During the fall rut, you will likely hear them before you see them. As two bighorn rams battle for dominance, the crack of their horns will echo through the canyons some call home. If you’re lucky enough to have a tag for one, maybe you’ll see one of these brutes featured below.
Conservation
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Trophy Stories
Behind every trophy, there is a story.
We dug through our archives, scoured the internet, and interviewed hunters to bring you the stories behind the top trophies in our records. While most of these stories involve hunters going to great lengths to find the biggest specimen, other stories are of hunters who simply lucked out. Some top entries succumbed to old age, vehicle collisions, predators, disease, or poachers. These entries are typically found by hunters and listed as “picked up” in the Boone and Crockett records to distinguish them from hunter-taken animals. Whether taken by a hunter or found by one, every one of these trophies has a tale to tell.
Rocky Mountain goats are tough animals, and hunting them is no walk in the park. Their horns are incredibly hard to judge in the field. To make matters worse, hunters need a keen eye to discern nannies from billies. They live in some of the most inaccessible terrain of any North American big game animal. Even if you see a great billy, you must know that you can recover it after the shot. Every year, determined hunters venture into goat country with a coveted tag—and each one of them has the adventure of a lifetime.
The stories behind the biggest Alaskan-Yukon moose in the Boone and Crockett Records A mature Alaskan-Yukon bull moose can stand more than six feet tall at the shoulder. Its antlers alone can easily weigh more than 60 pounds. During the fall rut, their lonely call echoes through the boreal forests...
These stories of the biggest elk in the Boone and Crockett records are not what most hunters consider typical hunts. They are, after all, non-typical elk. Terrible puns aside, these are tales of near death, unsolved killings, mistaken identity, lethal mud holes—and one typical story about a lady from Canada.
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.
Spend enough time outdoors, and you are bound to find something interesting. For some, those interesting things happen to be world record heads, horns, and antlers. Here are the stories behind the biggest “pick ups” ever found.
NUMBER ONE — Hunter: Milo Hansen Score: 213-5/8 points Location: Saskatchewan Year: 1993 It all started with a school bus driver. On the last day of Saskatchewan’s 1992 deer season, the driver told some locals that a monster whitetail was feeding in Milo Hansen’s alfalfa field. Once word got around...
With racks akin to century-old twisted trees at timberline, these bucks are true monsters. They are hardly the stuff of nightmares, though. Visions of seeing these deer afield give us the energy to hike over just one more ridge. Be careful, though. A buck with headgear like this can come with...
They may not be the prettiest specimens on the planet, but then again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And we’re willing to bet you wouldn’t pass up any of these bucks because they were a tad asymmetrical. Some of these deer were taken by hunters who didn’t mind a lot of junk. One deer’s...
Handsome, pretty, dashing—whichever word you choose—these muleys look downright gentlemanly with their nearly perfect symmetrical racks. “Nets are for fish,” you say. Well, okay, we’ll get you the stories behind the biggest mule deer ever (non-typicals) soon. Until then, we hope you like what you...
Anyone who has ever hunted pronghorn understands the magic that surrounds hunting them. You see a herd on the horizon, plan a stalk, and belly crawl through cactus to get into range. Then the wind shifts, and the herd makes for the next county. You smile, ready to do it all over again at dusk...
Native to California, tule elk are the beach bums of the elk world. In 2021, one North Dakota hunter was able to break a nearly 20-year old record and fill his tag with the largest hunter-killed tule ever recorded. Check out these stories. Only found in California , tule elk are named after the...
This subspecies of whitetail deer make a living in the arid, mountainous regions of the America’s Desert Southwest and south into Mexico. What they lack in size, they more than make up for in sheer toughness and adaptability. And their racks can range from dainty to downright devilish. Coues’ deer...
The echo of their bugles through the aspen is the quintessential sound of fall. When heard on the hunt, those screams trigger a primordial drive. The hunters in the following stories know that drive. They are cowboys, miners, Army medics, and a maintenance guy from the highway department. These are their stories of elk hunting legend.
As you read these tales of hunting mountain caribou, you soon realize these animals don’t come easy. Most hunts require backcountry camps reached only by foot or horseback. According to the B&C scoring manual , their range extends north into southern Yukon Territory, south into British Columbia, and east into Alberta. Find mountain caribou, and you will find adventure.
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"The wildlife and its habitat cannot speak. So we must and we will."
-Theodore Roosevelt
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