How To: Estimate Weight Of Whitetailed Deer

Have you ever had a conversation with someone about your bucks weight? Typically I drop mine off with a processor and rely on his scales to provide me with a field-dressed weight. Then someone will ask about the live weight...

Here is a formula for estimating live weight of your deer. You will need to make an adjustment depending on where the animal was taken. I typically hunt in Alabama so I will take the weight measurement from my field-dressed deer and multiply by 1.17 and add 5 pounds. This will stand true for most southern hunters below the Kentucky state line.

For the western and mid western deer multiply the dressed weight by 1.25 and add 2.6 pounds. Deer that are harvested in the east will need to multiply the dressed weight by 1.25 and add 4 pounds.

Of course, you will need to make some adjustments to this formula according to the particular area that you hunt. For instance. I have hunted some really large deer in southwestern Georgia. These deer were stocked from a northern state and rutted earlier than the surrounding counties. Therefore the deer are larger in body size compared to the typical southern deer.