 8/16 or 1/2=.5
9/16=.5625 10/16 or 5/8=.625
11 /16=.6875 12/16 or 3/4=.75
13/16=.8125 14/16 or 7/8=.875
15/16=.9375
