By PJ DelHomme Fred “Papa” Bear’s innovations to bowhunting gear and marketing vaulted the pastime into the mainstream. What is seldom discussed is his passion for conservation and his quest to establish a tax (for conservation) on the very products he sold. What started in the corner of a small...
Conservation
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Hang in there—fall is just around the corner. With a little rain and cooler temps, the wildfire smoke will clear out, the leaves will turn, and the critters will feel amorous again. In the meantime, sharpen your broadheads, sight in your rifle, and take a look at the biggest bucks and bruins to grace our records program in the past few months.
Rams, Bulls, a Billy, and a Cat Presented by Fiocchi Entries have been inundating our records department like a swarm of giant locusts—and we mean that in the most loving way. We like to see hunters bringing home some bacon and a nice memento from time spent afield. For this More to the Score...
Maine 1910 No, that’s not a moose. But at first glance, that’s likely what Maine Guide Hill Gould thought when this buck came crashing out of the alders one fall evening in 1910. When he killed it, Gould had no way of knowing that it would become the state’s biggest whitetail buck for more than a...
Listen Now > > I sensed it was about time to hear from Ross Peck of Fort St. John, British Columbia, about a hunt for Stone’s sheep. We had invited him into the Taylor Ranch in the central Idaho wilderness last winter to show him a bighorn, but time and weather prevented his visit.
By PJ DelHomme His adventures started with chasing Columbia blacktails in California, then they spread north to Alaska and beyond. Thankfully for us, Prentiss Gray kept meticulous journals of his travels—all while compiling and editing the Club’s first records book. Boone and Crockett Club members...
Listen Now > > For 40 years, I have hunted cougar with hounds; and, hopefully, my 1988 hunt will not be my swan song. The last 30 years, I have hunted in the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness in Idaho each winter, trying to kill a Boone and Crockett lion.
Science and research were cornerstones of the Boone and Crockett Club when it was founded in 1887. Supporting a science-based approach to wildlife research, conservation, and policy remains a focus of the Club today.
Listen Now > > “No closer!” cautioned my Inuit guide Charlie Bolt, raising his rifle just in case. “Shoot now. Shoot the white-horned bull.”
Put your boots on because it’s time to head over to Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front. On the Club’s Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Ranch , we’re a tad voyeuristic when it comes to wildlife there. From elk to mule deer and badgers to bears, there are plenty of claws, teeth, antlers, and horns to catch on camera.
Listen Now > > Jason, my son, was then 12 years old; this was to be our first “real” hunt. He had hunted since he was seven years old, around our ranch in southern British Columbia. We had decided on grizzly. I had always wanted a trophy grizzly. I had ranched some years before in the Anahim Lake area. We had friends there, and we knew there were large bears in the area.
Listen Now > I hunted bear in the Galiuro Mountains for several years, but September 9, 1982, was to be a day that I will never forget. It began very much like all my previous hunts. After two days of calling without spotting any bears, and two unfruitful stands on the third day of the season, I set my call on the ground and began to light my pipe.
If you ask any hunter who spends time hunting in the West, almost all could tell you about the seasonal big game movement patterns they see in the field. We have long recognized that mule deer, elk, and pronghorn take advantage of the vast landscape to seek the best forage and habitat conditions to help them survive the harsh environment. Anecdotally, we have known for years that big game migrate, but the advent of new, real-time GPS tracking collars along with a modeling technique to predict preferred pathways has shed new light on the needs of our western big game animals.
MISSOULA, Mont. (June 27, 2023) – The Boone and Crockett Club welcomed U.S. Department of Agriculture Under Secretary Robert Bonnie’s announcement of a new funding commitment to big game migration corridor conservation on private lands in Idaho and Montana. In addition, the Department will be expanding the highly successful Working Lands for Wildlife initiative that targets funding for wildlife habitat conservation on working lands. Following is a statement by James L. Cummins, President of the Boone and Crockett Club.
MISSOULA, Mont. – The Boone and Crockett Club thanks Secretary Deb Haaland for announcing today that the Department of the Interior will be continuing to implement Secretarial Order 3362 (SO 3362) on improving western big game migration corridors and seasonal range. The Order has led to significant...
Celebrating the Centennial of the Boone and Crockett Club’s National Collection of Heads and Horns with the 31st Big Game Awards May 25, 2022 marked the centennial anniversary of the opening of a building housing the National Collection of Heads and Horns at the Bronx Zoo in 1922. Organized by...
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today a coalition of conservation, sportsmen and forest management organizations and companies applauded the introduction of the Forest Conservation Easement Program (FCEP) Act of 2023. The bipartisan legislation will fill a critical gap and help keep private forestland intact...
Recognizing that the future of hunting and conservation rests with young hunters, the Boone and Crockett Club began noting the trophies taken by hunters aged 16 or younger in 2010. This slideshow celebrates five youth hunters who hold state records nationwide.
Excerpt from Wild Gourmet Recipe Courtesy Chef Michael Chiarello When I consider all the people, throughout centuries, who have used this method to cook, I feel like one small dot in a very long time line. This is a 30-log kind of a fire. To be safe have 3 dozen logs, each about 6 inches in...
Louisiana 1904 — For over a century, Ben Lilly’s Louisiana black bear has remained the state record, but it hardly compares to the stories behind the Lilly legend.
A Boone and Crockett Club member for 54 years, Lee Merriam Talbot was the primary author of the Endangered Species Act of 1973. That alone is a lifetime achievement, but there is so much more to the man who dedicated his life’s work to conservation—and humbly averted death numerous times.
A Dozen Spine-tingling Record-book Trophies Presented by Fiocchi Do you appreciate really big elk? Nasty non-typical mule deer your thing? Maybe you’re more a fan of sheep—Dall’s, desert, Stone’s? Honestly, it doesn’t matter, because we have a little bit of everything in this line-up from our most...
Conservation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Achieving grand conservation milestones takes networking, collaboration, patience, and partnerships. Boone and Crockett Club members know that. For this reason, many Club members have been on the ground floor in the formative days of numerous conservation and environmental organizations that still exist today. While this isn’t an exhaustive list of the groups that the Club has helped to get off the ground, it does provide some insight into the far-reaching influence that past and current members have on the community dedicated to the wildlife and wild places we cherish.
Members of the Boone and Crockett Club worked relentlessly not just to save pronghorn from extinction, but also to preserve the land on which they roam where they still flourish to this day.
There were about two million acres of old-growth redwoods in Northern California before Europeans arrived en masse to the area. Today, only about 110,000 acres of old-growth redwood forest remains. If it weren’t for Boone and Crockett Club members, there wouldn’t be any redwoods left at all.
George Bird Grinnell, co-founder of the Boone and Crockett Club, worked for decades to protect a chunk of northwest Montana we now call Glacier National Park.
Members of the Boone and Crockett Club were key players in laying the groundwork for both conservation of game species and generating the funds to pay for it—a system that we still use today.
After establishing the foundation for America's National Wildlife Refuge System, members of the Boone and Crockett Club continued to build upon their successful wildlife restoration efforts that still exist today. Challenges in managing these special places take collaborative solutions—and that’s where the Club excels.
How one member of the Boone and Crockett Club (almost) single-handedly established Denali National Park.
By PJ DelHomme A list of those involved in the early years of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) reads like a who’s who of the Boone and Crockett Club. Even though the AMNH opened its doors in 1869—18 years before the Club was founded by Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell —the...
Sheep, Bears, Caribou, Whitetails—There’s a Giant for Every Hunter Could you pick only one species to hunt for the rest of your life? We can’t either, so we waded through our recent big game entries to give you a big taste of everything. North America is a hunter’s paradise, and the assortment of...
More than anyone, George Bird Grinnell influenced, directed, and solidified the conservation movement during its early years. He also orchestrated the activity of many other conservation leaders, some of whom will be topics of future biographies. His avoidance of self-promotion, and his desire to often work “behind the scenes,” has left him largely unheralded today.
In 2022, both the Boone and Crockett Club’s National Collection of Heads and Horns and one of B&C’s great partners, Federal Premium Ammunition, celebrated their centennial anniversaries. The building that housed the National Collection was dedicated in May 1922 and marked a critical time in turning the tide toward wildlife conservation. Federal Cartridge Company was incorporated in April 1922, and when the Pittman-Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act passed in 1937, Federal became one of the primary companies paying the excise tax that helped restore our native wildlife populations. Conservation became a success story over the next 100 years, and the Club and our members and partners were at the center of the discussion.
Spring 2022 Edition – What’s better than record-book antlers, horns, and skulls? The stories behind them, of course. This slideshow certainly has plenty of big bone at which to gawk. Dig deeper, though, and you’ll find so much more. There’s the coal miner from Virginia who drove to Newfoundland with two chest freezers to hunt woodland caribou. There is the hunter who killed the world’s record musk ox, and then he packed it out on his back. And did you hear the one about the Rocky Mountain goat in South Dakota? We’ve got them all right here.
Summer 2022 Edition With the 31st Big Game Awards right around the corner, the anticipation of seeing so many conservation success stories under one roof is electric. What follows is just a sample of some of the great trophies the Boone and Crockett Club will celebrate in Springfield Missouri, July...
Winter 2021 Edition - Whether your hunts are in the rearview or you’re layering up for one more try, we have a number of new record entries to keep hunting on your mind. Check out a new Montana state record black bear, a behemoth bighorn ram from North Dakota, and an Appalachian sleeper-state producing some incredible whitetails.
In the early 1900s, when America’s conservation movement was in its infancy, Boone and Crockett Club members used media to spread the word about destruction of the country’s wildlife and wild places. In turn, the public pressured lawmakers to support legislation safeguarding those resources.
Lead Ammunition Top of Mind in D.C. — For most hunters, the metallurgical composition of ammunition only comes to mind when buying a box of cartridges or two at the sporting goods store. Most folks find their preferred caliber, peruse the specs, and buy the most cost-effective round for their budget.
Wildlife artist Carl Rungius traveled extensively across Canada and the American West, sketching and painting the big game he encountered. His work showed city folks on the East Coast what they would lose if they didn’t take seriously a new concept called conservation.
Montana 1958 — With a .270 Winchester Model 70, this dairy farm worker cut a big set of elk tracks in October. He followed that bull for at least a dozen miles using his wits and old-school hunting wisdom. At the end of the trail was the second-largest elk in the world.
Relenting to mounting pressure, Club officials allow the elusive chupacabra (Spanish for goat sucker) into the big game records. April 1, 2023 — Since 1995, advocates of a blood-sucking, hairless, reptilian-like animal have worked to recognize the creature as a trophy big game animal. They finally...
By Mike McTee, Researcher, MPG Ranch - Aldo Leopold wrote that “a conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe] he is writing his signature on the face of the land.” As hunters today, we are signing our names with bullets.
By Jon Gassett , B&C Professional Member In 2020, the Boone and Crockett Club, in partnership with the Wildlife Management Institute, initiated a comprehensive study of the illegal take of big game in the United States. The goals of this effort are to better understand the difference between...
The Boone and Crockett Club and Wildlife Management Institute’s Poach & Pay Program recently completed analysis of early data from surveys of landowners, hunters, and conservation officers in an effort to understand the “Dark Figure” of poaching. Initial research under the Poach & Pay project in 2016 examined and reviewed state restitution systems for illegal take of big game species and found that the judicial systems were the primary obstacle for successfully convicting and punishing poachers.
For five months in 2022, a trail camera posted on a fence next to a riparian area caught the intimate travels of both predator and prey. Grizzlies, lions, elk, bobcats, mule deer—everything took a turn walking along, scooting under, hopping over, and plowing through this fence near Dupuyer Creek that runs along Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front.
A raffle ticket earns a young hunter (and his dad) the chance to chase elk in Virginia. A historic hunt ensues, ending with a big bull and bigger memories. By PJ DelHomme Bo Prieskorn was hunting pronghorn with his sons in New Mexico when his phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number but answered...
Winter came early this year to the Rocky Mountain Front. On the Club’s Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Ranch in northwest Montana, the plains slam into the Rocky Mountains in dramatic fashion—and the weather can be intense. Winds in some places on the Front average 18 mph every single day. That doesn’t seem to stop the big game, predators, and other woodland creatures from going about their business as usual.
From apex predators like grizzly bears to feisty striped skunks, the Boone and Crockett Club’s Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Ranch on Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front is a wildlife melting pot. You can see a small sampling of those full-time residents here. The ranch has dozens of wildlife trail cams...
With a mix of apex predators, big game, migratory songbirds, and a wide variety of small woodland creatures, the Boone and Crockett Club’s Theodore Roosevelt Memorial (TRM) Ranch is a true wildlife cornucopia. Located on Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front, the TRM is a place of research and instruction...
It’s been a long winter, and they can be very long on Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front where the Boone and Crockett Club owns and manages the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial (TRM) Ranch . The mission of the ranch is to research, teach, and demonstrate integrated livestock/wildlife conservation, which is...
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"The wildlife and its habitat cannot speak. So we must and we will."
-Theodore Roosevelt
Headquarters
Boone and Crockett Club250 Station Drive
Missoula, MT 59801
Hours and Phone
Weekdays 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
406.542.1888
