If you're paying for a trophy, you should get a trophy

This article was first published in my email newsletter in June of 2025. I've added it to my website, because I think the information is useful in general, not just for the month it was published. If you'd like to keep up with the latest hunting information, including my open dates and available hunts, you can subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of this page.

It’s axis season, and I’ve got an ax to grind.

First, let me qualify that statement a bit. Axis is an exotic species in Texas, so there’s no ‘official’ season. You can hunt axis all year round. Practically speaking, however, most outfitters — and that includes me — schedule their axis hunts for May through July.

During that time period, I’m out hunting axis just about every day. Some days I’m doing trophy hunts, and other days I’m doing management hunts. It depends on what my clients ask for. My trophy hunts and my management hunts are exactly the same. The only difference is that my trophy hunters bag true trophy deer — mostly Gold Medal deer by SCI scoring (150 inches or more). Management hunts still bring down big, impressive deer, but on the SCI scoring system, they’ll be closer to 120 inches.

The price difference is $3,000 for a management axis versus $6,500 to $7,500 for a Gold Medal trophy axis. (That’s $6,500 for typical axis deer and $7,500 for non-typical axis deer, if we have any.)

So what is it that has me so annoyed?

I’m looking at social media and seeing outfitters and ranches posting photos of ’trophy’ deer, and they’re not trophy quality at all. They’re the same deer I consider management deer.

If you’re a hunter paying for a trophy, I think you ought to bag a trophy. The problem is in the definition, and I want my hunters to understand the difference.

THE SCI SCORING SYSTEM

First, let’s talk about how axis deer are scored.

I’ve written about this before, so I won’t go into detail here. But the key point is that axis antlers aren’t scored on just the length of the beam. There are eleven total measurements that — added together — give you the score of your axis. Beam length is just one part of it. The overall score attempts to give a real value to your axis by including the tines and even the spread of the antlers.

The fact is that you can kill a deer that has a pretty long beam, but — because everything else is pretty weak — you won’t have a high-scoring axis.

For typical deer (versus non-typical, which may have additional tines), SCI says that a Bronze Medal axis has a total score of 120 inches or more, a Silver Medal axis has a score of at least 138 ⅝ inches, and a Gold Medal axis has a score of 149 ¼ inches or more.

For more information, here’s an illustration of the SCI scoring system.

And here’s a video that explains the scoring, too.

WHAT IS A TROPHY AXIS?

When I take you on a trophy hunt, I’m aiming to help you bring down a Gold Medal deer. That’s what I consider a trophy.

The ranch I hunt, has terrific axis deer, including plenty that are of Gold Medal quality. In fact, when I’m on a trophy hunt, I often have to talk my hunters out of killing the first big deer they see.

“That’s just a deer,” I tell them. “Wait a bit and you’ll get a trophy.”

I can judge the SCI score of an axis pretty well at a distance. Over the years, I’ve made a habit of scoring a deer in my head before the shot is taken, and then measuring to see how close I was. By doing that over and over and over, I’ve gotten pretty good at it. If I look at a deer and tell you it’s not a trophy, you can take my word for it. And of course, the same thing applies if I tell you it’s a Gold Medal. You can take my word for it.

The problem with a lot of ranches is that they simply don’t have many real trophy deer, so they sell their ‘trophies’ based simply on beam length, not on SCI score.

If fact, some of those ‘trophies’ on other ranches are management deer that my ranch captured and sold to them.

WHAT IS A MANAGEMENT HUNT?

A good ranch manages its deer population, keeping the size of the herd down to a number that the land can support and removing animals that don’t measure up to the standards the ranch has set. On the ranch I hunt, there are two ways we manage the axis herd.

We do management hunts, where hunters can take deer we want to cull

We capture management deer, and then we sell them to other ranches

I want to emphasize that my management hunts are exactly the same as the trophy hunts. The hunting experience is the same. The food is the same. The accommodations are the same. There are just two differences: the score of the deer you’ll bring down and the price you’ll pay.

And that’s really what annoys me about ranches and outfitters selling deer as trophies that don’t have trophy-quality scores.

Look, there’s no reason you can’t be proud of any deer you brought down. I’m not making light of the fun and pleasure you’ll have on a successful management hunt. I’m only objecting to hunters being charged for a trophy hunt and then going home with a management deer that might even have been purchased from my ranch.

THE BOTTOM LINE

So the bottom line is this:

Educate yourself. Just like I can look at an axis in the field and compute a score in my head, you can look at some of those social media ‘trophy’ photos and determine for yourself whether it’s a real trophy.

Then look for an outfitter or a ranch whose hunters are bagging real trophies. Or, if you want a management deer, book a management hunt and save some money. I’m hunting axis day-after-day during the summer, and every day on my calendar is open for either kind of hunt — trophy or management — and I’ll give you the same experience either way.