Will your “head” make an appearance?

The CIC Trophy Measuring Board reports which heads made the cut and were awarded a CIC medal at the British Shooting Show... can you spot yours?

It’s that time of year again – show season! The British Shooting Show is the first event we attend in the year, and this year’s show in its new NEC venue didn’t disappoint. Generally, the show was busy on all three days, but Friday and Saturday were particularly busy for us evaluating trophies on the National Gamekeepers Organisation (NGO) stand. In total we awarded 27 CIC medals, scoring red, fallow, roe, muntjac, CWD, wild boar and a Steinbok.

We always have a lot of enquiries from stalkers at shows asking if their trophy would be worth measuring. While we can give you a rough idea by looking at a photo from a few different angles, you can have a quick measure of the main features of your trophy and compare this to our bronze medal example on our website.

A number of heads stood out as being worthy of a mention from the show. Mr H Dick’s Essex fallow scored gold at an impressive 200.65 CIC. Mr P Meadley presented a roe buck trophy for evaluation following the discovery of only the head in a ditch in North Yorkshire. A random find, or the result of a poached deer? Either way the trophy is recorded as a casualty on the form and achieved a gold medal at 134.17 CIC. This buck may well have scored higher if taken under normal circumstances, as the antlers carried no colour and it would have likely lost weight due to the surface condition of the antlers.

Several gold medal CWD were scored, but the most interesting CWD was that from Mr J Cooper. He presented tusks from an older buck – one tusk had a broken tip and had also been made shorter from being cut while being mounted for a shoulder mount. The result was a bronze medal at 186 CIC, a lucky score given the tooth wear and cut tusk. As a result, compared to normal CWD teeth, there was a big deduction in differences between the two tusks.

The most impressive muntjac from the show was Mr Hoskin’s Essex buck, with an impressive main beam length of 16.9 and 14.6cm. The trophy scored a good 71.5 CIC but was let down by its narrow inside span of 11.3cm.

It’s always nice to see something a little out of the ordinary, so it was great to evaluate a set of bronze medal wild boar tusks from Gloucestershire, as UK boar that achieve medals are few and far between.

Lastly, it’s worth mentioning that the CIC can evaluate any antlered or horned species from around the world, and on the Saturday at the show we were delighted to be able to score Mr J Walton’s steinbok from Namibia. He had phoned ahead, meaning we were able to evaluate this small antelope – it unfortunately missed the bronze medal criteria by 3.2 points, scoring 22.8 CIC.

In other news, all returns for 2017 are now in from the certified CIC measurers in the UK. These are being compiled into our UK database and we can reveal that all gold, silver and bronze medal scores and details will be printed in the next edition of Rifle Shooter. This will be the first time a full medal colour-based annual review of UK CIC scores will have been printed in the UK, and we hope this is something that will continue in future years.

It will also include a written report with our thoughts on the 2017 year and its trophy quality, so spread the word and make sure you get a copy to see if you are in it!

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