On the hoof or in your hand. I hear people on several occasions say they saw a buck several hundred yards away and they'll tell you what it will score. I found out most people can't tell you what they score if you hand them a set of anlers half the people don't know how to properly score a deer, in order to do so you'll need a cable a quarter inch tape and a square also a wood fold up ruler or yard stick. P&Y as well as B&C sell manuals that can tech you the properwayd.The more racks you handle/ score you will get better as time goes on. I've came up with a pretty fool proof method to field judge for a minimum P&Y score whitetail. They need 21 inches of time length and solid as wide as there ears, 99 percent of them will make P&Y.
Ive scored a shtt ton of deer both whitetail and mule deer,elk,moose and bear. For both P&Y and MO Big Bucks, thank you if you took time to read this.

Not to brag but we had an anlter scoring contest on three pretty decent deer a few years ago. All three deer had been measured and scored. We were guessing gross score. If my memory is correct my total miss on those three deer was in the single digits. If my memory is also correct one of most knowledgeable deer hunters (at least by his opinion) on here missed just one deer by more than 3 times my total miss. Now someone posted a pic once of a recently killed world class nontypical that I missed by around 20". Those gigantic non typicals are hard for me to wrap my mind around. For me i just guess what kind of score the overall frame(width, mass and heights)looks like it should score as a ten point then subtract some for an 8 point and add some if it got more typical points than ten. Another formula i use on live deer is subtract roughly 20 if its in velvet, 10 after you shoot it for ground shrinkage and another 15 if its a southern deer. Sometimes also 15 for some southeast deer. Works pretty good for deer in the 150 to 200 inch range. Those subtraction come out pretty good on live to actually scored deer.

My scoring method is how many packages that go in the freezer

I like it.

Well to myself I think a 1.5 year old whitetail buck get a score of 100 percent for the freezer.

That work too of you like deer meat and eat alot of it. I only want to make so much summer sausage, deer sticks, and jerkey. I I have recently found a way to make gound deer pretty taste for us.

and a lot of people do or can get pretty close on the hoof and when they are handed a set of horns. People that are meat hunters don't care waht it is but people that only hunt mature big game do know what they are shooting. From the area I live in people that are avid hunters can score pretty darn close, and sure know how to score if handed a set of horns.