To clarify, I am a pedestrian when it comes to field judging plains game. I will rely on my PH. I completely trust his judgement, I am not worried about making a mistake, but I am curious.
Is there a particular plains game animal that gets misjudged more than others? Perhaps a trait that can lead a less experienced eye to over-estimate either the age or size? I’ve read the tiny ones can be difficult, what about the larger ones?
Here in Oregon we hunt black bears and hunters often refer to their colorization as an indicator of age or size. In my experience colorization is not a good indicator of either age or size.
Who is saying age and size of black bears is based on color phase? That is plain wrong. If they are born black, black they shall be for life. Same for brown or tan or cinnamon or ice or whatever the trendy name is given to a color phase. What happens, especially with brown/grizzly bears, is the sun bleaches hair between molts and some of that long, light color hair stays on the legs longer. Their body and neck may have already shed the old hair and be darker. The legs may still have the lighter color sun bleached hair... giving them an odd appearance- kind of like a cross fox
Two to three year old brown bears in the spring within a month or two of being out of hibernation seem to show that odd hair molting, spidery, cross fox appearance, more so than most of the older, mature bears.
As to PG in Africa... roan are difficult to judge as at least one post has mentioned. You have to get used to seeing older, better roan bulls compared to smaller, younger roan bulls. They are very large, long legged antelope so perspective is different from sable for example. A mistake is to study sable then judge roan... doesn't work. You may end up letting a true whopper roan go because their horn tips won't scratch their butt
Oryx can be difficult, especially when looking at a cow with long, thin horns- most especially a cow with long, thin horns that splay out. For reasons I don't fully understand a lot of hunters get excited about wide splayed horns of both oryx and kudu. That shape really exaggerates or blinds the observer to a true assessment of the length. Even some sub-adult oryx fool hunters if there are no mature animals close by for comparison. Mature oryx have a head that is about 15" long. Get close to three face lengths worth of horn length and youssa!...big oryx! Then it's a matter of double checking for bull or cow what ever your preference may be
Hopefully the PH will assess and advise at the right time.
Kudu are obviously difficult because of the spiral. If that first curl looks to have a wide (deep) curl... that's a good start. Where the tips end up pointing is usually secondary. If the bull has a couple of those deep curls then it is better than a good start! Sometimes a bull pushing 60" will have the first two curls obviously wide and deep but with tips pointing inward. That can be deceiving because in the eyes of many that is the least attractive conformation- even though the bull may be a whopper and close to 60". Look at lots of pics. This forum has a ton of them posted in the kudu section. Not all of them have accurate measurements though - just saying.... Just as with oryx pay no attention to the width or splay if you are looking for good length. A wide splayed, tight spiraled kudu may look impressive but those are not usually where you find 60 inches - Of course if you like that conformation and care less about length then by all means go for it, if one those provides the opportunity. But it is easy to talk about such things, just idle dreaming to pre plan them.
