"Rate this buff"

IMO,

First he should have hard bosses. Soft bosses are developing bosses and, as other have said, signify a younger still developing bull. The soft boss will boil away when the skull is boiled to clean it. Soft bosses often show considerable light grey, but this can be decieving. Hair on the light grey soft boss is a dead giveaway.

Second, if his horns are still long and high, with a gradual taper to the ends, beware of a young bull. Bulls often wear the tips of their horns. This will shorten them and reduce their SCI score - but not their Rowland Ward score. Tha horns of an older bull will show some flattening on the top part of the horn as the tips wear. The taper will be more abrupt and a bit triangular for the first, maybe six, inches with the flatter part on top where the wear occurs.

Third, some guys like deep drop, the classic shape, while some like flatter horns. Deep drop tends to increase score since it adds inches to the measurement with the drop and curl.

Fourth, to estimate width the ears are a pretty good point of reference. IIRC, a bull will go 36" if his ears extend laterally to below the curl of the horns horns, 38" if his ears extend to the inside of the curl of the horns. The you use your best guess on how far inside the tips of his ears are from the inside of the curl. I've just moved and my references are ? so my recollection may be off a bit. Perhaps someone can confirm. I know Kevin Robertson goes over this in "The Perfect Shot."

Fifth, depth of boss. Some bosses are narrow from front to rear. Some are wide - like the first bull is going to be. IIRC, SCI gives no credit to boss width while Rowland Ward does.

Here are three photos. All were killed in the same conscesion in Zimbabwe. The charecteristics are very different.

This one is a nice bull, about 37-38". Killed him because he had an attitude problem. When we looked him over it was apparent that his attitude problem was caused by a festering, maggoty wound inside his right rear leg, probably caused by being hooked by another bull. If you look closely, you will see a dark hole in the front of the boss to the right in the photo, it is the exit hole from the very visible wound in his back.

This bull isn't wide but he has huge bosses with a big overhang like a brow over his eyes. 36-37". Lots of drop. He is the oldest bull in the photos. The grey isn't soft boss in this case. He was a big as he was going toget and his boss and horns were beginning to delaminate.

This bull is 40". He doesn't have the width of boss that the previous one did. And not so much drop either. Some may mistake the light color adjacent to his boss and a bit between his boss as a soft boss, but it is actually dried mud and was the color of the dirt in the area. Soft bosses often look lighter than hard bosses and often look a bit light grey in color. But even a bit of grey can be decieving. The bull in the photo above looks like he has some light grey but he is actually the oldest of the bulls in the photos and he wasn't getting any bigger.

This photo is of a cow, note the lack of boss and the hair between the horns - the hair can also be present on young bulls.

Hope this helps.

JPK