Fair Chase Spring 2024

OUR MISSION

Dallas Safari Club’s mission is to ensure the conservation of wildlife through public engagement, education and advocacy for wellregulated hunting and sustainable use.

OUR VISION

The vision of DSC is a society that values wildlife, engages in its conservation and understands and supports the role of well-regulated hunting in the sustainable use of wild resources.

To become a member or learn more about DSC, head to biggame.org.

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6 FROM THE EDITOR | Spring Changes

Karlie Slayer

8 FROM THE PRESIDENT | The World’s Most Famous Hunt and Toy, and the Birth of Fair Chase

James L. Cummins

12 CONSERVATION POLICY COLUMN

One Bear of a Problem

Charlie R. Booher

14 B&C POSITION STATEMENT

Wolf and Grizzly Bear Management

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HUNTER | Adapt or Suffer

Craig Boddington

Wayne van Zwoll

28 B&C IMPACT SERIES | Louisiana Black Bears: An ESA Success Story PJ DelHomme

32 FREE FALLING Mike Stolt

37 B&C NEWS

New Potential World’s Record Musk Ox Entered into Boone and Crockett Club Big Game Records

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The Naming of Bears: Clinton Hart Merriam and the Genus Ursus in North America Jonathan R. Mawdsley

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ABOUT THE BOONE AND CROCKETT CLUB

IT IS THE MISSION OF THE BOONE AND CROCKETT CLUB TO PROMOTE THE CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT OF WILDLIFE, ESPECIALLY BIG GAME, AND ITS HABITAT, TO PRESERVE AND ENCOURAGE HUNTING AND TO MAINTAIN THE HIGHEST ETHICAL STANDARDS OF FAIR CHASE AND SPORTSMANSHIP IN NORTH AMERICA.

WELCOME TO THE OLDEST WILDLIFE CONSERVATION ORGANIZATION IN NORTH AMERICA.

Established in 1887 by Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell, the Boone and Crockett Club was founded by hunters who dedicated their lives to the conservation of wildlife. As the turn of the 20th century approached our nation, these men had to make a choice: stand by and watch our cherished wildlife disappear or work for the protection and propagation of our wildlife resource. Thankfully, they rose to the challenge and chose the latter.

Yielding substantial political influence, members of the Boone and Crockett Club initiated the first laws dedicated solely to wildlife conservation—and established the methods with which to pay for it. This includes legislation such as the Lacey Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Wildlife Restoration Act (known as the Pittman-Robertson Act), and the Federal Duck Stamp Act.

Their work spearheaded efforts to protect Yellowstone, create Glacier, Denali, and Grand Canyon National Parks as well as our National Wildlife Refuge System. Their foresight spawned and supported key wildlife conservation organizations, including the New York Zoological Society (1895), National Audubon Society (1905), Wildlife Management Institute (1911), National Wildlife Federation (1937), Ducks Unlimited (1937), and more recently working with other partners in the hunting-conservation community to form the American Wildlife Conservation Partners (2000).

Today, the Boone and Crockett Club continues to build upon the legacy of wildlife conservation established by Roosevelt and Grinnell. We will continue the fight for conservation so future generations can enjoy the bounty of our wildlife resource.

Learn more about the history of the Club.

BOONE AND CROCKETT CLUB AND FOUNDATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2023 FOUNDED IN 1887 BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT

CLUB

Club President – James L. Cummins

Secretary – Richard R. Capozza

Treasurer – Morrison Stevens, Sr.

General Counsel – John P. Schreiner

Executive Vice President – Administration

Anthony J. Caligiuri

Executive Vice President – Conservation

Mary Webster

Vice President of Administration

John P. Evans

Vice President of Big Game Records

Richard T. Hale

Vice President of Conservation Research and Education

Steven Leath

Vice President of Conservation Policy

Simon Roosevelt

Vice President of Communications

CJ Buck

Foundation President – R. Terrell McCombs

Class of 2024 George R. Emmerson

Class of 2025 Michael L. Evans

Class of 2026

Paul V. Phillips

FOUNDATION

Foundation President – R. Terrell McCombs

Secretary – Michael J. Opitz

Treasurer – Charles W. Hartford

Vice President – John P. Evans

Vice President – Paul M. Zelisko

Class of 2024 Gary W. Dietrich

B.B. Hollingsworth, Jr.

Tom L. Lewis

Michael J. Opitz

Paul M. Zelisko

Class of 2025 John P. Evans

Steve J. Hageman

R. Terrell McCombs

T. Garrick Steele

C. Martin Wood III

Class of 2026 Robert W. Floyd

Charles W. Hartford

Benjamin A. Strickling III

John A. Tomke

Jeffrey A. Watkins

FAIR CHASE

PRODUCTION STAFF

Editor-in-Chief – Karlie Slayer

Managing Editor – PJ DelHomme

Conservation and History Editor

Steven Williams

Research and Education Editors

John F. Organ

Jonathan Mawdsley

Hunting and Ethics Editor

Mark Streissguth

Assistant Editors

Jodi Bishop

CJ Buck

PJ DelHomme

Kendall Hoxsey-Onysko

Kyle M. Lehr

Marc Mondavi

Tony A. Schoonen

Jodi Stemler

Julie L. Tripp

Editorial Contributors

Craig Boddington

Charlie R. Booher

James L. Cummins

PJ DelHomme

Kyle M. Lehr

Jonathan R. Mawdsley

Karlie Slayer

Mike Stolt

Eugene C. Williams

Wayne van Zwoll

Photographic Contributors

Fletcher Eidum

Donald M. Jones

Mark Mesenko

Wayne van Zwoll

Fair Chase is published quarterly by the Boone and Crockett Club and distributed to its Members and Associates. Material in this magazine may be freely quoted and/or reprinted in other publications and media, so long as proper credit is given to Fair Chase The only exception applies to articles that are reprinted in Fair Chase from other magazines, in which case, the Club does not hold the reprint rights. The opinions expressed by the contributors of articles are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Boone and Crockett Club.

Fair Chase (ISSN 1077-3274) is published for $35 per year by the Boone and Crockett Club, 250 Station Drive, Missoula, MT 59801. Periodical postage is paid in Missoula, Montana, and additional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to:

Fair Chase, Boone and Crockett Club, 250 Station Drive, Missoula, MT 59801 Phone: (406) 542-1888 Fax: (406) 542-0784

NATIONAL ADVERTISING

Phone: (406)542-1888 ext. 215

B&C STAFF

Chief Executive Officer – Tony A. Schoonen

Director of Big Game Records –Kyle M. Lehr

Director of Conservation Programs –Luke Coccoli

Director of Finance and Administration –Abra Loran

Director of Communications – Jodi Stemler

Deputy Director of Communications –Karlie Slayer

Assistant Director of Big Game Records –Jennifer Schwab

Accounting Manager – Brooke Van Oort Development Program Manager –Jodi Bishop

Digital Strategies Manager –Mark Mesenko

Sales and Corporate Relations Manager –Michelle Scheuermann

Graphic Designer – Fletcher Eidum

Office Manager – Kate Thornburg

TRM Ranch Manager – Mike Briggs

Conservation Education Programs Manager Madison Todd

PROUD PARTNER

The American Sportsman is the most powerful force for conservation in history. Bass Pro Shops® and Cabela’s® is proud to stand alongside our customers in partnership with the Boone and Crockett Club®. Together we are advancing responsible wildlife management, habitat conservation, and ethical fair chase.

Learn more at basspro.com/conservation

SPRING CHANGES

Spring is finally here. The days are longer, the sun is shining, and it’s an especially exciting time for us at Boone and Crockett Club headquarters. We’ve experienced numerous staff changes lately, and now that the dust is finally starting to settle, I’ll tell you what some of those changes mean for Fair Chase magazine.

For starters, I was named your new editor-in-chief. I’ve been at the Club for 14 years, and have been the managing editor of Fair Chase since 2013. Assisting me in this role is our new managing editor, P.J. DelHomme, who’s been in the writing business for the past 25 years.

You’re not going to see any drastic changes in the magazine, but you will see one change that we hope you will like. Starting with this issue, we’re going to dedicate much of one issue to a specific theme. For instance, we’re taking a deep dive into bears for this spring issue. We’ve got an assortment of articles focused on bears, including a bear hunt by regular contributor Wayne van Zwoll, as well as an article about Club members in Wisconsin working to help raise money for bear research and the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Jonathan Mawdsley’s piece gets into bear taxonomy

with early Boone and Crockett member Clinton Hart Merriam, and Club president James Cummins reminds us of the origins of fair chase and the Teddy Bear with President Roosevelt’s famous Mississippi bear hunt.

We understand that not everyone is into bears, which is why we’ve included a number of stories and departments that don’t even mention bears. For instance, writer Mike Stolt is a retired Air Force fighter pilot who took up writing later in life. His story, “Free Falling,” is about a shared bond between hunters we meet afield, especially those out there chasing elk with stick and string. Plus, we have Craig Boddington’s traveling hunter series and plenty of photos of recent entries.

We do have one more small addition that we’d like your help with. Frankly, we want to know what you think. Do you have a question about content? Do you want to see more articles about (insert your topic or species here)? Then tell us. And if you have a hunting story to tell, then we'd love to consider printing it. Drop us a line at editor@boone-crockett.org. n

ASK THE FAIR CHASE EDITOR

Have a question about content? Ask us. Want to see more articles about your favorite topic? Tell us. Drop us a line at editor@boone-crockett.org and see what questions get answered in the next issue of Fair Chase

Get caught up on back issues of Fair Chase online in our Fair Chase Community.

LOGIN HERE:

Karlie Slayer EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

TURKEY TOOLBELT

ACCELERATING THE PURSUIT

Throw your run-and-gun game into high gear. This minimalistic call and gear-management system merges the simplicity of a hip pack with the specialized storage of a full-featured vest. When you strike a bird, simply drop the removable seat pad and spin the pack to the front of your body to access an array of call pockets. There’s plenty of room for other essentials, plus compression straps for added layers to equip you for unruly spring weather.

SITKAGEAR.COM

THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS HUNT AND TOY, AND THE BIRTH OF FAIR CHASE

In Colonial America, there were few regulations regarding fish and wildlife. Our nation’s founders had the vision to set up a system of conservation, hunting, and fishing vastly different from what had existed in Scotland, England, and the other countries where the early settlers came from. There, kings owned the fish and wildlife and the rights to take them.

Early in our nation’s history, our Supreme Court ruled that this “property” that once belonged to the king was now owned by the people—and equally—that they be held in the public trust. This eventually led to our current system of hunting and fishing and the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. However, people were free to kill and sell wildlife, resulting in a major decline in their populations. Our nation, for example, lost the passenger pigeon and drove countless other species to the brink. The whitetail deer population in my home state of Mississippi dwindled to approximately 1,500 animals, compared to approximately 1.5 million today.

Concerned hunters took notice. In 1887, Theodore Roosevelt (TR) and others started the Boone and Crockett Club. Conserving big game and furthering policy for those purposes were its main tasks. It is North America’s oldest conservation organization. The Club saw a crisis in humanity’s impact on wildlife and their habitats and called citizens to action to change America’s direction. TR and others led the way and created a system of conservation that is now the envy of the world.

These early leaders in the conservation movement initially focused on protecting wild places and impeding the killing of fish and wildlife for markets. They shaped the conservation policies of North America and developed the cornerstones of the conservation movement, including the creation and establishment of the National Forest System, National Park System, National Wildlife Refuge System, and the federal agencies to oversee those systems. In addition, the Club established modern-day game laws such as seasons and bag limits to allow taking

“What people don’t understand is this is something that we only have in America. There is no other country in the world where an ordinary citizen can go out and enjoy hunting and fishing. There is no other nation in the world where that happens. And it is very much a part of our heritage.”

— Norman Schwarzkopf, Boone and Crockett Member

while sustaining fish and wildlife populations.

The founders and early leaders of the Boone and Crockett Club viewed how we pursue wildlife as equally important as conserving them. Wildlife must be given the chance of escape— that’s called fair chase. In case you don’t know the story, it made national news when TR and Holt Collier hunted black bears in the vast swamps of the Mississippi Delta, and TR refused to shoot a defenseless bear.

In 1902 TR traveled south to settle a border line dispute between Louisiana and Mississippi. While there—as many of us are keen to do—he mixed business with pleasure and hunted black bears in the Delta, my home region, which is a vast floodplain of the Mississippi River. In his book God Shakes Creation , David Cohn writes that the Mississippi Delta begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, and ends at Catfish Row in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

During the hunt, a renowned bear hunter and African American guide, Holt Collier, pursued a bear on horseback, lassoed it, and clubbed it with his rifle. Tying the bear to a tree, Collier badly wanted TR to kill the bear, as he wanted him to have a successful hunt. Upon arriving, President Roosevelt refused to kill the defenseless bear. His reasons? He had made no effort to hunt the bear himself, nor was there any way for the bear to escape.

The accompanying press covered the story. A political cartoon depicting the event ran in the Washington Post , and a shopkeeper in

James L. Cummins PRESIDENT

Brooklyn, New York, had the idea to market stuffed bears and call them Teddy’s Bear. He telegraphed President Roosevelt to get permission to name the bear after him, and he agreed. This event gave birth to the most famous toy in the world, as tens of millions of Teddy Bears are sold annually. The Teddy Bear is also the official toy of the state of Mississippi. This hunt brought attention to a new kind of hunting in which sportsmen and women replaced outright killers. This event, often considered the most famous hunt to have taken place on American soil, was the birth of fair chase.

In 1936, Collier died and was buried at Live Oak Cemetery in Greenville, Mississippi, initially in an unmarked grave, then later a single headstone was erected. The cemetery sits on land previously occupied by Plum Ridge Plantation, owned by the Hinds family. The remains of Holt Collier, a formerly enslaved person at Plum Ridge, are interred here. A few of my friends and I raised funds from a small group of local Holt Collier fans and renovated his gravesite with the family’s permission. It now includes a 4-foot by 2-foot bronze plaque with a detailed inscription describing Collier’s life, which lies atop his grave. The plaque sits on a brick foundation. The gravesite is bordered by a wrought-iron fence just over two feet high. We also worked to place this historic cemetery on the National Register of Historic

Places. This landmark designation will make it much easier to raise grant funds and take care of a cemetery where one of my heroes—Holt Collier—is buried.

In 2004, the Club worked to establish the Holt Collier National Wildlife Refuge in his honor. It is the nation’s only National Wildlife Refuge, among 500, named for an African American. It is also the only refuge named for a guide—and a great one at that. TR once said, “Holt Collier is the greatest hunter and guide I have ever known.”

In 2008, Holt Collier was inducted into the National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas, and a larger-than-life bronze monument of him on horseback was erected in his honor in Waco. Collier was a sharpshooter and cavalryman in the 9th Texas Cavalry, starting at age 14. Collier was the subject of a book, Holt Collier: His Life, His Roosevelt Hunts, and the Origin of the Teddy

Bear. Also, Sam Fathers, a character in William Faulkner’s 1955 collection of stories Big Woods , is thought to have been based on Collier.

We are fortunate to live in a country where those who came before us set up the system we have today. Former Boone and Crockett Club member Norman Schwarzkopf said, “What people don’t understand is this is something that we only have in America. There is no other country in the world where an ordinary citizen can go out and enjoy hunting and fishing. There is no other nation in the world where that happens. And it is very much a part of our heritage.”

As hunters, we must always remember what General Schwarzkopf said. As our founders established, fish and wildlife belong to the people, and hunting and fishing are privileges. How people view these activities will determine their future.

Jim Posewitz, in his book Beyond Fair Chase , defines

an ethical hunter as “A person who knows and respects the animals hunted, follows the law, and behaves in a way that will satisfy what society expects of him or her as hunter.” Unfortunately, there are many smart people today who say hunting should end. “Poachers” and game hogs are giving hunting and fishing a bad name and are jeopardizing hunting’s future existence.

Taking care of fish and wildlife resources is a great moral responsibility, and how hunters and anglers are perceived will determine the future of hunting and fishing. Many of us in the Boone and Crockett Club have dedicated our lives to ensuring future generations of Americans have the same opportunities to enjoy them as we all have today.

The Club has made notable progress in conserving North America’s natural

The Boone and Crockett Club asks that you please thank our Trailblazers with your patronage.

Read more about TR's black bear hunt and Holt Collier on page 28.

When President Theodore Roosevelt traveled to the South to settle a border line dispute with officials from Louisiana and Mississippi, he did a little bear hunting. His guide was Holt Collier.

resources since we were formed 137 years ago by enabling the protection, restoration, and enhancement of hundreds of millions of acres of land, including Holt’s and TR’s historic Lower Mississippi River Valley hunting grounds. We haven’t done it alone, working with a community of like-minded people, private landowners, other organizations, and government agencies.

And, with 80 percent of Americans now living in urban areas—farther from natural spaces—our challenge now is to help people maintain enough of a connection to the land and the natural world to care about it and see it as essential to their well-being.

Thankfully, many Americans value outdoor experiences. Today, more Americans care about healthy fish and wildlife populations and functioning natural systems than at any other time in our nation’s history. They believe, as I do, that we all share a responsibility to conserve them for present and future generations. Our approach is to help people see that conservation often makes com mon sense and economic sense. We do that by working with government agencies, policy leaders, and business es to create incentives to pro tect water quality, conserve natural habitats, and even use natural systems to reverse the effects of a changing climate.

it has nurtured and preserved.” That’s what this great Club has done through its selfless and steadfast actions to make North America a better place to live, work, and raise a family by preventing a few “bad apples” from stealing from the public trust.

But what keeps me, and the entire Boone and Crockett leadership and staff, up late at night is worrying about how to keep the world’s greatest system of hunting and conservation healthy for the next 137 years. Especially with all of the political, economic, social, technological, and environmental changes we are experiencing.

Keeping this system healthy has never been easy. Is it worth all the effort, resources, and energy? Before you answer, think about life without hunting and fishing, which was almost a reality. Now think about how this great system of conservation and fair chase hunting was created largely thanks to a handful of concerned sportsmen and women. I have to believe Holt and TR would be proud of what has been done. n

The Boone and Crockett Club believes that it is not enough to preach that we all have an unquestionable responsibility to conserve the fish and wildlife resources around us; we must practice it too. This includes regulated hunting and fishing. But it does not include the illegal and senseless taking of our natural resources. Posewitz once said, “A society or culture is ultimately measured not by what it develops or consumes, but rather by what

In western Mississippi, close to where Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi meet, sits both the Holt Collier and Theodore Roosevelt National Wildlife Refuge (NWR). Roosevelt was largely responsible for creating the nation's National Wildlife Refuge System.

The Wilderness Warrior Society, the Club’s premier major gifts society, was launched in 2011 to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the Boone and Crockett Club.

In 1887 Theodore Roosevelt formed a coalition of hunters to establish the foundation for the world’s greatest wildlife conservation system. Knowing that he could not accomplish this daunting task alone, he invited men of influence to join him in forming the Boone and Crockett Club.

We still cannot do it alone. We need your help. Please join the Wilderness Warrior Society!

With your gift of $125,000 or more, you will be presented with a limitededition bronze of Theodore Roosevelt on horseback by Bob Scriver, a custom blazer, and an exclusive event at our annual meeting each year to recognize and honor your special generosity toward wildlife conservation.

The $125,000 donation can be paid with a $25,000 current contribution and the balance payable over a maximum of four years. Please consider pledging to become a member of the Wilderness Warrior Society today!

R. Terrell McCombs President Boone and Crockett Club Foundation

53 MEMBERS OF THE WILDERNESS WARRIOR SOCIETY

Trevor L. Ahlberg

Lee R. Anderson Sr. Anonymous

James F. Arnold

Rene R. Barrientos

Marc A. Brinkmeyer

Pete R. Brownell

Anthony J. Caligiuri

Richard Childress

Marshall J. Collins Jr.

Samuel J. Cunningham

William A. Demmer

Gary W. Dietrich

John P. Evans

Michael L. Evans

Robert W. Floyd

Steve J. Hageman

Robert H. Hanson*

Charles W. Hartford

John L. Hendrix

George C. "Tim" Hixon*

B.B. Hollingsworth Jr.

Ned S. Holmes

Andrew L. Hoxsey

N. Eric Johanson*

Anne Brockinton Lee

Tom L. Lewis

Jimmy John Liautaud

T. Nyle Maxwell

R. Terrell McCombs

Marc C. Mondavi

David L. Moore

John L. Morris

Rick C. Oncken

Michael J. Opitz

Jack S. Parker*

Paul V. Phillips

Remo R. Pizzagalli

Thomas D. Price

Edward B. Rasmuson*

Richard D. Reeve*

Marion "Scotty" Searle

James J. "Jake" Shinners

T. Garrick Steele

Morrison Stevens Sr.

Benjamin A. Strickling III

George C. Thornton

Ben B. Wallace

Mary L. Webster

M. Craig West*

C. Martin Wood III

Leonard H. Wurman M.D.

Paul M. Zelisko * Deceased

Contact Terrell McCombs at 210/818-8363 for more details.

ONE BEAR OF A PROBLEM

The policies governing bears range from local ordinances dealing with bird feeders to permits to move trophies internationally. Regardless of the venue, topic, or issue, bear hunting policies are often divisive and confusing.

Because bears are so charismatic, and many non-hunters don’t fully understand how bear meat, grease, and furs are utilized, our fellow citizens (and not a few fellow hunters) tend to approve of hunting bears less than the hunting of other species. Today, decisions about where, how, or if we may hunt bears are at the heart of a broader controversy over how we manage wildlife in this country and who should be responsible.

Ballot initiatives seeking to ban bear hunting have become common over the last three decades, as have lawsuits seeking to ban certain forms of hunting. While legal, neither of these mechanisms for making policy are particularly helpful nor are they conducive to incorporating the best available science,

public perception, and hunting ethics into decision-making. Further, state legislatures have made new laws to expand or contract hunting opportunities for bears, like expanding hound hunting for black bears in areas where grizzly bears occur. While these new policies may be popular among some hunters and are legitimate, they are also unhelpful because they disrupt the institutions crafted over time to best construct wildlife policy.

Federal management decisions made by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could be viewed like the rules made by ballot initiatives, litigation, or state legislation. The policies governing other bears, especially those listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), raise different challenges than those species firmly under state management. Grizzly bears may not be hunted in the lower 48 states because, as of this writing, they are protected under the ESA. The same species may be pursued north of the 49th parallel. The Boone and Crockett Club recently

The policies governing bears range from local ordinances dealing with bird feeders to permits to move trophies internationally. Regardless of the venue, topic, or issue, bear hunting policies are often divisive and confusing.

released a revised position statement on grizzly bears (and wolves) that outlines the history of this species’ status under the ESA. The Club’s position is that recovered populations of grizzly bears should be delisted, and state management be resumed.

Decisions surrounding bears and the hunting of recovered bear populations should—and typically do— occur within state wildlife commissions. However, these commissions have become the most recent target of some wildlife activists who seek to minimize the role of hunting, fishing, and trapping in wildlife management. This debate is perhaps most heated in Washington State, where spring bear hunting has been “paused” by the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission since 2022. However, Colorado might not be far behind with the recent appointment of a handful of commissioners representing “outdoor recreation and parks utilization” constituencies. While ensuring qualified people are appointed to these bodies is important,

giving these commissions clear direction on how they should make policy is more critical. Several of these bodies are tasked with ensuring we leave wildlife populations better than we found them. Others must ensure opportunities for sustainable harvest—of bears and other species—remain available to the public.

Unless otherwise stated, like in the case of an ESA listing, state governments prescribe how wildlife are managed. Typically, this power is delegated to a state wildlife commission or board tasked with deciding what ends up in your regulation booklet. While this varies from state to state, it often includes season structure, if or how many licenses hunters

Charlie R. Booher BOONE AND CROCKETT CLUB POLICY CONSULTANT

As hunters, we are responsible for representing our community to the rest of the world. We must hold ourselves to the highest standards of fair chase while in the field, but we must also ensure that we show these species the respect they deserve when we bring them home.

can purchase, and the means and methods hunters can employ while in the field.

The rules for hunting black bears differ depending on location for various reasons and non-reasons. Bear hunting with hounds is a longstanding tradition in the Great Lakes states. In other regions, baiting is common. In much of the West, black bear boars may (currently) be harvested in the spring, but using dogs at any time of the year is frequently outlawed. Other states, like Missouri, have recently begun hunting black bears again after generations without legal harvest opportunities. Regional traditions and unique ecological contexts mean hunting regulations differ by state and by tribe.

Species sharing the genus Ursus occur from Florida to Alaska and nearly everywhere in between, making bears some of the most widespread omnivores on the continent. Four species of ursids, including grizzly bears, Alaska brown bears, polar bears, and black bears, are eligible for entry in our Club’s record program, but bear hunting, like hunting other large carnivores, is not secure.

As hunters, we are responsible for representing our community to the rest of the world. We must hold ourselves to the highest standards of fair chase while in the field, but we must also ensure that we show these species the respect they deserve when we bring them home.

Further, we must commit ourselves to holding wildlife managers, state legislators, litigators, federal officials, and wildlife commissioners to high professional, scientific, and ethical standards. While some areas of the law merely seek adequacy from our regulatory mechanisms, hunters, conservationists, and sportsmen should seek excellence. In building durable wildlife policy, we must combine biology, tradition, and public perception with the law, just as our Club has done for the last 137 years. Today that means wading into the law that governs many different wildlife conservation and management institutions and preparing to move each of them further in the right direction. n

The rules for hunting black bears differ depending on location. Bear hunting with hounds is a longstanding tradition in the Great Lakes states. In other regions, baiting is common. In much of the West, black bear boars may (currently) be harvested in the spring, but using dogs at any time of the year is frequently outlawed.

Wayne E. Umlor 20-2/16

Delta County, Michigan 2004

Bryan D. Hamacher 20-4/16

Mesa County, Colorado 2017

Dennis A. Soper 21-5/16

Hancock County, Maine 2021

B&C Position Statement

Where the Club Stands on Topics Relative to Wildlife, Conservation, and Hunting

wolf and G rizzly B ear manaG ement

EFFECTIVE DATE: NOVEMBER 29, 2023

Situational overview

Gray wolves and grizzly bears have become the most controversial species of wildlife in North America. Once considered animals to be eradicated by any means possible, these two species were “listed” under the Federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) in the 1970s. Since then, they have recolonized remarkably in the lower 48 states of the U.S., advancing under decades of federal protection and three wolf reintroductions, and supported by abundant prey. Populations of both species are either stable or growing wherever they occur.

The ongoing controversy is fueled by passionate views about the proper size of the populations and their distribution, and how to manage the effects of these powerful, charismatic

animals on other elements of their ecosystems (e.g., other wildlife species, livestock, people, and land). The question of how to manage them has been further complicated by disagreements over whether state governments should resume their role as managers or if the federal government should retain this role. The Federal government has attempted to transfer the role to states for the wolf eight times and for the grizzly bear twice (a third such decision is pending). All but one of these “de-listing” decisions have been reversed by the courts, with one of these reversals subsequently reinstated by Congress.

The main reason for these judicial reversals concerns the interpretation of a 1996 federal policy that divided entire populations of wolves and bears into

subpopulations for separate analysis of their viability. A secondary issue preventing resumption of state management is whether state management policies and plans are adequate to sustain wolf and grizzly populations.

Today, as a result of the two successful wolf de-listings by the federal government, management of wolves in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and parts of Oregon, Washington, and Utah is the responsibility of the state fish and wildlife agencies and commissions. After first being listed in 1978, decades of efforts by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) led to the Northern Rockies Distinct Population Segment of gray wolves meeting the requirements for ESA delisting.1

Following numerous legal challenges to this decision, Congressional action in 2011 finally reinstated the latest decision of the FWS (at that time) to delist in Idaho and Montana. Wyoming wolf delisting followed after a subsequent FWS decision withstood a 2012 court

challenge. The rest of the wolves in the lower-48 states, which are expanding in the Northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest, and occur in the Great Lakes states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, are listed and remain governed by the FWS under ESA authority.

Grizzly bears are exclusively managed by the FWS under ESA authority in the lower-48 states, with most of these bears living in the states of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. The FWS has attempted twice (and is attempting again now) to remove the bear from the endangered species list based on years of research, management, and recommendations by the federal/state interagency grizzly bear study team that grizzly bears, where they occur, have recovered, and are no longer threatened. As with similar attempts to delist the wolf, these decisions were rejected by courts for lack of consistency between the meaning of “population” in 1973 and the amended meaning in 1996.

This unstable management regime, roiled by litigation, suggests that wolf and grizzly bear management is at a crossroads. Most people agree that neither persecution nor wholesale protection are appropriate as the primary approaches by which we manage them. Still, we have not yet been able to assign stable governance as we have with numerous other wildlife species under state and tribal management. Without stable management, the problems of depredation, threats to human life, property damage, and nuisance cannot be adequately addressed. Frustrations over management have spurred state legislatures to

Without stable management, the problems of depredation, threats to human life, property damage, and nuisance cannot be adequately addressed.

pass species-specific laws and concerned citizens to promote ballot initiatives, both of which supersede the state agencies and commissions that apply scientific analysis and consider public opinion in setting management policy.

For much of its history, the Boone and Crockett Club and its members have been actively involved in wolf and grizzly bear policy, research, and in developing best management practices. The Club understands the biological, sociocultural, economic, and political factors associated with managing these two species, and is well-positioned to help promote results-driven, successful conservation strategies moving forward.

PoS ition

The Boone and Crockett Club supports delisting recovered gray wolf and grizzly bear populations, resuming state management and oversight. The Club finds that keeping species at no risk of extinction listed on the ESA misuses the ESA, wastes the resources of the ESA program needed for other species, impedes conservation, and erodes support for the ESA.

The Boone and Crockett Club maintains that state and tribal wildlife agencies have the expertise and the capacity to successfully manage recovered wolves and grizzlies and refine their management policies to ensure populations remain

robust and to mitigate any new challenges that arise. These agencies and their associated commissions are also in the best position to address the effects on wildlife and people from wolf and grizzly conflicts. The Club has been and will continue to work with state and federal leaders to ensure state-level policies sustain wolf and grizzly populations.

State management plans must ensure that objectives are based on science and its means are effective and ethically acceptable to society. Goals of managing population sizes and distributions must define measurable results, and the means of management must achieve those results within ethical bounds. For example, hunting should be bound to the ethic of Fair Chase, and management actions involving wolves should adhere to animal welfare standards to ensure removal is conducted in the most humane manner possible.

State management must outperform the ESA requirement that a state management plan constitutes an “adequate regulatory mechanism,” meaning that a plan gives reasonable assurances that a species will not become threatened or endangered again. The even larger challenge for state wildlife agencies is showing the entire country that a species once almost eliminated, then restored, can now be sustainably managed. State wildlife

agencies have demonstrated exceptional success with many other species. Continued coordination between the states and FWS will maintain delisted status and help withstand litigation.

Of course, state management of any species comes with challenges. Managing wolves and grizzlies is expensive, hunting and trapping may not suffice to achieve population goals, and public debate over how many wolves and grizzlies there should be and where they should occur is contentious. The Club believes these debates should not be held in courts of law, but in the administrative venue of state wildlife commissions supported by the professional analysis of wildlife agencies. This is where most wildlife management policies have been made successfully for more than a century. However, decisions will not be made in these venues so long as wolves and grizzlies are listed under the ESA and managed by the FWS. n

1 The FWS must delist a species, either in its entire range or in a Distinct Population Segment (a significant, but isolated population for purposes of the ESA), when science has shown the species has recovered and is no longer in need of federal oversight. The FWS is responsible for keeping species out of danger of extinction (endangered) or at risk of becoming so in the foreseeable future (threatened) throughout all or a significant portion of its range.

LIST OF CURRENT POSITION STATEMENTS

ANIMAL WELFARE

BAITING

BIG GAME RECORDS

ELIGIBILITY

Updated November 2022

BIG GAME TROPHIES AND TROPHY HUNTING

CANNED SHOOTS

Updated August 2022

CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE

Updated August 2022

CLIMATE CHANGE

CONSERVATION AND PRESERVATION

DEER AND ELK BREEDING

Updated August 2022

ENDANGERED SPECIES

EQUAL ACCESS TO JUSTICE

Updated December 2021

FAIR CHASE

GENETIC MANIPULATION OF GAME - updated October 2022

GOVERNOR'S TAGS

Updated October 2021

LEAD AMMUNITION FOR HUNTING AND SHOOTING

LONG RANGE SHOOTING

Updated October 2021

NORTH AMERICAN MODEL OF WILDLIFE CONSERVATION

WOLF AND GRIZZLY BEAR MANAGEMENT

SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS

TECHNOLOGY AND HUNTING

NEW December 2021

Read more about the Club's Position Statements

I climbed on a north-side path that threaded brushy, spring-fed draws feeding the steep coulees below. As evening fell, a cow elk emerged from a thicket and looked back. But not at me.

I inched closer along a game trail. The than the shadowed cover.

— I’VE NOTHING AGAINST BEARS — PG. 23

Adapt or Suffer

When in Rome, hunt like a Roman.

Headed into one of Montana’s “unlimited bighorn areas” on a backpack hunt…a long time ago. Look at that country! Boddington doubts he could do a hunt like that today. Best to be honest with yourself, as well as guides, outfitters, and hunting partners.

As hunters, most of us have comfort zones. We’re familiar with our home turf and local game, whatever the terrain and species might be. Eastern whitetail hunters are probably most familiar with treestands and ground blinds. Texas deer hunters love their box blinds and tower stands. Western deer and elk hunters are probably more versatile and accustomed to hunting by glassing and spot-and-stalk techniques.

Neither is better nor worse; it is just a fact that terrain and vegetation vary. Regardless of species, wildlife adapts to their habitat. Hunters need to adapt as well. I don’t want you to think I’m a Communist agitator, but the truth is I’m not crazy about hunting from stands. I get fidgety. I probably have a short attention span. My Kansas farm is a thick oak forest with a foot of leaf litter. Trust me, if I could figure out a better method than stand hunting, I’d do it. Our woods are just too thick and noisy for still-hunting to be productive. After a couple of slow days on stand, somebody in camp is certain to say, “Have you tried drives?” Uh, no. We have a high deer density, but the properties we hunt aren’t huge. There is no way I want to spook deer in my bedding cover over to the neighbors. We hunt from stands because it works. We finished our third straight 100 percent rifle season six days ago, so I know it works.

PRACTICE AND TRAIN FOR THE TERRAIN

I grew up primarily a Western hunter. Still young when I went on my first African hunt, I didn’t have nearly the experience I thought I did. I’d never seen or heard of shooting sticks until my PH set them up in front of me and suggested I shoot a waterbuck using them. I suppose I can be forgiven. There was no internet or outdoor television. Today, there’s no excuse; the resources are out there. I was in Barry Burchell’s

ABOVE:

was

had never

a

but eventually got a

camp in the Eastern Cape a couple of years ago. A family from Texas had their teenagers with them. These youngsters hadn’t practiced off sticks and were having trouble getting the hang of them. Being young, with great eyes and reflexes, they quickly figured out the sticks. I got lucky; I actually hit that waterbuck with the first shot I ever fired off of them. Today, in this information age, there’s no excuse for not studying and practicing the shooting you’re likely to encounter in new country.

In Africa, shooting sticks are almost universal for many good reasons. The PH or a tracker habitually carries them. They get you above low vegetation. And sticks get you off the ground with its thorny plants and creepy crawlies. When Africa-bound, get or make a set of shooting sticks and practice with them. Today, I’m simply amazed when I’m in camp with a first-time African hunter who has never before used shooting sticks.

Most hunting is spot and stalk in the American West, western Canada, and Alaska. Extreme range isn’t often required, but open country is daunting if you aren’t used to it. Many of us are hardpressed to find ranges with targets beyond 100 yards but practice at distances up to 400 yards. Spend as much time as possible away from the bench, shooting how you’ll likely shoot on the hunt—bipod, sticks, off your pack, or all of the above. Most of us have hunting dreams, but we must be as realistic. Most of us work hard for years before realizing some of these dreams. We don’t suddenly wake up in our middle years ready to tackle a tough mountain hunt. If you’ve never hunted wild sheep or goats, it’s difficult to envision how tough it can be. Also, guys like me who live at sea level often underestimate the effects of altitude. Long before your hunt, check with your doctor and tell them your plans. Then start

Boddington’s Kansas whitetail hunting is stand hunting, a mix of sturdy treestands and box blinds on towers. He prefers the treestands, but a lot of hunters shouldn’t climb ladders or are afraid of heights. State your preferences and limits!

This

a big surprise: Cross-country skis on a spring bear hunt in Kamchatka. Boddington snow-skis but

been on cross-country skis. He fell down a lot, swore

lot,

nice bear. RIGHT: PH Ben Rautenbach demonstrates the Four Stable Sticks to Melissa Belcher. Sticks are universal in Africa, but many PHs have shifted to sticks that support both buttstock and fore-end. All shooting aids are good, but all require practice.

training early, months ahead. Walking is the best training— and find some hills. Start slow, and increase distance gradually. Use the same logic when carrying a pack. Start with nothing and increase gradually. Horses are wonderful in tough country, but a long ride is sheer murder on your body, especially if you have no horse experience or it’s been a long time.

A lot of our dream hunts are, of necessity, outfitted hunts. It doesn’t matter how much you want to do it or how much it costs. Being honest with prospective outfitters regarding your overall health and physical capability is essential. Every outfitter has stories about hunters who neglected to reveal medical conditions or just plain lied about their condition. Even tough hunts can be possible for even guys my age. Much of it is mental, one step ahead of the other, but we all have limits.

PACK THE RIGHT GEAR

As baggage allowances seem to decrease with every flight, it’s essential to pack as lightly as possible. Still, you need

Dave Leonard and Boddington on a spring grizzly hunt up in the Arctic. Pack light but do your research and make sure you have the gear you need.

what you need, and it needs to be the right gear. I always ask my outfitters for an equipment list, but modify at your peril.

This past October, I went on a fall brown bear hunt on the Alaska Peninsula with old friend Dave Leonard of Mountain Monarchs of Alaska. I got his equipment list and followed it pretty well, including insulated hip waders. Dave recommended a long raincoat. I couldn’t find one, so I went with the good raingear I already owned. We saw ten days of near-constant rain and wind. Everything was fine except for a fourinch gap between the top of my waders and the bottom of my rain jacket. I did not get a bear, but my outer shell will have an extra long tail when I return in the spring. I have no desire to spend another ten days with a wet butt.

Hunting is hunting throughout the world, and conditions vary tremendously. Weather influences the gear we need to be comfortable and successful, while topography and vegetation— probably more than the animals—dictate the kind of

shots taken. When going into an unfamiliar area, do as much research as possible and try to understand what to expect. Like they say, there is no such thing as a stupid question. On unfamiliar turf, there are almost sure to be surprises. Prepare for them as best you can, then be flexible and roll with the punches. It’s all part of the fun when we travel to hunt. n

Rainy day on the Alaska Peninsula. See that gap between the bottom of my rain jacket and the top of my waders? No bueno! The outfitter’s equipment list was clear, but I failed to find an outer shell or raincoat that was long enough, wet crotch most of the hut.

Ready to head out on a backpack sheep hunt in Alaska. Such hunts must start with months of serious training…and aren’t for everyone.

I’ve Nothing Against Bears

Mostly they just want to eat and sleep. Why interrupt?

Black bears have their priorities straight: Eat, then eat more. This Alaska bear has salmon on the menu.

Despite the wall of black spruce anchored in black mud and a record hatch of black flies, I was in a bright mood. Winds that had bent the forest had given way to a gentle westerly. A scarlet sun hung in slivers between the trees, two hands from gone. Muscling my chair around to face the oil drum, I fought with the mud to level it. Then I sat and reached down into my daypack for my book on Jim Bridger.

A shadow shifted on my flank. Still doubled over the pack, I moved only my eyes. The bear was perhaps 30 feet away, and closing. But its gait showed no threat. Silently it shuffled through the windfall, halving the distance. It passed me as if I weren’t there, to a log spanning a pool. Testing it with a tentative paw, the bear glided across as if on hard earth. It plopped in front of the drum, facing away, and started lapping up grain.

Black bears seem always to have their priorities in order.

Before leaving me in this wooded swamp, miles from a serviced Alberta road, Zach had tended the 55-gallon drum, chained upright to a spruce. He’d dumped in a pail of past-date granola and secured the top. Scattering unprocessed grain outside, he’d set a stout stick at an angle into a melon-size hole in the drum’s midsection. “A bear will knock the stick aside to reach in,” he said. “Proof of a visit.”

Zach hadn’t been gone 10 minutes. My front sight steadied on the bear’s plump behind. The rifle didn’t shake. It seemed to know I wouldn’t take such a shot.

So, apparently, did the bear. It lay by the drum 20 minutes, filling its belly. Then it rose and stood to show me its ribs. It was a sizable bear.

Walking through the woods in a lazy arc close on my other side, the animal paused in a crease in the shin tangle behind me, downwind, to drink. Then he was gone. I laid the .45-70 on my lap and picked up Bridger.

I have nothing against bears—partly because they’re generally so obliging. How can you plot the demise of a creature that unassumingly dares you to pull it off?

Or that gives you multiple chances. Long ago, my first evening on a board tacked to a tree in the Maine woods pitted the scent of old steer bones against that of creosote-based Woodsman’s Fly Dope. I barely escaped assassination by squads of

With grain and granola, peanut butter, molasses and table scraps, they work well!

Grain around this drum draws bears that remove the stick to reach inside for granola. Proof of a visit.

M&Ms as bear bait?

no-see-ums. The next day I doubled the Fly Dope and donned a head net. Again the bear came to the bones late.

Night was closing on my third effort when the conifers coughed up the bear. Pulse at jackhammer pace, I brought the .303 to cheek. Alas, the netting had the effect of dark glasses. I could barely see the rifle, let alone its open sights. Slowly, disregarding the insect Luftwaffe, I lifted the veil. The bear looked up from the bones.

But as I wished the bullet away, the veil fell. All went dark. I took my trigger hand off the rifle to lift the mesh again. The bear was peering now. The sky had bled nearly all its light. I squinted and quickly milked ounces from the trigger. But not fast enough! Again the netting dropped. Frantic, I lost all caution, ripping off hat and all as if it were alive with ants. The bead was somewhere near the rear sight and the bear when I yanked the trigger. The blast silenced the crickets. Muzzle flash blinded me. In the violence of the moment, the bear left.

I found it dead nearby. It was of average size—smaller than it had looked over the steer bones. Skinned, it struck me as almost human. Roasted, the meat was sub-standard.

Hunting black bears over bait has its detractors. But in the northern U.S. and across the Canadian Shield to Alaska, some forests are so vast, baiting is the only practical way to get desired harvests. South of the Ohio Valley and into the Desert Southwest during the 19th century, hounds brought most bears to bag—even for Davy Crockett. Born in 1786, Davy ran off at age 13 to make his way at sea. In Baltimore he had second thoughts, and returned to his father’s tavern on Tennessee’s Nolichucky River. There he “delighted most in bear hunting.” He named a .48-bore rifle, bought in 1803, after his sister Betsy. A 40-caliber flintlock presented him by the State Assembly in 1822 became, reportedly, Old Betsy. By the time he entered the Creek Wars in 1813, local bears “had been much hunted.”

While Crockett served three terms in Congress, he

preferred rural life. In 1821 a flood claimed his mill and distillery. Moving to the Obion River’s unsettled south fork, he found more bears. On two short hunts with a friend and his son, he reported killing 32. One annual tally reached 105. Davy was known to “spin yards,” though he may not have counted stricken bears lost in the canebrakes (grass jungles).

Six years after Crockett’s death at the Alamo in 1836, Robert Bobo was born in Mississippi. After four years as a Confederate soldier, Bob walked home, only to find it and most of the county under water. He canoed to a patch of “almost impenetrable forest and canebrake, where wild beasts flourished….” By Bobo’s death in 1902, that remote plot had become a 2,000-acre estate, with “some of the best hunting…in Mississippi.”

An avid bear hunter, Bobo trained his Walkers and Redbones with a tame bear he led through the woods. In an 1887 Forest and Stream article, Bobo declared that in 1869, after renting out the farm, he had lived “in the

swamp” with his hunting friends, supplied by hired help “three months at a time.” Their collective bag included 304 bears. “One season I killed 150 [and] lost only two runs.” Bob Bobo’s biggest bear, shot at night in a cornfield, was too heavy for four men to lift into a wagon. Roped behind an axle for the retrieve, it later scaled 711 pounds.

Meanwhile, Ben Lilly was eluding education. Alabama-born in 1856, he moved with his parents to Mississippi just before the Civil War. He fled a military academy in war’s aftermath, to work for an uncle in Tennessee. With no heirs, the uncle gave Ben property in northern Louisiana, where the young man tilled its soil, hunted bears.

Lilly would marry twice and sire several children, but was known for his wild ways and physical prowess. He was claimed to jump out of a tall barrel without touching its sides and backpack 125-pound loads. He studied the ways of bears. By 1887 he’d left the farm to hunt. He camped with his dogs, a pony and a servant. The years distanced Lilly from normal life, if not from legend—though he adored children and didn’t work on Sundays. He preferred the ground to a bed. He’d go three days without food, bathe in snow, sole his boots with tire scraps. Once, when a bear killed one of his dogs, Lilly emptied his rifle into the beast and charged it with a knife—then out-ran it.

After a decade with this eccentric vagabond, Lilly’s second wife told him: “Next time, just keep going.” In 1901 he gave her his property, bade her and their three children goodbye and left to hunt bears in Tensas Parish. There he also worked for the Biological Survey. In 1906, after reportedly taking at least 105 bears, Lilly wandered to the Big Thicket of Texas. There he met Ben Brackin, who would claim 300 bear kills in a lifetime.

Since this photo, many more bears in the East and Upper Midwest have been taken by deer hunters.

I’ve not followed hounds after bears. In fact, for years after the mosquito netting drama in Maine, I had little to do with bears. Then in Oregon, I arrowed an elk at dusk. Rather than push the animal in the dark, I took the trail at dawn. It was short, my broadhead having pierced the liver. But a bear had found the bull. Salvaging most of the meat, I decided this bear had crossed the line. So before shouldering my pack, I cleared a path through the lodgepole litter for a quiet approach to the carcass. That bear might return.

It did. Early the next morning I found it on the elk and sneaked toward it on my trail. At 20 steps, the bear’s head in the ribs, I sent a shaft from my recurve. It sped true, a flicker with the pphitt! of a hit. The bear fled from the carcass. To my astonishment, however, it stopped within a few yards, stood on its hind legs and stared back. Seconds later, it ambled into the forest, healthy and puzzled.

My search turned up neither the arrow nor any sign of a hit. Was the sound of contact instead that of deflection?

Another humbling discovery came at the carcass. Where the bear had buried its head in the ribs, the droning of bees was so loud I could have walked up and swatted the beast’s behind. Duh.

“Ya gotta respect ‘em,” said a pal. “Resourceful. Clever. Lucky.”

“Wait a minute,” I retorted. “How can you respect lucky?”

“Well,” he said, “that bear was lucky, and you weren’t. The bear won. Nobody respects a loser.”

Despite that barb, I thought kindly of bears. Then I met one in California. Booked for a night in a lakeside cabin, I arrived early for a walk around the nearby resort. A crowd had gathered on the edge of a broad porch behind its lodge. A bear was rifling through kitchen

leavings strewed about the three garbage cans it had up-ended.

“Best back off,” I told the wall of tourist cameras. “A garbage bear can be dangerous.” Getting no response, I decided to chase the bear off with my big angry bear repertoire. The bear turned and snarled. I snarled back, waved my arms and threatened an approach, barking orders that evidently made no sense to the bear. It went back to a picnic plate, leaving the potato salad to tuck into baked beans. Publicly stapled to my mission, I edged closer with a menacing growl. The bear spun and sneered.

A charge was my last option. The bear stood it admirably, but at the last second scampered down the porch steps. Triumphant and now looking down on the animal, I barked more orders. Humiliated, the bear was very angry now, and still keen for barbeque. It was having second thoughts. More snarls. At last it shuffled off. The vacationers tossed me looks of disgust. Had I saved them? No. The bear would be back, with the histrionics useful in keeping at bay people who would deny it food.

Hunters bridle at bears that raid their camps, though the bear’s defense (just being a bear) has a lot going for it. Bears are omnivores with catholic tastes and great appetites. Like people, bears prefer not to work for food if free food abounds. Clean camps have fewer bear problems. Automobiles that jettison food give bears the idea of entering automobiles. Bear logic is robust. I once hunted and shot a bear that had climbed through a cabin window and left quite a mess. The bear’s defense was weakened by the fact that the window had been closed.

A bear’s legendary taste for honey gets it into trouble. Summoned by a beekeeper with several valuable hives, I hauled in a culvert trap to capture the nocturnal beast. I baited the trap with a cartload of tempting treats, from melons and hamburger to pastries and granola. The bear stayed true to the hives. Freshening the smorgasbord every other day ran up a big grocery bill. Eventually, the bear got curious enough about the culvert to climb inside.

To get the best sport (and experience the most disappointment) hunting

bears, I still-hunt them. While bears have weak eyes, they hear well, and their noses are peerless. Agile as cats, they slip through timber like smoke with a tail-wind, silently threading shin tangle that pulls me to a slow, snap-cracking stumble. Often I emerge bleeding.

There’s no satisfaction like that of sneaking through the bush after a solitary animal that makes no noise, leaves no tracks, and can hear and smell you farther than you can see.

Late summer is an empty time for many hunters. Big game seasons have yet to start. Coyote pelts are worth nothing. Prairie dogs estivate. But as wildfires smudge western skies, bears are afoot in patches of ripening huckleberries, elderberries, and wild plums. One evening after a pal brought his Cessna onto a grass strip over the Snake River Canyon, we split to scout for elk on the rims. During the last hour of light I walked up on nine different black bears. They’d converged in the canyon heads to gorge on berry bushes heavy with fruit. Yet I’ve hunted there for days in September without seeing a bear.

Their pads give even big black bears an almost noiseless step. Grizzly claws are longer and straighter.

Anthony Neidlinger of Whiskey Mountain Outfitters added a cement mixer to his bear camp east of Hells Canyon on Idaho’s Salmon River. “It helps us mix granola and table scraps with peanut butter. Great bear bait!” But in

early fall, his hunters also glass from ridges for berry-hungry bruins. To host me on these steeps, Michael McMichael took a break from his Boise shop, where he makes bullets under the shingle of Accura Outdoors.

Mike had trailered an ATV to reel in elevation on ranch two-tracks snaking up the grassy coulees. Afoot one afternoon at mid-elevation, we separated. I climbed on a north-side path that threaded brushy, spring-fed draws feeding the steep coulees below. As evening fell, a cow elk emerged from a thicket and looked back. But not at me.

I inched closer along a game trail. The bear appeared as shards a tad blacker than the shadowed cover. Slowly, I rocked the hammer back. There! A shoulder came clear. Recoil and smoke from the stiff load hid the impact; but the shot had felt good. The bear lay dead 22 steps on. The close, dark place, and its sudden silence, brought to mind the Maine woods—and a later hunt in Alaska.

“I’ve never booked a hunter with a .30-30,” said Mark Gala, his thumb

crooked over the wheel of Bear Necessity. The boat cleaved gentle waves as low sun lit a shimmering path to Japan. “Frankly, I’m not thrilled. Sure, they’re black bears. But they’re big and fast, and they don’t drop much blood. They live in thick places.”

The powerful inboard diesels had whisked us from Wrangell at seven knots. Peaks vaulted from tidal beaches fronting forests that swallowed up to 18 feet of rain each year. We anchored in a cove near an abandoned fishing village.

Next day we took Mark’s skiff up one of myriad creeks lacing Prince of Wales Island. Mindful of huge tide swings, he moored with a long line. Bear trails led us through coarse, waist-high grass toward forest’s edge. In and out of alders, conifers and small meadows, we watched rain clouds and the afternoon slide

Bears are faster and more agile than they look. They move like cats, and even in shin tangle, as quietly!

In vast forests of the North and West, baiting may be the only tenable way to meet bear harvest goals.

by. Then Mark hissed, “Bears!” There were two. Crosswind we threaded the opening, careful not to splash in the creek. Crawling as we closed, I led. Then the breeze pivoted. Both bears raced for cover.

On my knees, I swung the .30-30 to catch the trailing boar in my 2½-power scope. He paused. The 170-grain flatnose struck audibly. Then he was gone.

Hurrying forward, we found no blood. A crease in the grass pulled us into deep forest with chest-high ferns. Dusk was fast draining light when a crimson ribbon appeared. Great splashes signaled the end. In ferns that hid everything beyond arms length, we came upon the heart-shot boar, dying.

That was years ago. As Alberta’s night approached, the black bear that had dined earlier returned. I looked up from Bridger and watched him glide by.

Then behind him, in jack-straw blowdown, an enormous red head appeared. A bear the likes of which I’d never seen. Massive shoulders followed. But this great beast was cautious. It dismissed the path taken by its companion to move behind me, downwind. I hadn’t a chance.

Most of an hour passed.

Against all odds, the russet bear reappeared, in slices between trees, as dusk swallowed the sun. It ghosted downwind. Gone. At last light I was still staring into the shin tangle from whence it had come.

Then, as if conjured, that big red head was staring at me. Nightfall paused as the animal turned. A third chance again! The bead was faint against its ribs. But the aftermath left no doubt it had been in the right place.

A hunter just being a hunter. It’s not that I have anything against bears. n

Alaska’s southeast coast holds many bears, and they grow big. Off logging roads, still-hunting is a challenge!

BOTTOM LEFT: Wayne took this bear still-hunting in heavy forest with guide Mark Gala on Prince of Wales Island. BOTTOM RIGHT: A faulty cap cost this hunter a chance. He shot the same Alberta bear with a patched ball the next day!

LOUISIANA BLACK BEARS: AN ESA SUCCESS STORY

This is a story that began more than a century ago. It features a roughriding U.S. president, hunts on horseback, crafty legislation, conservation-minded landowners, fair chase, endangered species, and, of course, stuffed teddy bears.

In 1973, Boone and Crockett member Lee Talbot pushed hard to get the Endangered Species Act (ESA) across the legislative finish line. Once signed into law, the ESA became a tool for conservationists to prevent species from going extinct. To date, 54 U.S. species have recovered to the point that they no longer merit the protection of the ESA.

Over time, the ESA has been criticized for imposing significant economic burdens on private landowners and rural communities. Look no further than the northern spotted owl controversy of the 1980s and ‘90s in the Pacific Northwest. And yet, a more recent and successful example of the ESA at work took place in an opposite corner of the U.S. The Louisiana black bear (Ursus americanus luteolus) is now a recovered species, and its recovery is a refreshing example of cooperative conservation.

ORIGINS OF THE TEDDY BEAR

Our story begins with U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, co-founder of the Boone

and Crockett Club. In 1902, he traveled south to settle a border dispute between Louisiana and Mississippi. While there—as many of us are keen to do—he mixed business with pleasure and hunted black bears in the Mississippi Delta, a vast floodplain of the Mississippi River between Memphis, Tennessee, and Vicksburg, Mississippi.

During the hunt, a renowned black bear hunter and African American guide, Holt Collier, pursued a bear on horseback, lassoed it, and clubbed it with the butt of his rifle. Tying the bear to a tree, Collier wanted Roosevelt to kill the bear, as he desperately wanted the president to have a successful hunt. Upon arriving, the president refused to kill the defenseless bear. His reasons? He had made no effort to hunt the bear himself, nor was there any way for the bear to escape. The accompanying press covered the story. A political cartoon depicting the event ran in the Washington Post . And a shopkeeper in Brooklyn, New York, had the industrious idea to market stuffed bears and call

them Teddy’s Bear. He telegraphed President Roosevelt to gain his permission to name the bear after him, and Roosevelt agreed. This event gave birth to the most famous toy in the world, as tens of millions of teddy bears are sold annually.

More importantly, President Roosevelt brought attention to a new kind of hunting in which sportsmen replaced killers. This event, often called “the most famous hunt to have taken place on American soil,” was the birth of fair chase. But it did not stop there. In the early 1900s, Roosevelt and his fellow Boone and Crockett Club members worked to end the

trade in meat, hides, and feathers. Market hunting was annihilating the fish and wildlife resources of the United States. These sportsmen realized that the young country’s vast resources were finite.

THE DECLINE OF TEDDY’S BEAR

The bear that Roosevelt hunted, the Louisiana black bear, is one of 16 subspecies of Ursus americanus. These bruins ranged from eastern Texas through Louisiana and the southern two-thirds of Mississippi. Even though hunters like Collier and Ben Lilly made it their life’s work to hunt and kill any predator

Roosevelt and Collier, circa 1916. TR holding the Winchester 1886 that he presented to Collier.

PJ DELHOMME

they could find, Louisiana's black bear population was on relatively solid ground in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Seventeen parishes in the Mississippi-Atchafalaya region harbored resident bears.

By the 1950s, bear populations had become sparse.

By 1986, an estimated 80-120 bears in Louisiana and around 400 bears total were thought to exist throughout their historic range. Only three known breeding subpopulations were confined to the bottomland hardwood forests of Louisiana in the Tensas and Upper and Lower Atchafalaya River Basins. The primary threats to the survival of the Louisiana black bear included habitat loss and human-related mortality.

By the 1980s, more than 80 percent of suitable habitat for the Louisiana black bear had become fragmented. The bottomland hardwood forests of the Lower Mississippi River Valley had been cleared for row crop production. Humans brought roads, homes, and towns. Bears had been pushed out, and

their numbers dwindled. Poaching and vehicle collisions also took a toll.

The Louisiana black bear was officially listed as threatened in 1992 under the ESA, and by 1995, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had crafted a recovery plan. Key to this plan would be giving the bears suitable habitat to allow their populations to recover, which meant working with both public agencies and private landowners.

CREATING HABITAT THROUGH POLICY AND PARTNERSHIPS

The southeastern United States is not known for its copious amounts of public land. Louisiana is 89 percent private, Texas 95 percent,

The Impact Series is dedicated to showing how sportsmen, members of the Boone and Crockett Club in particular, saved the wildlife and wild places of the United States. Early members of the Boone and Crockett Club comprised the movers, shakers, and initiators of the American conservation movement. They were hunters, anglers, explorers, lawmakers, soldiers, and, above all, conservationists. These members established laws that allowed our wildlife resources to flourish. They also protected landscape-scale geologic marvels and American icons like Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Denali, and many, many more. These members may no longer be with us, but their legacy remains. This series aims to honor their accomplishments and remind us of the good work still to do.

READ MORE FROM THE IMPACT SERIES

CRAZY CANYON MEDIA

Distinguished from other black bears by possessing a skull that is longer and narrower, the Louisiana black bear is fat and happy in the bayou thanks to conservation efforts.

RIGHT: The Washington Post ran a political cartoon depicting Roosevelt's refusal to shoot the bear.

PHOTO COURTESY PAM MCILHENNY.

and Mississippi 89 percent. If these bears were going to stand a chance at creating and maintaining viable populations, buy-in from private landowners would be paramount. That’s where the

Boone and Crockett Club’s long-standing involvement in developing and implementing the quintennial Farm Bill comes into play.

The Farm Bill is an expansive piece of legislation that has existed since the 1930s as part of the New Deal. It was a way to help the U.S. maintain its food security in response to the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. A major component of the Farm Bill includes paying farmers, ranchers, and private timberland owners to conduct voluntary conservation and restoration work on their land. In the case of the Louisiana black bear, programs like the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) were key to incentivizing landowners to set aside habitat. Each time the Farm Bill is authorized, the Boone and Crockett Club and its members leave a significant mark on Farm Bill policy.

WRP, known today as Wetlands Reserve Easement (WRE), gives landowners the financial resources to protect, restore, and enhance wetlands on their property. In 1992, the same year the Louisiana black bear was listed as threatened under the ESA, the USDA began implementing the WRE to restore marginal cropland and reforest the areas with native hardwoods. Key to the success of this program was the cooperation between groups like Ducks Unlimited (DU), The Nature Conservancy, and Wildlife Mississippi. James Cummins, executive director of Wildlife Mississippi and current Boone and Crockett Club president, grew up in the Mississippi Delta city of Greenville, Mississippi, the same city where Holt Collier is buried, and has worked on implementing the WRE program since it was authorized in 1991.

“The Boone and Crockett Club and its members have left a significant mark on past Farm Bill policy,” Cummins says. The Club has worked to include incentives

for private landowners who voluntarily enhance wildlife habitat on their property. This year, the Club is taking the lead in proposing the creation of a new Forest Conservation Easement Program and working to grow and improve the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program. “These provisions directly impact wildlife habitat and, therefore healthy game bird and big game populations,” Cummins adds.

At an event celebrating 30 years of the WRE, George Dunklin, a past president of Ducks Unlimited, had

this to say about Cummins, who received DU’s Conservation Excellence Award: “He has been a champion for volunteer conservation and has been a proponent of the Wetlands Reserve Program and now the Wetlands Reserve Easement since it was created in the 1990 Farm Bill.” By the end of 2022, more than one million acres of bottomland hardwoods and wetland habitat had been restored in the Lower Mississippi River Valley.

In addition to private land conservation, Cummins and the Club worked with

USFWS employee Matthew McCollister holding Louisiana black bear cubs at the Tensas River NWR.

A great egret in the Bayou Teche National Wildlife Reserve, prime Louisiana black bear habitat.

PHOTO COURTESY TOM CARLISLE.

lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to craft legislation creating the Theodore Roosevelt National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) near Onward, Mississippi, where President Roosevelt’s famous bear hunt occurred in 1902. He also worked to create the Holt Collier NWR, the first and only NWR named in honor of an African American. In 2001, the Bayou Teche NWR was established to support the Louisiana black bear by restoring and managing bottomland hardwood forests, cypress-tupelo swamps, bayous, and marshes to ensure high-quality, diverse habitat. It is located in far southern Louisiana on the Cajun Coast. Since 2011, an additional 37,000 acres of land within the Louisiana black bear habitat restoration planning area has been permanently protected, according to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

REMOVAL FROM THE LIST

After 25 years of conservation efforts, the USFWS proposed removing the Louisiana black bear from the list of threatened species in 2015. In their published rule, the USFWS noted that the population had grown to include four main subpopulations and additional satellite populations in Mississippi. That increase was a direct result of quality habitat on private land.

“A large proportion of habitat (an increase of over 430 percent since the time of listing) that supports breeding subpopulations and interconnects those subpopulations has been protected and restored through management on publicly owned lands, or through private landowner restoration efforts with permanent non-developmental easements,” noted the ruling.

At the time of its official delisting in 2016, Louisiana black bear populations had grown from an estimated 150 animals to 500-750 bears. Today, anywhere from 750-1,000 bears now roam the swamps and hardwood bottoms. While it inhabits just a fraction of its historic habitat, Louisiana black bear populations are considered stable. Currently, there is no hunting season for the bears, but it could be a possibility in the coming years.

In looking back on the recovery effort, John Pitre, a USDA resource conservationist, was just starting his career as a wildlife biologist in 1992. He watched as the WRE program evolved and black bear populations grew. In a 2016 article, he wrote about the recovery. “Even as the growing global population increases the demand to produce more food, fiber, and fuels on working lands, private lands conservation offers us tools to integrate wildlife-friendly practices on working lands. The Louisiana black bear is one example of how agriculture and wildlife can thrive together.” n

“President Theodore Roosevelt would have really enjoyed why we are gathered here today,” said then U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell at a press conference announcing the delisting of the Louisiana black bear. “Working together across private and public lands with so many partners embodies the conservation ethic he stood for when he established the National Wildlife Refuge System as part of the solution to address troubling trends for the nation’s wildlife. As I said last spring when the delisting proposal was announced, the Louisiana black bear is another success story for the Endangered Species Act.”

Historic and current range of Louisiana black bear.

Credit: Robert Greco, USFWS

AFTER KILLING A RESPECTABLE BULL, A HUNTER WORRIES HIS DAYS HUNTING ALONE IN THE MOUNTAINS ARE NUMBERED. THEN HE DRIFTS INTO THE CAMP OF A WELL-SEASONED HUNTER WHO CHANGES HIS PERSPECTIVE, AND HIS TIMELINE.

FREE FALLING FALLING

I sat on a clump of bunch grass so I wouldn’t slide down further. I looked at the rack leaning against the tree trunk, the game bags, the core of my apple I had tossed a few feet away. The air still flowed down and out of the drainage, and the sun had just cleared the ridge. It filtered through the pines in shimmering beams. It was only the second day of hunting. A storybook hunt where it plays out like the script in your mind. Scripts flip, however. Tables turn. I sat there feeling sorry for myself. I sat because I could not stand. I felt sorry for myself because I had not yet met Mr. Preston.

Two hours before, I blew a last soft mew and dropped the call into my pocket. I pivoted on my knees to square up with where the bull’s vitals would clear the sage. I drew my bow early and settled in, still as stone, because the bull and I would be breathing the same air at the shot. That close. I watched the top of his antlers glide and rise behind the swell until he could peek through the tips of the sage. He searched the spot he expected to see a big brown cow. I felt his eyes all over and around me. The coin was in the air and there was nothing I could do but hope it landed on him walking forward, instead of wheeling and thundering down the drainage. He took one step forward and stopped. Then two more. Then the one I needed.

The arrow zipped and landed with a crack that startled me. The shock of a shattered rib buckled the bull’s knees as if I’d hit him with a slug. He dropped with a thud. I felt like springing to my feet, arms raised to the sky. As I gathered

my feet to stand, the bull rolled so that his legs were now downhill, then he slowly rolled over again so that I saw his belly, then his back. Then he mustered momentum. Back, belly, antlers, back, belly, legs, picking up speed as he steamrolled sage and grass and shale. He vanished over the horizon, and the absurd thought struck me that he was getting away, making a break for the willows at the bottom of the river drainage.

I raised my bow to clear the brush and shuffled and slid after him to keep him in sight as he traveled another 40 yards. The dust drifted and settled on the hillside. My breathing slowed, and the clattering of shale faded away, returning the space to the steady rush of the river. The urge to raise my arms in triumph was gone, and a sense of relief replaced it. I sat down. The bull lay on his side with remarkable composure—legs outstretched, head and rack resting on the ground as a horse would lay and sleep. I paid my respects as we do, with the tinge of sadness we feel at that time. But I kept my thoughts moving. I had work to do, and I was by myself.

I laid out my pack above a tree stump and pulled out my tag, game bags, and knife. I examined the apple I was saving for lunch and propped it up in the grass above my pack—a reward for the job ahead. As I worked, I considered how lucky I was to have a good bull down on public land again. I knew it wasn’t because I was a great hunter. The secret to my success was showing up, driving across four states then up a ragged logging road, erecting a Spartan camp, hiking two hours in the dark, then dropping a thousand feet into a drainage. Then, I would run my hand across a burned snag, smear the ash on my face, and wait for first light. And I would brim with hope. Every day, I brimmed with hope.

I am the slightly below-average employee they keep around because he shows up on time with a good attitude. I can say one thing with my bugle, and I think it’s “Hey!” If a bull responds with a challenge or a query, I answer him with “Hey!” That, and some simple cow calls make me sound like an easy mark for bullies. I have killed several nice bullies.

I was on an incline with no trees for an anchor point, so I was forced to wrestle the bull, holding his legs out of the way with my legs or shoulders or forehead. If my wife could see me now, I thought. It would not play well. My wife tells me she would like me to “stop doing that.” She says a man pushing 60 should not be running around in the mountains by himself. She says the key to my success might someday

be the key to my demise. The thought made me smile and shake my head as I cut away the last backstrap. It comes from caring, I thought. Too much at times. But, too much of a good thing is still a good thing. I hung the last bag and sat down with my apple.

The sun’s light grew bolder in the valley. I heard the river run and run and tried to grasp that it would always run. I could see the water through a gap in the willows. It was just getting started at this high elevation—narrow and

Mr. Preston bowhunting the backcountry in 2023. A little later, he packs out the bull he killed late in the evening.

eager. The water rushed and foamed white over the rocks on the near bank. But on the far bank, on a smooth disc of black water, a single aspen leaf floated blood red with accents of orange and blackened around the edges. I watched it glide in a circle. I watched it until I thought it may swirl in that place for days. In that moment of stillness, I acknowledged I had made a big trade. Killing a bull on the second day, I traded another week of this. Maybe next year, I thought, I should hold out for the big one.

MAYBE SHE WAS RIGHT

I finished my apple, tossed the core downhill, and stood. Pain shot through my left knee so bad my leg collapsed beneath me. I grimaced and glared at my knee. Betrayed. It had bothered me for years, but it had never failed me. I stood again and put weight on it. Toothache pain flared, and I pulled it up again. Once more, changing the angle on the hillside. Nope. I sat back down. And just like that it all looked different. I could only see it through my wife’s eyes. Deep in a crease of a remote drainage, white and red bags hanging from trees like ornaments, a mahogany rack frosted with white tips leaning against the base of a tree. She’d think, “He dug his own grave then decorated it.”

I pulled out my satellite tracker and looked at the SOS button. Fear sank in but not for my safety. I sat next to a river on a nice day with 200 pounds of meat cooling in the trees. I didn’t fear the cost of extraction or my wife saying she told me so. I feared my family saying I couldn’t do it anymore. I’d crawl to camp before pushing that button. But, I could send a text. My buddy Cade was a few miles away camping with his dad and brother. After the text bounced off a satellite, and if I caught him crossing a ridge, and if his phone was turned on, he might get my text.

Even then, I had not even met his dad and brother. Was I going to wreck their hunt? They might agree that a man pushing 60 shouldn’t be up here by himself anyway.

So, I did what any man would do. I stood up and thrashed my leg from stop to stop as hard as possible, cursing at it, like you might a vending machine. Then, I held my hands out, put my foot on the ground, and pressed. Good. I took a step, then another. Shaking a vending machine may not make those chips fall, but it’ll sure fix a limb in the field. I kept my knee centered under me, and two days later I was packed out, meat on ice, dignity intact.

MEETING MR. PRESTON

I found my buddy Cade’s camp late afternoon. A couple of trailers and a fire ring nestled next to a stream.

“Mike?”

“Yep, Rusty?”

We shook hands.

“Cade said you might come by.”

“I just dropped in to see if you needed help packing out.”

“Your timing is perfect. We just finished bringing in my bull, so you’re off the hook.”

“Perfect.”

We laughed.

“Cade is still in the field.”

His dad came over, holding a paper towel on the back of his hand with a band-aid between his fingers.

“Dad, this is Mike, Cade’s buddy.”

“I’m sorry Mike, just one second.”

He held his hands out to Rusty, who took the band-aid and held it ready to apply. His dad raised up the paper towel, and Rusty placed the band-aid over a piece of skin that had been scraped back.

“My old skin is getting thin. I bumped my hand and it just tore like paper.”

Bandaged, he held his hand out

and I shook it—firm, calloused, but I felt it had been stronger at one time. Or maybe I was making assumptions. Mr. Preston was small-framed, thin. He wore a jacket that he had weathered but was a shade large on him now, as if he had shrunk up a bit recently. His eyes, though, were young and cheerful and humble. In a word, they made you feel welcome.

“Yes, sir. Mine is thinning, too, I’ve noticed.”

I felt bad as it left my lips; it was such an obvious attempt at empathy, trying to say I was right there with a man in his seventies.

“Mike, can I get you a bottle of water, a beer?”

“Beer sounds good. Thank you, sir.”

Rusty and I took a seat at the fire, and Mr. Preston joined us with three beers. We went straight to elk. Rusty was a guide with so much experience and knowledge I kept him talking as much as possible. It was like attending a free clinic. He talked about the ones that got away from them and about the lessons they had learned or relearned. Mr. Preston watched the fire and nodded. I wondered how many times he had made it into the field so far. I hoped it was as much as he wanted. My dad’s last hunt was at the same age, 76, but he didn’t make it out of the cabin.

I told them about my hunt, minus the part where I almost called them to rescue me. It would have been depressing for me, knowing my days in the mountains were numbered if my knee was worn out. We discussed hitting a rib, broadheads, and draw weight.

“Yeah, I’ve had a few shoulder surgeries, so I just pull 65 pounds,” I said.

“Yep, I’m down to 50 this year,” Mr. Preston said. “I had a couple of knee surgeries and I guess my shoulder atrophied while I rehabbed my legs.”

“Well, 50 pounds was enough yesterday,” Rusty said.

FAR LEFT: Mr. Preston fishing in 2011 with his stepdaughter Mary-Beth, great granddaughter Emmy, and granddaughter Lottie. MIDDLE: Circa 1985 Utah with a pile of bucks, Mr. Preston, son Rusty, Uncle Willy, father-in-law Norm, mother-in-law Char. FAR RIGHT: Tagged out in 2023, son Cade, Mr. Preston, and son Rusty.

IT’S NOT SOLITUDE MR. PRESTON AND I SEEK, BUT THAT THING THAT ONLY HAPPENS WHEN YOU ENDURE SOLITUDE.

“No kidding? That’s awesome,” I turned to Mr. Preston. Again, I could hear my own patronizing tone. He didn’t volunteer to show me the bull’s rack, and I chose not to ask. Any elk with a bow at his age is a trophy.

Mr. Preston stood to tend the fire. He picked up a long, straight, bare limb that tapered to a point that was charred from use over the last many days. He reached in with the limb and maneuvered three logs. He touched the limb to the end of one and rotated it 90 degrees, then rolled another to touch it at a right angle. Then, in three moves, none of which had to be repeated, he rolled the third log up and onto the first two so that it sat on top of them. The flame boiled to life in the pocket within and I felt its heat as if it were aimed at me.

“You have done that before,” I said.

He laid the limb aside and said, “Well, yeah.”

“So, I’m curious,” Rusty said. “Why do you hunt alone? You camp alone? For 10 days?”

His earnestness caught me off guard, like he had been wanting to know the answer for years even though we had just met.

The question itself made me

uneasy, too. I could never find the words to answer that question. I told myself that it might be the challenge, or time to think, or I hunted better alone. But none of those felt complete. In the end I could never find words to explain it to myself, much less someone else. I couldn’t even say I enjoyed it. It was more akin to needing it.

“I just like the solitude,” I said. Just another word for alone, but fancy enough to conjure an image of Henry David Thoreau lost in thought in his cabin. Question answered. Off the hook.

“Yeah, I get it,” Rusty said, disappointed.

Mr. Preston watched the fire and nodded.

We sat in silence for a long moment.

FIRE STORIES

“So, nice one? Did you bring the rack with you?” Rusty asked.

I smiled big and said, “Of course I brought it with me. I’ll be right back.”

I went to my truck and pulled the rack out of the back seat of my cab. It was not a bruiser, but I couldn’t help but smile as I walked back to the fire ring with it.

“Good-lookin’ bull. Symmetric,” Rusty said.

Mr. Preston took it and held it out.

“Nice bull, Mike. Congratulations.”

I leaned the rack against a chair so we could all admire it. Then Mr. Preston tipped his hand.

“You know, any public-land bull with a bow is a trophy.” He declared it with authority and with a faint, thin hint of pity. I picked up on it because I had done it to him twice already.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s see it.”

“No, no, you don’t want to see that thing.”

“Yes, yes, I do want to see that thing.”

“No, you really don’t.”

He couldn’t contain his smile now.

“Yes, Mr. Preston, I really do.”

I leaned over and punched his shoulder.

“Ok,” he said, holding his shoulder as if I’d hurt him.

We walked to the bed of his truck. He dropped the tailgate, and the bed was filled with a massive, heavy, six-by-six rack. Symmetric, deep chocolate brown with ivory tips, tines that turned and swept with strength and style.

“Oh, my goodness. That is a giant.”

“Its thirds are weak, but the mass would help the score,” Rusty said.

“I don’t know about that, but I do know this is a work of art,” I said.

Mr. Preston in 2018 with a limited-entry Utah rifle bull.

Mr. Preston held a brow tine in his hand and ran his thumb across its tip. Then I noticed something. He had sawed the skull cap off with the hide attached. This rack was destined for his garage, or at best leaned against a wall in the house. It would be the bull of a lifetime for me—maybe a pedestal mount, knock out a wall to make room. Mr. Preston was hunting more than inches of bone.

“That sun is dropping fast. I’m going to go start on dinner. They’ll be back before long.”

Mr. Preston turned for the stove. Rusty and I returned to the fire.

“That is really impressive at that age,” I said to Rusty.

“He put in 12 miles on that bull yesterday.”

“Twelve miles?”

He nodded.

“And just had two knee replacements?”

He nodded.

“Over the last couple of years.”

I was thankful I hadn’t whined about my long days, or my sore knee, or my age.

“Cade and I are going to have a talk with him. After watching him pack that bull out yesterday.”

“Yeah. My dad’s last hunt was at that age,” I said.

“I mean, he’ll just take off by himself for a week, two weeks, up into the mountains. Comes back with giant animals, but dang.”

“What?”

“Yeah. By himself.” Rusty shook his head. “I think he should stop doing that.”

And just like that, I had a real answer. Seeing it in someone else, it came to me. I looked over at Mr. Preston grilling elk steak for his boys. I thought about how warm and engaging he was. He was no lone wolf. As Rusty talked and I watched Mr. Preston shuffle pans on the stove, I remembered seeing an adrenaline junkie explain herself from a hospital bed. She was a base jumper, a skydiver without an airplane. But she said she was not chasing adrenaline. What she was hooked on was the moment in her brief freefall when there was only now, the present, just being.

I imagine it as the silver skin-thin space between the past, where our regrets haunt us, and the future, where our fears hunt us. An eddy in time where it does not stop, but where you stop participating. It’s not solitude Mr. Preston and I seek, but that thing that only happens when you endure solitude.

I picked up his stick and examined its charred tip. I pictured Mr. Preston’s eyes transfixed by the flames of a campfire. I saw the magpies perched atop his bull’s cape. I wondered if he had ever cussed a knee into working. Seventy-six, I thought. My days may be numbered, but maybe the number is bigger than I thought. Bigger than my wife hoped for.

Cade and his friend Brandon rolled into camp and lit it up with excitement.

Brandon dropped his pack and replayed the day for Rusty who laughed. “No way. No way. Oh man,” he said. Mr. Preston buzzed around the stove and listened and worked and paused to listen again. Cade echoed the story to me as the fire popped and sparks raced up into the black. The elk were there he said, and so close, and the day was so full and so hard and he brimmed with hope for tomorrow. Mr. Preston cut in, commanding dinner was ready and you better not

let the rice get cold. “Ok, ok. Hold on, hold on, Dad,” they yelped back.

But I saw it all from a distance. What I heard was, welcome back and I love all this and I love you and I love you, too. The pack was back and gathering in the moonlight, howling and yipping and swirling toward each other.

Mr. Preston insisted I sit and eat, but I explained my mother had cooked meals for me. I’d be in trouble if I didn’t put a dent in them. He understood.

I thanked them all for their hospitality and made the rounds with handshakes, coming to Mr. Preston last. He and I leaned in for a hug just as easy as autumn leaves. Fellow freefallers, just trying to get by until we jump again.

“Take care, Mr. Preston.”

“You too, Mike.”

As I drove to camp, I thought aloud, “Compassion, my ass. That man is my hero.”

I heard Mr. Preston had given his rack to Cade before they even left camp. n

The author and Mr. Preston with their public land archery bulls 2023.

new Potential world’ S

r ecord mu S k ox e ntered into B oone and crockett clu B B i G Game r ecord S

The records department of the Boone and Crockett Club recently received a musk ox entry, and if confirmed by a judges panel, it will be crowned the new world’s record.

The recent entry was killed by Aron F. Wark on August 1, 2023, near Contwoyto Lake in the Canadian Territory of Nunavut. With a preliminary score of 131-4/8 points, Wark’s musk ox beats the old record of 130-4/8 points taken by Alex Therrien in 2020.

“I had the best time of my life, even without shooting a musk ox,” Wark says. The 57-year-old is quick to credit his guide, Sam Kapolak, with filling the hunt with good laughs and plenty of exercise. “A lot of people think this is an easy hunt, but it’s not,” notes Wark. “We covered 20 miles in a day, and it’s not flat. The walking sucks. I want to get these hard hunts out of the way before I get old.”

The Boone and Crockett Club has been measuring North American big game since 1895. As a way to measure conservation efforts the Club began keeping records in the 1920s and released the first record book in 1932.

According to Kyle Lehr, the Club’s director of big game records, “Keeping a record of the largest representations of North American big game isn’t a competition between hunters, it’s a tool for hunters and resource managers to help them understand how wildlife management is or isn’t working in a given area.”

SEE ALL THE CURRENT WORLD'S RECORDS

“Every animal is a trophy,”

says Tony A. Schoonen, chief exec utive officer of the Boone and Crockett Club. “Some times, there are truly mag nificent animals taken that represent the conservation success story of North Amer ica. That’s really what we’re celebrating.”

As for Wark, he’s excit ed to share his passion for hunting with his 15-year-old daughter and 10-year-old twin boys. He hopes to start them out with something a little easier than musk ox, maybe an elk hunt, he says.

Before Wark’s entry is official, Boone and Crockett Club procedures require that

either an Awards Program Judges Panel or a Special Judges Panel. Awards Program Judges Panels are assembled once every three years following the close of one of the Club's triennial Awards Programs. Special Judges Panels are convened

els with the sole purpose of verifying and declaring a new world's record. In either case, two teams of two judges each measure the entry, and if the scores of both teams verify the original measurement, the panel will declare it a new record. n

Hunter Aron Wark (right) and his guide Sam Kapolak with Wark’s musk ox that, if confirmed, will be the new World’s Record.

Shop Boone and Crockett Club

RECORDS OF NORTH AMERICAN BIG GAME, 15TH EDITION

Long considered “The Book” of big game records, Boone and Crockett Club’s newest edition of its All-Time records book— Records of North American Big Game—is the most complete big game records book cataloging the greatest big game ever taken in North America. B&C is giving sportsmen, trophy owners, and record-book connoisseurs the chance to own a special collector’s edition. The books are coffeetable quality with dust jackets and full-color printing, and come packaged in a custom slipcase.

In its fifteenth edition since the original book was published by B&C in 1932, this latest edition has grown to over 1,000 pages split between two-volumes.

What's Inside

n Listings of more than 36,000 native North American big game trophies in 38 categories—an increase of over 4,500 trophies from the previous edition—including B&C final and gross scores, detailed measurements, plus location and year taken.

n Two new World’s Records since the previous edition— musk ox and bighorn sheep.

n Stories, photos, and score charts for the World’s Records in all 38 categories, plus over 300 photographs of the top-ranking animals.

n Over 600 color photographs of hunters in the field.

n Entertaining chapters and photo essays that every outdoorsman will enjoy including updates on the current status of desert bighorn sheep and Columbia blacktail deer, a special photo essay about wildlife artist Bob Kuhn, plus special sections on Betty and Grancel Fitz, the Club's National Collection of Heads and Horns and stories about trophies lost to history.

LIMITED TO 1,000 COPIES! ONCE THEY ARE SOLD OUT, NO MORE WILL BE PRINTED.

HOW TO SCORE NORTH AMERICAN BIG GAME, 5TH EDITION

In this edition of How to Score North American Big Game, Boone and Crockett Club collaborated with Pope and Young Club to bring both organizations’ scoring manuals into a single text. From its founding in 1961, Pope and Young has used Boone and Crockett’s scoring system. With the steps taken by both organizations to bring slight differences that developed over time together, this was the natural next step in ensuring uniform use of the system throughout North America. The resulting text is the definitive guide to the correct use of the Boone and Crockett scoring system with both organizations’ rules and procedures clearly outlined. It is explained in detail using simple, straightforward language and more than 100 color illustrations and diagrams by noted wildlife artist and B&C Official Measurer Chris Lacey.

A must-have addition to the library of any hunter-conservationist, the latest edition of How to Score North American Big Game offers the most up-to-date scoring techniques with easy-to-follow instructions for the categories recognized by each organization—38 for Boone and Crockett and 36 for Pope and Young. As with previous editions of How to Score North American Game, category boundaries are detailed for the organizations and accompanied by color maps produced by OnX maps.

n 9.5 x 11.375 inches

n Full color

n 280 pages

n Over 150 drawings, photos, and maps

IN THE FIELD

NOVEMBER 2023 - DECEMBER 2023 -

B&C AUDIO ADVENTURE

boone-crockett.org/tags/bc-audio-adventures

Listen to legendary hunts from the Boone and Crockett Club archives. Download them to your phone as a podcast or listen from the website.

Cat and Mouse

Hunting adventure rarely gets any better than archery elk in an Arizona trophy unit. And this hunter refuses to eat tag soup.

Old Flare

After losing 10 pounds in four days from hunting Montana’s sheep country, one hunter’s tenacity pays off with a state-record ram.

The Best Present

When John Johnson gave his son a moose hunt for college graduation, little did he know that he'd shoot one to the biggest Alaska-Yukon moose in the world.

Our Way or No Way

Over 50 yards of frozen, windswept tundra stretched between us and the two huge musk ox that stood facing us, pawing at the snow menacingly while lowering their heavy-horned heads as if contemplating an imminent charge.

The Longest Night

In an area where his family had ranched for years, one hunter fights insomnia as the excitement of chasing a monster pronghorn tugs at every ounce of his being.

JANUARY 2024

B&C IMPACT SERIES

boone-crockett.org/tags/bc-impact-series Taxidermy and the Art of Immortality

A handful of early Boone and Crockett Club members were pioneers in the science and art of modern taxidermy. Their preserved specimens filled museums with animals on the verge of extinction. Here’s what they accomplished.

Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Ranch

To mark a century of conservation, Club members wanted a legacy project that would celebrate the Club’s accomplishments while providing a testing ground for big ideas and bold research. They could not have chosen a more dramatic—or appropriate—location.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHTS

boone-crockett.org/tags/bc-member-spotlight General James Doolittle

After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, aviator James Doolittle led a daring bombing mission over mainland Japan, earning him the Congressional Medal of Honor. When he wasn’t serving his country, Doolittle often could be found hunting big game, his self-professed favorite sport.

Arthur Radclyffe Dugmore

At 22, Arthur Dugmore arrived in New York City with .55 cents in his pocket. From there, he conned his way into a good job and found a calling—producing some of the best wildlife photographs the world had ever seen.

FROM AROUND THE CAMPFIRE

boone-crockett.org/news

Florida’s Key Deer in the Spotlight | November 2023 | As sea levels rise, a tiny deer that early Boone and Crockett members helped save may be running out of room to roam. Read the article at NPR.

Club’s Outdoor Camps Leveled Up | December 2023 | Youth Outdoor Adventure Camps held at the Boone and Crockett Club’s Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Ranch recently earned accreditation from the American Camp Association (ACA). Learn what that means for future campers.

Fair Chase and Hunter Education Combine Forces | December 2023 | Thanks to a National Rifle Association (NRA) grant, the Club assembled a team of fair chase subject matter experts, educators, and outdoor enthusiasts to formulate what has become a world-class electronic learning experience. Check it out.

If you don't receive the Boone and Crockett Club's In the Field e-newsletter, you're missing out on some excellent articles that are published exclusively on our website. You can access an online archive of the most recent In the Field e-newsletters on the Club’s website.

Visit www.boone-crockett.org and click on COMMUNITIES, then look for the card pictured at right to find the archive page. Or, scan this QR code to be taken directly there. If you're not receiving the e-newsletter, access SETTINGS under MY ACCOUNT, and make sure the SUBSCRIBE button in the bottom left is checked.

MORE TO THE SCORE

Eleven Big-game Whoppers boone-crockett.org/more-score-volume-12

From state-record whitetail pick-ups to nearly World’s Record bison and tule elk, this installment of More to the Score will surely have you wishing hunting season wasn’t coming to a close.

WILDLIFE CAUGHT ON CAMERA

Cruisin’ on the Ranch boone-crockett.org/wildlife-caughtcamera-volume-11

The Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Ranch provides seriously good winter range for mule deer and elk. Our trail cameras captured plenty of them rolling through this past fall.

STATE RECORD CALL OUTS

boone-crockett.org/tags/boone-and-crockett-clubs-state-big-game-records

California

California is more than just tule elk. Columbia blacktail have a solid showing in the records, as do Roosevelt’s elk. Believe it or not, the state boasts a black bear in the top 10 all-time and a desert sheep breaks into the top 20. See what else is hiding in the Golden State.

Ohio

If you’re into whitetail deer and nothing else, you should check out Ohio. It doesn’t matter if you like the clean lines and picture-perfect symmetry of a typical whitetail or if you’re more into the kickers, stickers, droptines and freakish nature of a big non-typical, the Buckeye State has you covered—and the deer are all over the state.

ADVENTURES FROM THE ARCHIVES

boone-crockett.org/tags/adventures-archives

Dall DeWeese’s Alaska Yukon Moose

The moose would not go down. In one final act of desperation (or perhaps revenge), it lowered its antlers and charged at 30 yards. Dall DeWeese stood there, alone, armed with his Mannlicher, watching as the old bull closed the gap.

Marguerite

McDonald’s Grizzly Bear

At a remote ranch just outside Yellowstone Park, Marguerite McDonald had a visitor one night. It was nine feet tall, wore size 12 paws, and wanted bacon. Armed with a .30-06, Marguerite had something else in mind to share.

The Luckey Buck

Antlers make people do weird things. In this case, it wasn’t the antlers attached to this World’s Record, but its sheds that caused the problems.

“Character is doing the

THE NAMING OF BEARS

CLINTON HART MERRIAM AND THE GENUS URSUS IN NORTH AMERICA

Boone and Crockett Club member Clinton Hart Merriam (1855-1942) was easily one of the most distinguished biologists in the history of the United States. His lengthy and highly productive scientific career included significant contributions to the study of North American birds and mammals, as well as research in fields as diverse as entomology, ethnography, geography, ecology, and medical science. He helped to establish numerous professional and scientific societies, including the American Ornithological Union, the National Geographic Society, the Biological Society of Washington, and the American Society of Mammalogists. For his contributions to the latter field, he is known as the “father of mammalogy.” In 1902, he was appointed by his good friend President Theodore Roosevelt to the National Academy of Science.

Among many firsts, Merriam was the first to apply the concept of “life zones” to characterize the distribution of animals and plants in North America. Many biologists, beginning with Alexander von Humboldt in 1805, had noticed that different animal and plant species lived at different elevations on tall mountains. Merriam observed this same phenomenon during a visit to the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff, Arizona, in 1889 and proposed a series of seven “life zones,” each with its own distinctive plant and animal species, ranging from subtropical to boreal. He noted that these life zones corresponded with increasing elevation on the mountainside and increased latitude as one moves north across the continent.

Merriam also founded an important precursor to the U. S. Bureau of Biological Survey and led this group for 25 years. The Survey was created in 1885 (thanks in part to Merriam’s lobbying through the American Ornithological Union) as the Section of Economic Ornithology under the Division of Entomology in the United States Department of Agriculture, with Merriam as its first head. In 1886, Congress added mammals to the survey’s portfolio, making it the Division of Economic Ornithology and Mammalogy. In 1905, this Division was renamed the Division of Biological Survey, five years before Merriam’s official retirement in 1910. In 1934, the Division became the Bureau of Biological Survey, with Boone and Crockett Club member Jay “Ding” Darling

as its first chief. Six years later, the Bureau of Biological Survey was combined with the Bureau of Fisheries to form the Fish and Wildlife Service within the Department of the Interior. Merriam’s vision for the scientific management of American wildlife lives on in the modern-day U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

One of Merriam’s great passions was the taxonomy or scientific naming of animal species, especially mammals. He described his first new species, the marsh shrew ( Atrophyrax bendirii ), in 1884,

Jonathan

and he went on to describe some 660 species, subspecies, and forms of mammals. Slightly more than 100 of these are currently listed in Wikipedia as valid taxa; the others have been sunk in synonymy by subsequent generations of taxonomists as they discover that the names proposed by Merriam actually apply to species that have already received scientific names in earlier publications.

This is where the story of Clinton Hart Merriam, brilliant American scientist, intersects the theme of this issue of Fair Chase magazine. It is virtually impossible to discuss Merriam’s scientific career without addressing his scientific publications on the taxonomy of bears in North America. Merriam was intensely interested in the nomenclature of our wild bears, and amassed a very large collection of specimens, mostly skulls, from some 1,864 individual bears. Many were “last of” bears, the last individual bear found by government trappers or homesteaders in some remote mountain range or canyon. Other bears were collected by sporting men and women who ventured into the great American wilderness in search of big game. Perhaps the most famous of these bears was Old Bigfoot, immortalized by Boone and Crockett Club member Aldo Leopold in his essay “Escudilla.” This essay is an eloquent account of the demise of the last grizzly bear in the Escudilla Mountains of eastern Arizona. In Merriam’s hands, Old Bigfoot’s skull became USNM [United States National Museum, an alternate name for the Smithsonian Institution] #177332, and

also the holotype of Merriam’s species Ursus arizonae. Merriam set forth his views on the classification of our North American bears in a series of papers that appeared over several decades in two friendly journals, the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington and the North American Fauna series of the Bureau of Biological Survey. His conclusions can be summed up chronologically: in 1896, he recognized eight bear species from North America; in 1902, he described two new bear species from the Alaska Peninsula; in 1904 Merriam described four new bear species; in 1914 he described 30 new grizzly bear species from North America; in 1916 he described another 19 grizzly and brown bear species; and in his 1918 taxonomic review of the genus Ursus in North America, he recognized a full 86 forms of grizzly bears (species and subspecies).

Given that today we recognize just one species of grizzly bear in North America, something went drastically awry with Merriam’s efforts to classify North America’s bears. It is well known that taxonomists are often considered either “lumpers” (who tend to recognize fewer species or other taxa) or “splitters” (who recognize more taxa). By this classification, Merriam certainly stands at the extreme end of the “splitters” regarding North American bears.

But simply labeling Merriam a splitter does not explain what happened with

By the end of the 20th century, mammalogists had largely repudiated and rejected Merriam’s expanded classification of grizzly bears. Yet the specimens he collected have taken on a second scientific life. New techniques have allowed new generations of scientists to extract DNA from these representatives of historic bear populations. In 2006, researchers at the University of Idaho reported the successful extraction and analysis of mitochondrial DNA from 108 historic grizzly bear specimens, at least 73 of which were collected or acquired by Merriam.

Merriam published countless volumes of biological data during his career.

his classification of bears. In my library I have several publications by Merriam, including the classic 1918 monograph with its 86 grizzly bears, as well as more popular publications that he wrote for the Boone and Crockett Club membership. In reviewing his taxonomic publications, I was impressed by the careful descriptions he provides of the skulls he is examining, the use of a consistent set of quantitative measurements, the clear points of difference that he notes, and the photographic illustrations he provides of key characteristics as well as individual skulls. Merriam comes across as a meticulous observer and recorder of the bear skulls available to him for study.

So, what went wrong with Merriam’s understanding of our bears? First and foremost, many of the specimens he examined were

unique single specimens— the last bear from a particular mountain range, canyon, or other geographic area. It is impossible to fully understand the variation in skull size and characters in a particular bear population from such limited samples. Under such conditions, individual variations can easily be confused with characters that delimit whole species. Second, Merriam had the misfortune of choosing characters that can be highly variable within individual grizzly bear populations. Subsequent researchers were able to study variation in skulls of grizzly bears from individual populations and discovered that many of Merriam’s characters vary considerably within a single population. In his previous work on mammals, Merriam had found that measurements of the skull and teeth could be valuable characters in distinguishing

species and subspecies. Later studies demonstrated that these characteristics simply didn’t work for classifying grizzly bears.

Merriam’s grizzly bear classification was controversial at the time. According to Adolph Murie’s classic 1981 book The Grizzlies of Mount McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt took great exception to Merriam’s proposed bear taxonomy, and the two men engaged in a vigorous discussion at the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C., regarding the appropriate classification of two bear skulls which Merriam had brought for the occasion. In his essay “Escudilla,” Aldo Leopold touches on this controversy when he reports that “all he [the last grizzly] left was a skull in the National Museum and a quarrel among scientists over the Latin name of the skull.” Certain Boone and Crockett Club members also took a skeptical eye toward Merriam’s bear classification; in my library, I have a reprinted chapter from the Club’s 1932 Records of North American Big Game titled “The Bears of America” by Dr. C. Hart Merriam. In this chapter, Merriam alludes to the large number of bear species he has found in North America. Still, when it comes to the actual records of bear specimens, these are listed according to the more conventional categories: Alaskan brown bear, grizzly bear, black bear, and polar bear. By the end of the 20th century, mammalogists had largely repudiated and rejected Merriam’s expanded classification of grizzly bears. Yet the specimens he collected have taken on a second scientific life. New techniques have allowed new generations of

scientists to extract DNA from these representatives of historic bear populations. In 2006, researchers at the University of Idaho reported the successful extraction and analysis of mitochondrial DNA from 108 historic grizzly bear specimens, at least 73 of which were collected or acquired by Merriam. These analyses give us insights into the population history and dynamics of long-vanished grizzly bear populations. Further analyses with nuclear genes and now whole genomes extracted from historic bear specimens are helping us understand the relationships and population size and status of bears across their historic range. The same is true for black bears and other bear species whose skeletal remains were collected by Merriam and other pioneering scientists more than a century ago. From these analyses and additional information, we can learn how historic bear populations responded to drought, climate change, and variations in prey populations and food availability. Much of this information is directly relevant to ongoing efforts at state and federal levels to manage bear populations in the face of resource shifts, changing climates, and increased human-bear interactions. All of us who admire these magnificent carnivores can be grateful to Merriam and his colleagues for their efforts to collect and preserve this material from long-vanished bear populations. Merriam’s bear classification may be extinct, but the historic bear specimens he collected continue to provide fresh insights that inform our management of these magnificent wildlife species. n

C. Hart Merriam was the first Chief of the Biological Survey.

C. HART MERRIAM B&C MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

The first Merriams immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637. Clinton Hart Merriam was born in New York City on December 5, 1855. His father retired from the banking and brokerage business at age 40, when Hart was nine, and returned to the family home north of Utica, New York, where he represented his district in Congress from 1871 until 1875.

Merriam showed an early interest in animal life and hunting, and started collecting bird, animal, and insect specimens when he was five years old. He was tutored privately until 14, then attended private schools, and apprenticed as a taxidermist. When Merriam was 16, taking advantage of his father's influence, he accompanied the 1872 Hayden Survey on one of the first expeditions into the Yellowstone region. His Report on the Mammals and Birds of the Expedition (1873) was well received, but Merriam demonstrated an obstinacy that accompanied him all his life. He concluded that the male rabbit suckled its young and, despite ridicule, never retracted that observation.

PHYSICIAN AND ORNITHOLOGIST

Merriam studied natural history and zoology at Yale University from 1874 until 1877, entered medical school, and received his medical degree after two years. He also actively pursued his ornithological interests and published the Review of the Birds of Connecticut, with Remarks on their Habits (1877). Bird specimens were obtained by

hunting, and Merriam's reputation as a crack shot resulted in his being refused entry into turkey shoots.

Merriam had become one of America's most respected scientists. In 1888, he was one of six founders of the National Geographic Society, and in 1902 was appointed by Theodore Roosevelt to the National Academy of Science.

Merriam established his medical practice north of Utica, but his interest was still natural history. During the summers of 1881 and 1882, he took trips into the Gulf of the St. Lawrence. ln his two-volume set, Mammals of the Adirondack Region, Northeastern New York , published in 1882 and 1884, he was one of the first to suggest that the length of daylight influenced animal behavior.

Merriam gave up his practice in 1883 and became one of the founding members of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU). The following year he accompanied a sealing vessel out of Newfoundland, sending back one crate and four barrels of specimens, and a year later visited mammalogists and ornithologists in Germany, England, and Holland.

FIELD EXPEDITIONS

Merriam's most famous and controversial work was in the distribution of plants and animals. Different “ zoographic ” zones had been proposed for centuries. Merriam dominated the field of mammalian distribution, but having reached his conclusions, he never considered revisions in the face of new evidence.

San Francisco Mountain near Flagstaff, Arizona,

towers 8,000 feet above the surrounding Colorado Plateau. Spending three months there in 1889, Hart determined that it contained seven distinct floral and fauna “ life zones.” He concluded that a mountain simply distributes vertically what flat land does over thousands of miles. He hypothesized there were two basic North America life zones, the northern “ boreal ” and the southern “ subtropical,” with each extending “ interpenetrating ” arms into the other. He went on to say that average temperature and humidity were the two most important factors governing the distribution of plants and animals.

Two years later, Merriam headed an extensive expedition into the western Death Valley and adjacent Sierra Nevada Mountains. Numerous specialists in eight different field parties were involved, scientists coming and going. The study area was 20 miles east-west by 500 miles north-south. The “ Death Valley Expedition ” collected 6,000 mammals, 1,000 birds, 1,000 herptiles,

In

Boone and Crockett Club members have come from a crosssection of famous accomplished people whose lives and careers have written and recorded the history of this country since the late 19th century. They have been naturalists, scientists, explorers and sportsmen, writers and academics, artists, statesmen and politicians, generals, bankers, financiers, philanthropists, and industrialists. Their diversity of ideas and activities during their careers have made the Boone and Crockett Club rich in its fellowship and achievements.

READ MORE MEMBER SPOTLIGHTS

1900, Dr. E.W. Nelson named the Merriam's turkey in honor of C. Hart Merriam. This species is found in the mountain regions of the western U.S.

4,500 insects, and 25,000 plants. The parties lived off the land, eating fish and game from the Sierras. In 1898, Merriam published his results in Life Zones and Crop Zones of the United States

WASHINGTON POLITICS Merriam never recognized the limitations of his findings. His research had been done in western states, and was not applicable to the rest of the country. He also never published enough data to back up his results. He neglected to consider soil, other vegetation, ground cover, predators, topography, and geological structure as important factors in fauna and floral distribution. Further research by others in later years would find that extreme cold was a more important temperature consideration than Hart's daily averages.

The Division of Economic Ornithology and Mammalogy and the Division of Entomology became Bureaus in 1906. Although this raised salaries and gave the Survey added status, the years 1900 through 1910 were a period of contrast for Hart. He had befriended Theodore

Roosevelt, a respected naturalist in his own right, when TR was appointed to the Civil Service Commission in 1889. In 1893, Merriam named the Roosevelt's elk in honor of his friend.

Their friendship continued through Roosevelt's presidency years, and Merriam was a frequent visitor to the White House. However, Merriam disdained politicians, and had a miserable relationship with the Congress that gave him funding. He was above all a scientist and had little patience for Congressmen. Congress almost gleefully harassed the Survey, and more than once threatened to remove its funding, only to be saved by Roosevelt's intervention. Merriam relished pure science, while Congress wanted pragmatic applications from his research. In addition, the Survey was now charged with federal game law enforcement. Hart's 1909 pamphlet titled Relations of Birds and Mammals to the Natural Resources led to the establishment of the bureau's longtime policy of predator control.

While in Death Valley in 1891, Merriam was

appointed by the president to represent the United States in the investigation of seal harvests around the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea. This assignment turned into a 20-year odyssey. Hart sailed immediately to Alaska to investigate, along with representatives from Russia, Japan, and Canada, whose foreign policy was represented by Britain. The initial discussions lasted one month, and nothing was agreed upon. Further meetings in Washington were repeated for years. Pelagic (sea) hunting had to be distinguished from land hunting. Good scientific evidence was lacking. Meanwhile, the seal numbers were dropping. Finally, the Fur Seal Advisory Board was created in 1911, a year after Hart left the Bureau.

Merriam had been spending summers for years in Marin County north of San Francisco. After retiring, he would leave Washington for California in late spring and not return until late fall. While still head of the Survey, he maintained close contact with the Harriman family, and after her husband's death, Mrs. Harriman created the “ Harriman Fund,” administered by the Smithsonian Institution, specifically to give Merriam a stipend for research and writing. Mrs. Harriman also purchased Hart's extensive specimen collection and donated it to the Smithsonian.

Merriam helped establish the California Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. He included the naturalists John Muir and John Burrows among his new friends, and camped with Muir in Yosemite. He became the first president of the American Society of

Mammalogists in 1919. He had notes and unfinished manuscripts all around his California home, but to Mrs. Harriman's dismay, couldn't get himself organized enough to publish. He finally submitted his bear manuscript but, despite voluminous notes, never did finish his treatise on mammalogy. In 1931, the same year he was awarded the Roosevelt Memorial Medal for excellence as a naturalist, he was admitted to a nursing home, where he remained until his death on March 19, 1942. His library was purchased by a philanthropist and given to the University of Kansas.

CONCLUSIONS

C. Hart Merriam became an anachronism. Right at home among the “ splitters ” of the late 19th century, he wasn't able to change and subsequently fell out of favor in the world of “ lumpers ” of the 20th century. He had trained many of those mammalogists and collectors who disagreed with him. He was the last of the generalists; all who followed were specialists within mammalogy's various disciplines. Hart's greatest scientific contribution was his methodology and techniques in trapping, hunting, preparing, labeling, and extensive note taking. He also fostered the idea that the federal government should take responsibility for scientific research.

It is unclear at what point he became a Professional Member of the Boone and Crockett Club, but Merriam's extensive field studies, the high standards he required of his staff, and his expertise in both ornithology and mammalogy justify his designation as the patriarch of America's mammalogists, as well as its wildlife biologists. n

C. Hart Merriam named the Roosevelt's elk after his friend Theodore Roosevelt.

e mB racinG tHe call of tHe wild a Heartfelt t Hank you to our e xtraordinary SuPPorter S

The Boone and Crockett Club founders created a conservation legacy that began more than 130 years ago. We stand not only on their shoulders but on the foundation built by all of our members. In those early years, members answered the call to protect game populations by establishing bag limits and hunting regulations. They set aside unique landscapes and called them national parks. They set aside land specifically for the recovery of species on the brink of extinction. They called these places wildlife refuges. The list goes on because the legacy of their foresight runs deep.

Meaningful conservation has never happened in a vacuum. It takes the voice of a concerned public to speak for what is right. Conservation also takes time and other precious resources like money, which is why we are writing to express our gratitude to a handful of truly extraordinary supporters, most of whom are still with us, but some have passed.

These are members who have generously contributed $500,000 or more to help fund various Club needs, from helping to purchase the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Ranch to infrastructure upgrades to growing the ever-important endowment. The impact of these substantial donations goes beyond monetary value. These donations help us fulfill our mission to promote the conservation and management of wildlife, preserve and encourage hunting, and maintain the highest ethical standards of fair chase and sportsmanship in North America.

One of these donors, Bill Ruger, founder of Sturm, Ruger & Company, was a stalwart Club supporter and honorary life member. In short, he loved everything about B&C. “I have always been proud of my membership in Boone and Crockett and felt that I was one of the luckiest of men to be associated with a group I genuinely liked, and which was devoted to the same interests that have stimulated me for a lifetime. Not only that, but Boone and Crockett over its long history, has acquired immense prestige, initially because of the character of the people who make up the Club,” he said.

Before Bill passed away in 2002, the Boone and Crockett Club Foundation received a generous gift through his Charitable Remainder Trust. His contribution added greatly to the Foundation’s endowment and assisted the Club in continuing its work.

Bill is just one of nearly two dozen members from our “Hall of Fame.” More than financial supporters, these donors are kindred spirits, bound by a shared passion for the outdoors. Their commitment to conservation aligns with our vision of conserving wildlife and wild places for generations to come.

As we express our gratitude, we also cast our gaze to the distant horizon, eager to face the challenges ahead with the unwavering support of our generous hunting community. Your contributions are more than financial—they are a declaration that fair chase hunting and conservation work together. With continued support, they always will.

Together, as a community united by the love of nature and the thrill of the hunt, we are forging a legacy that celebrates the extraordinary connection between hunters and the great outdoors. And for that, we thank you.

R. Terrell McCombs President, Boone and Crockett Club Foundation

Hall of fame

Lee and Penny Anderson

James F. Arnold

Lowell E. Baier

Rene R. Barrientos

William A. Demmer

Gary W. Dietrich

Wesley M. Dixon, Jr. *

John P. Evans

Bobby and Sharon Floyd

George C. Hixon *

Robert B. Johnson *

Anne Brockinton Lee

Robert Model

C. Robert Palmer *

Jack S. Parker *

Remo R. Pizzagalli

Edward B. Rasmuson *

William B. Ruger, Sr. *

Michael D. Searle

Morrison Stevens, Sr.

Ben and Roxane Strickling

Ben B. Wallace

C. Martin Wood, III

* DECEASED

B&C UNIVERSITY PROGRAMS

Today’s conservation challenges are multifaceted and often occur at the interface of ecology, economics, culture, and communication. The policy process seeks to integrate these diverse drivers to determine the most appropriate action. The process of formulating conservation policy is more likely to be successful if knowledgeable, skilled professionals are involved. That is where the Boone and Crockett Club’s University Programs come in. Boone and Crockett Fellows study wildlife ecology with top scientists and get their degrees from the best wildlife programs in North America. They are trained in ecology, wildlife management, and conservation policy and learn how to use their research results, networks, and knowledge to impact policy. By developing a diverse community of high-impact wildlife conservation leaders, University Programs is preparing experts for tomorrow’s policy decisions.

In 2023 the Boone and Crockett Club was a sponsor of the annual conference of The Wildlife Society in Louisville, Kentucky. The Club was also well-represented by our graduate fellows who offered a couple dozen posters and talks in various symposia. Fellows benefited from professional development opportunities and took advantage of the strong network of regular and professional Club members. These sessions have historically included lessons on leadership, science communication, and diversity, equity, and inclusion in the field of wildlife conservation.

In 2019 the Club established the annual Boone and Crockett Fellow Outstanding Achievement Award to recognize a graduate student whose research advances the Club’s mission and informs natural resource management and policy decisions in North America. The award highlights and strengthens the connection between students and the Boone and Crockett Club that supports them.

Our 2023 recipient was Calvin Ellis. Calvin graduated with his masters from Texas A&M University - Kingsville in December 2023. He presented his thesis titled, "The interaction between mule deer spatial ecology and chronic wasting disease epidemiology," at the Club's Annual Meeting in Louisville, Kentucky in December, 2023.

Calvin grew up in a small town outside of Athens, Georgia. His love for the outdoors helped him decide to earn a bachelor’s in wildlife science from the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources at the University of Georgia in 2020. At Texas A&M University-Kingsville his graduate research project focuses on mule deer spatial ecology in the Texas Panhandle, specifically understanding the movement of species susceptible to chronic wasting disease. His team GPS-collared 30 juvenile mule deer in Oldham County, located along the Canadian River, to study movement and dispersal patterns. Calvin will also use a previously collected five-year dataset of mule deer movement to examine site fidelity and finescale selection in crop fields in this region. n

The mission of the Boone and Crockett Club University Programs is the development of a diverse community of high-impact wildlife conservation leaders.

2023 OVERVIEW

3 ENDOWED PROFESSORSHIPS

PROGRAMS:

TEXAS A&M

TEXAS A&M

LEFT TO RIGHT: B&C Professional Member and Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute Director, David G. Hewitt; B&C Regular Member and President, James L. Cummins; B&C Fellow and 2023 Boone and Crockett Fellow Outstanding Achievement Award Winner, Calvin Ellis; B&C Professional Member and Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute Assistant Professor, Levi Heffelfinger.

SPOTLIGHT:

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - STEVENS POINT

JASON D. RIDDLE - GERALD AND HELEN STEPHENS PROFESSOR OF WILDLIFE

HOW DOES YOUR PROGRAM SUPPORT THE BOONE AND CROCKETT MISSION?

Our program and the associated Doug Stephens Boone and Crockett endowment support 1-2 undergraduate research fellows per year. Fellowships are competitive and not associated with specific faculty. Instead, faculty (from any discipline within the college) may select a student and co-apply to compete for the fellowship annually. To apply, the undergraduate applicant must be paired with a faculty member who has additional extramural funding focused on a game species. Traditionally, this has been funding supporting a wildlife graduate student. The undergraduate fellow then develops their own research question, study design, and objectives. The project is designed to also be of value to the graduate student’s project.

HOW DOES YOUR PROGRAM PROMOTE HUNTING AS A TOOL FOR CONSERVATION?

Faculty in our program often partner with conservation organizations (e.g., Ducks Unlimited) to offer learn-to-hunt opportunities. Additionally, we have offered firearm safety trainings through our student chapter of The Wildlife Society. Finally, two of the instructors in our college are also instructors for Conservation Leaders for Tomorrow (CLfT).

HOW DOES YOUR PROGRAM TRAIN FELLOWS FOR POLICY WORK?

In addition to special webinars and trainings that the Club offers for fellows, we provide policy coverage in several of our required courses: People, Resources, and the Environment (100-level), Human Dimensions of Wildlife (400-level), and Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Biology (400-level). Students have the option to take Natural Resources Communication and Public Relations (300-level).

FELLOW RESEARCH PROJECT

Ava Cross-Weisbeck is studying the sound ecology of ruffed grouse. Ruffed grouse are an important ecological, cultural, and economic game species throughout North America, especially in Wisconsin and the upper Midwest. Ruffed grouse often are associated with young forests and relatively dense understory. As such, they are remarkably compatible with rotational forest and timber management practices. Male ruffed grouse have a stunning breeding display in which they “drum” to attract mates and fend off competing males. This drumming display is typically done on a fallen log. The drum is characteristically low in frequency. The low frequency sounds travel further in densely covered habitats. Ava’s preliminary results suggest that ruffed grouse are choosing drumming locations that allow their display to be heard over greater distances than from random locations within the woods. If ruffed grouse select breeding habitats based on acoustic properties, then using site-specific acoustics information could lead to more effective survey designs for monitoring efforts as well as more effective management techniques.

Category Boundaries

F rom How To Score NorTH A mericAN Big gA me

Big-game records keeping for both Boone and Crockett and the Pope and Young Club deals only with certain native North American big game animals. For such purposes, the southern boundary is defined as the south boundary of Mexico. Only cougar, jaguar, and whitetail deer of the recognized trophy categories range south of this boundary, and only the first two reach recordable size south of Mexico. The northern limit for trophies such as polar bear and walrus is the limit of the continent and associated waters held by the United States, Canada, or Greenland. Continental limits and held waters define east and west boundaries for all categories.

This excerpt is featured in the Club's latest publication, Records of North American Big Game, 15th Edition.

Read more about the book and order your copy on page 38.

1) there are extensive geographical areas where the proposed animals occur;

2) the animals occur in good numbers;

3) there are suitable boundaries that can be drawn;

4) the game department(s) managing the proposed class are in favor of setting up such a new category;

5) scientific evidence supports the new category.

A number of species show geographical variation so that there are smaller varieties inhabiting some parts of the continent and larger ones elsewhere. For example, mature moose from Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Colorado, etc., of the Shiras’ variety, although they may grow large and beautiful racks, are unable to compete with the monstrous moose from the Alaska-Yukon region. So it has been necessary to break up the total ranges of some of the species into various categories in order to provide proper recognition.

Both Records committees have, over the years, gradually defined the areas from which trophies may be entered and have modified these boundaries in some cases when more thorough knowledge of the distribution of the animals in question has become known. The B&C Records Committee creates new categories from time to time. In fact, the Boone and Crockett Club has created four new categories since 1986, including non-typical American elk, tule elk, and non-typical categories for both Columbia blacktail deer and Sitka blacktail deer. Other new trophy categories (e.g., wolves, Columbia whitetail deer, alligators) have been proposed, but both Committees maintain a conservative stance in reviewing such proposals. New categories are considered only when the following conditions are met:

The following material will review the categories for which there are geographically defined boundaries. Obviously, these boundaries must be observed in the taking of a trophy in order for it to be considered for that category. As a general rule, the categories are set so there is virtually no chance of a larger category specimen (or a hybrid animal) being taken within the boundary for the smaller category. While this may exclude some deserving specimens of the smaller category that reside in the larger category’s range, it is a price that must be paid to keep the smaller categories pure.

ALASKA BROWN AND GRIZZLY BEARS

The big brown bears are found on Kodiak and Afognak Islands, the Alaska Peninsula, and eastward and southeastward along the coast of Alaska. The smaller interior grizzly is found in the remaining parts of the continent. The boundary between the two was first defined as an imaginary line extending 75 miles inland from the coast of Alaska. Later this boundary was more precisely defined with the current definition as follows:

A line of separation between the larger growing coastal brown bear and the smaller interior grizzly has been developed such that west and south of this line (to and including Unimak Island) bear trophies are recorded as Alaska brown bear. North and east of this line, bear trophies are

recorded as grizzly bear. The boundary line description is as follows: Starting at Pearse Canal and following the Ca nadian-Alaskan boundary northwest erly to Mt. St. Elias on the 141-degree meridian; thence north along the Ca nadian-Alaskan boundary to Mt. Na tazhat; thence west-northwest along the divide of the Wrangell Range to Mt. Jarvis at the western end of the Wrangell Range; thence north along the divide of the Mentasta Range to Mentasta Pass; thence in a general westerly direction along the divide of the Alaska Range to Houston Pass; thence westerly following the 62nd parallel of latitude to the Bering Sea.

POLAR BEAR

Polar bear must be taken in either United States- or Canadian-held water and/or land mass in order to be eligible for entry in B&C/P&Y. This definition is necessary because of the wide range of polar bears in the far northern hemisphere.

The boundary separating grizzly bear (green) and Alaska brown bear (tan).

World's Record Bear Stories

In addition to information on bear boundaries, the Records of North American Big Game , 15th Edition features the stories of the current World's Record for each species. The following pages contain the thrilling stories for all bears.

Grizzly Bear

27-13/16 points

LOCATION

Lone Mt., AK

HUNTER Picked Up OWNER

Gordon E. Scott DATE KILLED 1976

A friend and I flew to the McGrath area in Alaska in April 1974 in a Piper Super Cub and hunted grizzly bear for more than three weeks. During our scouting we encountered scores of grizzly bears. We had covered a large area and settled on a couple of locations where large boar grizzlies were present. We concentrated our efforts at these places and were able to take two large grizzlies. One of these bears is listed in the current B&C records as being taken by Curtis C. Classen, McGrath, AK, 1974, and scoring 25-2/16. The other was taken by me, but never entered in the records.

As you see, this area produces big grizzlies. I went back in the spring of 1976 to hunt black bear. While on an extended hike out in the tundra bogs, I stumbled across the bones of an animal partially frozen in the moss and overflow ice. After a closer inspection, it turned out to be a grizzly bear.

I brought out the skull and a few assorted vertebrae. The skull was smelly but I knew it was big and worth the effort. It had meat and hide still somewhat present on the back part, and some of the teeth were missing.

I cleaned it up somewhat, and judged it to be a nice mature brown bear. From that point on, I stored it in my attic for many, many years.

Almost 30 years later, I was remodeling the attic and came across the skull again and decided to score it. Much to my surprise, it was larger than I thought. After some research, I found that it was considered a grizzly for scoring purposes, according to B&C’s boundary description. I had it officially measured and was amazed to learn that this was, in fact, the largest grizzly ever recorded. It was quite a find.

Black Bear

On July 1, 1975, the World’s Record skull for a black bear was found along the edge of the Manti-La Sal National Forest, about seven miles east of Ephraim, Utah. Out west, black bears are occasionally seen in sub-alpine meadows, but they generally prefer the shelter of trees, where they quietly move in and out along the edges of the forest. Such was the setting where Merrill Daniels and Alma Lund contemplated their discovery. Daniels and Lund were unable to determine the cause of death but did recognize the immensity of the old carcass that was slowly decaying in the summer heat.

BLACK BEAR TROPHY INFO

B&C SCORE

23-10/16 points

LOCATION Sanpete Co., UT

HUNTER Picked Up

OWNER Cabela’s, Inc.

DATE KILLED 1975

However, because the score exceeded the previous record by more than an inch, their incredible find was

trophy owners, the skull was shipped to the Club’s office in Washington, D.C., where it was examined by experts at the Smithsonian Institution.

After undergoing careful comparisons with type specimens, as well as other identification criteria, the final assessment was that this was indeed a bona fide black bear skull. In 1980, the trophy was awarded a Certificate of Merit in recognition of its outstanding trophy character at the 17th North American Big Game Awards Program. Pick-ups are included, in order to enhance the scientific value of the records and to complete the standard by which sportsmen can judge their best trophies. San Pete County, Utah, was also the location of the previous state record trophy taken by Rex W. Peterson accompanied by Richard Hardy in 1970, which scored 22-6/16. Bears taken in Arizona and Colorado during the 1960s have also received impressive scores.

Solid improvements in black bear management and populations across nearly all of the Lower 48 have increased the number of records-book entries steadily. While the number and locations of record-qualifying bears are on the rise, this Utah trophy still tops the list after more than 40 years.

Alaska Brown Bear

Alaska’s Kodiak Island, just below Cook Inlet, supports the largest land-based carnivores in the world. The World’s Record for the Alaska brown bear (Ursus arctos middendorffi) continues to hold with a score at 30-12/16 after being taken in late May 1952, near Karluk Lake, Kodiak Island.

This immense bear was collected by a scientific expedition headed by Melville N. Lincoln and was sponsored by a habitat group affiliated with the Los Angeles County Museum. The actual shot was made by Roy R. Lindsley, an employee of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Kodiak, who was working in cooperation with the scientists. Lindsley, who had never before shot an Alaska brown bear, had many years of experience working among these intelligent giants.

Technically, the Alaska brown bear and grizzly bear are classified as the same species, Ursus arctos. The Alaska brown bears that have been genetically and physically isolated on Kodiak Island have slightly varied skull proportions, claw shape, and dentition that have set them apart from browns found elsewhere in Alaska, and are therefore classified as a separate subspecies. A mature boar can weigh as much as 1,500 pounds after feeding on coho salmon during the autumn

season, and when he rises upright from the river bank to test the coastal winds, may stand well over nine feet tall.

As a seasoned observer, Lindsley knew that he would need a heavy bullet that could deliver sufficient force in order to make a clean kill and prevent the possibility of the bear charging or running away. He took down the record-sized male brown bear using the 180-grain bullet in a .30-06 rifle. Lindsley’s bear skull measures 17-15/16 inches long and 12-13/16 inches wide for a final score of 30-12/16 points. It was declared a World’s Record at the Club’s Sixth Competition held at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, New York, in 1954.

Polar Bear

The polar bear (Ursus maritimus) taken by Shelby Longoria of Matamoros, Mexico, continues to hold the World’s Record. In the spring of 1963, Longoria headed from his home south of the border toward the far north, embarking on what would become a harrowing yet rewarding adventure. Choosing from outfitters who operated out of Cape Lisburne, Point Hope, and as far north as Point Barrow, Longoria made a decision to hunt out of Kotzebue, Alaska.

Spring in the North American Arctic can be an ideal window for hunting as warm flickers of light provide a pleasing contrast to the dark tones of winter. However, unlike the polar bears that are partially insulated by their long, shaggy coats, it is possible for a man to die from exposure within a matter of minutes if he should plunge into the cold polar seas. This was only one of many dangers that lingered as Longoria and his guides searched the windswept and wave-sculpted ice fields near the Bering Strait and Chukchi Sea for the grandest bear they could find.

ALASKA BROWN BEAR

TROPHY INFO

B&C SCORE 30-12/16 points

LOCATION

Kodiak Island, AK

HUNTER

Roy Lindsley

OWNER

Los Angeles Co. Museum

DATE KILLED 1952

stalk his prey through the frozen maze before eventually bagging the impressive polar bear.

Nearly a hundred miles offshore, the hunting expedition located a promising ivory-white bear wandering against a treacherous background pocketed with bulging mounds of splintered ice. Utilizing powerful hindquarters and long legs with partially webbed feet, “bears of the sea” have been spotted swimming up to 300 miles from shore and are capable of bounding completely out of the water onto an ice floe. After undertaking a contrastingly dangerous landing on the sea ice, Longoria continued to

Scoring 29-15/16 points, Longoria’s trophy topped the former record held by Tom Bolack. It should be noted that polar bears are extremely capable hunters due to their nearly exclusive carnivorous diet. As a result of this adaptation to their environment, these bears typically have longer, narrower skulls than the Alaska brown bear.

TROPHY INFO

B&C SCORE

29-15/16 points

LOCATION

Kotzebue, AK

HUNTER

Shelby Longoria

OWNER

Shelby Longoria

DATE KILLED

1963

Bear Necessities

A $1 million endowment revitalizes a landmark black bear study in Wisconsin’s North Woods

Scotty Searle

Tom & Kris Dew

Christine and Stan Thomas

David Moore

Paul & Judith Zelisko

The late Kim & Carol Williams

John and Judy Tomke

John & Miranda Schreiner

Only a handful of people know what the inside of a bear den smells like in January. Cady Sartini is one of them. In Wisconsin’s North Woods around Clam Lake, Sartini has been headfirst in an occupied den more than a few times.

“It smells earthy but doesn’t smell bad,” she says. “I think it smells really good. I don’t think my husband feels the same way.” Sartini is an associate professor of wildlife at the University of Wisconsin—Stevens Point (UWSP) and is in charge of one of the longest-running bear research studies ever conducted. She and her students have been in their fair share of dens to capture, collar, weigh, and examine black bear sows and their cubs as part of the Wisconsin Black Bear Research Project.

The project started in the 1970s, and since then, professors and graduate students have produced numerous papers and studies focused on Wisconsin’s bears, including data used to set state hunting regulations and plans. In fact, 60 percent of the literature cited in Wisconsin’s 20192029 black bear management plan came from the project.

“How many of our students are going to be writing the next plan or writing similar plans for other states?” asks Sartini. “That’s what I’m excited to see. This is the future of the program.”

The Dew's granddaughters, Margot (holding the cub) and Vera are examples of “planting the seed” of conservation early.

“Thank You” to the members who contributed to the black bear research endowment.

Other members who have been involved over the years:

A very special thank you to Mary Webster for her patient and tenacious efforts on the paperwork.

Until recently, though, funding for the program has been in doubt. Money for research has always been an issue. In the past, funding was cobbled together with grants and donations from various groups. “It’s hard to come up with money for bear research. It’s not like waterfowl, where there are federal programs that support them,” says Club professional member Christine Thomas, retired dean of UWSP’s College of Natural Resources. As an associate dean, she got involved with the project in the late 1990s. At the time, there was talk about shutting down the bear research project. And then Thomas went into her first bear den.

“It was a really emotional experience,” she says. “A guy from Wisconsin DNR was there and said you can’t shut this project down. It’s too big.” Thomas applied for some grants, having to get creative for funding. “We had elk research funding for a while. There were a couple of years that we did a project related to bear predation on elk calves, in order to justify the dollars it took to keep the bear project alive,” Thomas says. The department hired Tim Ginnett to run the program, and Thomas had $90,000 in grants waiting for him to spend on research. Ginnett kept the program running until he retired. He mentored a number of graduate students during that time, and Sartini took over in 2019.

Thanks to a major effort by Club members and others, the project is about to get a lot more work done.

A NEW ENDOWMENT

At the close of 2023, the UWSP College of Natural Resources received a $1 million endowment for the project. A combination of three funding sources, the endowment was spearheaded by Thomas, who reached out to the Stephens Family Foundation. As part of the Boone and Crockett Club’s University Programs, UWSP has offered the Douglas R. Stephens Boone and Crockett Club Fellowship in Wildlife Conservation since 2012. The family, whose son died unexpectedly while conducting bear research at UWSP, told Thomas that they would provide a match of up to $500,000. They got the match.

The endowment is comprised of three funding sources. The Stephens Family Foundation Wisconsin Black Bear Research Project Endowment will support all operations and needs of the college’s black bear research and education with their half-a-million dollar match. The Safari Club International Wisconsin Black Bear Research Fellowship Endowment will support UWSP’s black bear research and education initiatives. And the Searle-Dew-Thomas Boone and Crockett

PJ DELHOMME

“The most important thing about this project is the experience that it gives the students.”

— Dr. Cady Sartini, associate professor of wildlife at the University of Wisconsin—Stevens Point

“The Club is interested in training students in sound science, but we are equally interested in touching their lives in a way that encourages them to become the conservation leaders of tomorrow. We also welcome the opportunity for these students to learn about the Club and its important and historic role in wildlife conservation.”

— Mary Webster, Boone and Crockett Club Executive Vice President of Conservation

Wisconsin Black Bear Fellowship Endowment will support a research fellowship program, providing undergraduate and graduate student opportunities in cutting-edge black bear research.

NEW FUNDING LOOKS TO THE FUTURE

“We want to see this ability to leverage smaller funds into bigger funds,” says Mary Webster, the Club’s executive vice president of conservation.

“Looking at this fund, and how Chris (Thomas) has been able to leverage funds is really what we’re looking for in all of our University Programs. It’s how you get things done in the 21st century.”

“Mary is spot on,” Thomas says.

“Lots of funds aren’t available if you don’t have a match. If you’re a brand new professor, where are you going to get a match at a smaller university? I think this is the future.”

MANAGEMENT FOCUS

One of the classes Sartini teaches is black bear ecology and management. Twenty students learn everything we know about black bears, including the skills needed in the field once they locate a den. The students go to the dens in advance, do the scouting, know their location, contact the landowner, and do all the logistics work. “The students run the project, which is amazing to me. That is what we’ve created this project to do. It develops their skills. They’re not just

BELOW: A student uses radio telemetry to locate the collared bears.

showing up and petting a bear. They are doing all of the work. This endowment was the only reason I was allowed to develop this class and put so much energy into it,” Sartini says.

The project’s scope isn’t limited to professors and students. Hunters, landowners, and future generations are all involved. The Wisconsin DNR uses the program to help fill in gaps in their research and cites their results in management plans. “We go to the bear advisory meetings, listen to stakeholders, and use that input to help direct our research efforts,” Sartini adds.

Using hunting as a management tool is a big part of the black bear ecology and management class. “We talk about hunting culture, how hunting regulations can

be set up in different ways depending on management objectives, and we also go over the public input process in Wisconsin. The state’s Bear Management Plan is one of our textbooks.”

Thanks to the new endowment, generations of students will enter the conservation workforce better prepared for the trials ahead. Sometimes, that begins with an unforgettable trip to a bear den.

“As a volunteer, what I love is when a landowner accompanies the researcher out there and brings a child or grandchild along,” says Club member Tom Dew. “When you put that bear cub in a child’s arms, you can’t pry it out of them. You’ve planted a seed in wildlife conservation that will last forever.” n

“I know that I can speak for the Dews and Scotty Searle when I say how proud we all are to partner with the Stephens Foundation and the Club in this ‛forever’ conservation effort.”

— Christine Thomas, Boone and Crockett Club Professional Member, Dean Emeritus, College of Natural Resources, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

Looking into the forest shadows, I could see a form that looked out of place against a backdrop of thick spruce. I shouldered my rifle and peered through the scope. The image observed through the riflescope electrified me as I realized I was only yards from the monster grizzly— and I was clearly the focal point of its attention.

This hunt started days before, on April 28, 2001, when local area Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Glenn Stout and I went on a snow machine ride into the Kaiyuh Mountains south of Galena. Our day’s adventure was driven by the notion that we wanted to see some new country. Spring thaws had settled the heavy mountain snow pack, opening up some backcountry that is rarely visited. We each carried rifles with us on this occasion, just in case we spotted a distant wolf or possibly a bear, though it was a bit early for bears to be emerging from hibernation.

Breaking out above the line of timber and onto the open alpine tundra, we were met with snow flurries and low clouds that blanketed our intended destination with a thick carpet of white—so

dense that to press on would risk getting us lost or driving off a cliff.

Backtracking to lower elevations near the upper tree line, we came across a several-days-old track of a large grizzly bear. The bear had moved up out of the timber of one drainage and slipped down into the head of another. We guessed the bear’s destination to be the bottomlands along the Yukon River, approximately seven miles to the northeast, where the monster would likely stalk and pull down a moose to feed what had to be a ravenous post-hibernation appetite.

As the day’s plan was no longer workable, we elected to satisfy our immediate curiosity in the enormous track by following it a short distance into the heavy timber. Glenn joked that he would defer any bear shooting that day to me, as I was carrying a .30-06, and he was packing his .223 varmint rifle. The direction taken by the bear put it on an intersecting course with the Yukon River. Curiosity in the tracks quickly vanished as the deeper, unsettled snows of the steep timbered slopes caused our snow machines to bog down and us to perspire freely and often in digging out mired

DARK TIMBER GRIZZLY

Eugene C. Williams' grizzly bear was awarded first place at the 25th Big Game Awards program with a score of 26-14/16 points. It is currently ranked 14th in the 15th Edition of Records of North American Big Game

machines. With the excitement of this game now gone, we retreated back the way we had come.

Thoughts of the monster bear haunted me for the next two days. On the evening of April 30, I gave Glenn a call to see if he was up for another trip to the bush to look for the bear. He declined, electing not to waste a day of his vacation time to pursue my fanciful notion of finding a large bear in the thousands of square miles of roadless wilderness south of Galena, Alaska, where we lived.

My wife was reluctant to allow me to go on my own, fully understanding the risks of snow machine failure, weather, and terrain — not to mention risks associated with confrontations with bears. What probably worried her more than anything was the notion of me crossing the Yukon River on a snow machine this time of year. It was spring. Snow pack was melting. River ice had to be thawing. She signed off on my plan for the solo trip, but only after I promised to wear a life jacket while on the river and grilling me as to the contents of my day pack in case I had to spend a night in the woods. I left her a topographic map, on which I defined the area

where to look for me should I not return. She was also advised that Glenn would know where to begin to look for me if need be.

I left the house at 6 a.m. on May 1. The temperature was 10°F. With six extra gallons of fuel and a pair of snowshoes, I headed out on my snowmobile. My plan was a simple one. I would follow an abandoned, decades-old dozer trail that started on the south bank of the Yukon River upstream from the village of Galena. One branch of the trail led through the hills and then cut down to and across Kala Creek, about two miles off the Yukon, and terminated at an old military radar site on Ketlkede Mountain. The other branch led up to and across the Kaiyuh Mountains to an inactive mining claim. As Glenn and I had taken the west fork to access the Kaiyuh Mountains on the earlier trip, I decided to travel the east fork of the dozer trail down into Kala Creek. This was new country I hadn’t been in. I reasoned, too, that this course had the potential to put me in a position to intercept the trail of the bear discovered earlier, or at least possibly into the country where the bear might be.

This column is dedicated to the system that supports the public hunting of public wildlife for all fair chase sportsmen, and the stories and trophies that are the result. Theodore Roosevelt strongly believed that self-reliance and pursuing the strenuous activities of hunting and wilderness exploration was the best way to keep man connected to nature. We score trophies, but every hunt is to some extent a way of measuring ourselves.

BEYOND THE SCORE

Eugene C. Williams

STORY FROM LEGENDARY HUNTS, SHORT STORIES FROM THE BOONE AND CROCKETT AWARDS

It didn’t take long, once leaving the south bank of the Yukon River, to travel the two miles of old dozer trail into the bottom of Kala Creek. To my amazement and delight, there in the frozen slush atop the creek ice was a lone set of very large bear tracks headed away from the Yukon and back up into the mountains.

There was no way to gauge the age of these tracks. The slush, or “overflow” as it is called locally, could have been the result of any of the freeze/thaw cycles of the several previous days. Overflow can be a trap for unsuspecting snow machiners or dog mushers. The condition typically is hidden under an undisturbed surface crust of snow, where seepage from snow melt, springs, or adjacent wetlands collects. Breaking through the surface crust into several inches (or several feet) of slush/water can ruin your day, particularly if aboard a 600-pound snow machine. As temperatures had dropped into the single digits the previous night, and coupled with settling from the recent warm weather, the overflow here was frozen hard clear to the creek’s surface ice in most places.

I followed the bear’s trail up the creek on the snow machine out of curiosity, with little thought about the possibility of a bear in the last tracks on the other end. But after 200 yards of following the creek, with open water peeking through and gurgling sounds below, I thought more about cold wet feet and the dreadful notion of pulling a waterlogged snow machine out of a hole in the creek ice. I retreated.

Returning to the first point of intersect with the tracks, I headed off on the old dozer trail toward Ketlkede Mountain in search of more tracks. The run to the mountaintop didn’t take long and no other tracks were discovered.

I returned to the creek, electing to follow the bear track on foot as a form of morning entertainment. The weather was crisp and the skies clear. Winds were light and variable. I was intrigued by the meandering course the bear had taken upstream. It was interesting to note, as I followed its path, what objects or odors caught its attention. Occasionally, the bear would turn at 90° angles and move off a few feet to investigate something in its surroundings. At one point, its nose told it there was a shed moose antler buried under two feet of snow, which the bear dug up and bit into. The heavy print of the bear was obvious and easily discernible well ahead along the creek’s course. Occasionally, it broke through the crust into the intermittent overflow or soft snow beneath. In contrast, I was leaving little evidence of where I had been.

After two hours of fanciful pursuit on foot, I decided I should return to the snow machine, as going overland with the machine to this point on the creek was an easy option. I would also be that much closer to a ride home when I elected to call it quits. I returned with the machine, and struck off again on foot on the tracks of the grizzly.

The bear was still sticking to the creek bottom. I told myself that if it stayed

in the bottom or turned east into the tundra/open scrub black spruce stands, I would follow. That was, of course, providing the snow crust would carry me. If the bear turned west into the timbered slopes of the Kaiyuh Mountains, where snow was deep and soft, I would give up the pursuit.

The grizzly regularly cut across the points of land in the creek’s many meanders, but sometimes would stick to the creek channel and follow it around the bend. If the bear took the shortcut and I could see through the timber to the other side, I would follow. If it took a shortcut through the trees and visibility was poor, I would follow the meandering channel around and pick up the track on the other side.

Over the course of the morning’s trek, it became apparent to me that the grizzly’s trail here had been made since the temperature had plummeted late the previous evening. Where the animal had walked on snowfree southern bank exposures, it had tracked dirt and spruce needles out onto the clean snow. Had the dirt been tracked out onto the creek the day before, the tracks would have been melted out by the sun’s warm rays being absorbed by the dark material. These tracks were not. I now knew I had a chance for this bear.

I removed my shooting glove, checked my firearm, and assured myself that my scope was on low power. I was carrying a .300 Magnum Browning BBR, a companion on countless previous hunting trips.

I was intrigued by the meandering course the bear had taken upstream. It was interesting to note, as I followed its path, what objects or odors caught its attention. Occasionally, the bear would turn at 90° angles and move off a few feet to investigate something in its surroundings. At one point, its nose told it there was a shed moose antler buried under two feet of snow, which the bear dug up and bit into.

The game of simply following a track in the snow had transformed into a cautious pursuit. The pursuit remained much the same as the previous three hours— in and out of the timber along the course of Kala Creek, going upstream. The sun was still low in the clear eastern sky and morning shadows were long. Once more, I followed the grizzly’s shortcut across a narrow point of land at the bend in the creek channel. I had broken with the morning’s discipline of not following the track into the timber when I couldn’t see bear tracks in the snow in the creek on the far side. The point of land here, though narrow, was of higher elevation. There was very little plant understory.

I felt secure, and assumed the bear had simply returned to the open channel on the upstream side. The giant bear had not! Once in the trees, the grizzly had come across a maze of moose tracks along the far bank and elected to follow them—and travel by stepping into the tracks left by the moose!

I no longer had a clear picture of where the bear was. I scanned the creek channel upstream and downstream—no bear tracks. My attention turned to the moose tracks at my feet. I couldn’t discern which direction the bear had gone. I looked to my left and spotted a form that didn’t fit with its surroundings. I shouldered the rifle and peered through the scope at the strange form. It was the grizzly! The bear was facing me head-on, while standing with front feet atop a downed tree. It was huge! The bear’s intent stare told me it had seen me before I saw it. The grizzly was too close! I knew full well it was a mere few seconds away. A charging, running bear can outrun anything afoot in these parts.

As the safety came off and my finger found the trigger, my mind was asking the question of what would happen next. Would the bear turn and run at the shot, or would it come for me? The rifle fired and I quickly worked the bolt to chamber

a fresh round. As if in slow motion, the bear reared up, roared, threw its head back with front paws high in the air and tumbled over backwards. Then all was quiet. The grizzly got up momentarily behind the blowdown timber and then sank out of sight. It remained quiet!

As it turned out, the bear had been napping behind some blowdown timber along the creek bank, in a bed it had prepared for itself by scratching away the two feet of snow and ice down to bare earth. Remaining hidden through my approach, it had heard me approaching, or possibly caught my scent in the variable breeze that was blowing, and got up.

I looked at my watch. It was 11:45 a.m. I waited a full 10 minutes before walking in a big semicircle around the bear on the creek side. The grizzly had tumbled backwards down the bank into the creek channel. I approached cautiously. When close enough to lob in some tree branch projectiles, I did so, to ensure the animal was dead. As I got close enough to use the gun barrel, I poked the grizzly with it to ensure no life was left. The bullet had struck the bear at the midpoint of its sternum and traveled the length of the body, stopping just under the hide of its right hip. The 200-grain bullet had done its job.

The animal was in excellent physical condition, but with very little body fat remaining. It was an old bear with some long-ago healed dental problems, likely created by an encounter with a flying moose hoof. I had been on the track since 8:00 a.m., having followed it for over five miles on foot.

There was a healthy bounce in my step as I returned to where I had last parked the snow machine. I carefully guided the snowmobile up the creek from where it was parked and was able to maneuver to where the grizzly lay. Skinning the animal was easy, other than the two feet of soft snow, which made it difficult to turn the animal over.

It was an interesting ride for the two of us on the snow machine during the trip home. The distance to my home’s back door from where the bear fell was 35 miles.

This was my first grizzly. At this point, I knew I had harvested a nice trophy, but had no idea how big the bear really was!

I called a taxidermist in North Pole to tell him what I had. Charlie Livingston of Alaska Wilderness Arts and Taxidermy was skeptical, at best, as I described the size of the animal to him. “How big? You have to be kidding!” he said.

Mr. Livingston had worked with scores of grizzly trophies and had not seen anything like I described. Unofficially green-scored by Glenn Stout, and subsequently by Mr. Livingston, it was pointed out that it may be

Listen to this story!

within a few sixteenths of the World’s Record grizzly.

The news that I had taken a big grizzly passed through Galena quickly. Galena, a traditional Native Athabaskan community, consists of about 650 people. Though half white now in cultural mix, many Natives still adhere to a lifestyle dependent upon natural resources. The interior grizzly is respected and typically not hunted alone. Many were in awe of the notion that I went out on a solo bear hunt.

I returned to the kill site the following weekend to reflect on the last moments of this hunt. I collected the moose antler the grizzly had dug up and chewed on. I measured the distance from where I was standing when I shot to where the bear was located at point of bullet impact. It was only 38 yards!

I am certain that it was this bear that had left the large tracks Glenn and I had spotted earlier. There aren’t that many big grizzlies out there. Most larger interior Alaska grizzlies taken by hunters measure six to seven feet in length. This one measured 8 feet 3 inches! This animal clearly is a trophy of 10 lifetimes.

To be able to step out and hunt from one’s back door and do a day-trip grizzly hunt is easy enough to do when living in rural “bush” Alaska. To cross paths with a Boone and Crockett bear is an entirely different matter. Mr. Livingston advised me, “My friend, you will not outdo this monster ever again.” n

Eugene C. Williams took this grizzly bear on a solo hunt near Kala Creek in Alaska, in 2001.

Introducing the Boone and Crockett Club Founders’ Circle

Founders’ Circle members are among the Boone and Crockett Club’s most committed and loyal donors who invest in our mission with gifts of $500,000 or more.

Our work simply would not be possible without their support. We are so proud of these members and their families who have helped us with our mission to conserve wild places and the wildlife that calls it home and to protect our hunting heritage.

With your gift of $500,000 or more (payable with 20% down and the balance payable over a maximum of 4 years) you can join this elite group of dedicated members. You will also join the ranks of the Wilderness Warrior Society and be presented with a limited-edition bronze of Theodore Roosevelt on horseback by Bob Scriver, a custom blazer, and an exclusive event at our annual meeting each year to recognize and honor your generosity.

If you would like more information about joining the Founders’ Circle, please contact Terrell McCombs at 210-818-8363

From left: R. Terrel McCombs, President, Boone and Crockett Club Foundation, Ben and Roxane Strickling, Bobby and Sharon Floyd, and Lee and Penny Anderson

The three inaugural members of the Founders’ Circle, pictured above, each made a $1 million pledge to the Boone and Crockett Club in 2023.

A GUIDE TO MEASURING BEARS

Spring is a time for new beginnings. Bears emerge from their dens and begin to explore and look for food. Mothers take care of their young and make sure they survive. Spring bear seasons are also ramping up, which means you may get more calls to score bear skulls for entry into the records.

Not to be outdone by the bears, the records department is also in a period of new beginnings. If you had a chance to read the fall issue of Fair Chase, you might know that longtime director of big game records, Justin Spring, recently accepted the executive director position with Pope and Young Club. We are very happy for him with this new chapter in his and his family’s life and wish him all the best. I am grateful for the time I got to work and learn from him during his tenure.

Beginning in October, the Boone and Crockett Club began the transition of moving me to the director of big game records position and Jennifer Schwab into the assistant director position. I was extremely honored to be considered and humbled to have been given this opportunity. As a young kid growing up in southcentral Pennsylvania hunting bushy tails and whitetails, I never would have thought that one day I would have the opportunity to work for the oldest conservation organization in North America and have a small part in the conservation of wildlife.

MEASURING BEARS

You might have noticed that much of this issue of Fair Chase is devoted to bears, which makes this a great opportunity to answer the question: How does one measure a bear skull? We have approximately 1,400 Official Measurers (OM) in North America, and their contact information is on our website. If you’re a trophy owner with a skull that will meet or exceed the entry minimums, we recommend scheduling a time and location with an OM. Please understand that our OMs are volunteers. We recommend trophy owners take a dry run at scoring before contacting an OM. If the score is close to the minimum, please contact an OM near you. If you need

to brush up on skull measuring, pick up the latest edition of our Official Measurer’s manual, How to Score North American Big Game , 5th edition, in our web store or by calling 406-542-1888.

Beginning on page 45 of How to Score North American Big Game, 5th edition Chapter 4, “Bears and Cats,” outlines the scoring process for skulls. A requirement to remember, mentioned later in this column, is that the skull must be completely clean to obtain an accurate measurement.

The tool used most commonly to

ABOVE: The green lines indicate the axis of a skull. Length (A) and width (B) measurements must be taken at a right angle to the other.

One method for scoring skulls is with a large pair of calipers. Determine the greatest measurement, carefully remove the calipers, and measure the distance between the two points with a ruler.

Kyle M. Lehr

B&C PROFESSIONAL MEMBER DIRECTOR OF BIG GAME RECORDS

Learn more about How to Score North American Big Game, 5th edition on page 39.

measure the length and width of the skull is a set of calipers—also available for purchase online. When measuring the length, the upper teeth can be included in the measurement as long as a tooth is not sticking straight out; the lower jaw can never be included in a length measurement.

For the width, if the zygomatic arches are unnaturally sprung and create an artificial width measurement, it is appropriate to lightly adjust the arches to their natural position.

BEAR SCORING POLICY

Within the manual are a couple of policies that relate specifically to measuring and scoring bear skulls. These are within Chapter 18, under “General Policies,” which starts on page 231.

The first policy often referenced is our clean skulls policy on page 232. This states that a skull must be completely cleaned of all adherent flesh, fat, and membrane before being measured. There is a misconception that only the areas that contact the measuring tool (calipers, boss square, levels, etc.) need to be cleaned. If the skull has been boiled or a degreaser or whitening agent was applied after cleaning, then the mandatory 60 consecutive days of drying at a habitable room temperature requirement resets.

What about beetles? Since dermestid beetles require a habitable room temperature to survive, we consider the time spent in the beetles as part of the 60 days. Remember, as previously mentioned, if any degreaser or whitening agent is applied after removal from the beetles, the drying period resets.

The second policy pertains to painted or dipped skulls. The paint or dipping must be completely removed to have the skull measured and entered. If we receive an entry where the photographs of the skull indicate the

skull has been dipped, we have to follow up to make sure this policy was adhered to.

The third policy regards a damaged trophy, whether the damage resulted from a bullet or saw blade. While damage to a trophy is not an immediate disqualification, it requires additional evaluation. If you have a damaged bear skull, please inform an Official Measurer before measuring. If possible, please wait to repair until after the trophy has been entered and accepted. We will request photographs of the break and the pieces put back into place. We are looking to see that the broken piece(s) fit seamlessly to ensure there is no question that they belong to the skull. Most often, this can be determined with photographs showing the pieces separated and held in place. On rare occasions, the skull and associated pieces may have to be shipped to our headquarters in Missoula, Montana, to determine if the broken piece(s) can be included in the measurements of the skull. All broken skulls (whether repaired or not) are handled case-by-case. A broken skull results in one of three outcomes: piece(s) included in the measurement, pieces excluded, or the skull is deemed ineligible for entry.

As with any new beginning, there are unknowns. However, I am excited and optimistic for the future and look forward to continuing the great legacy of the records program. With a solid foundation set forth by past directors (Harold Nesbitt, Jack Reneau, Justin Spring) and the records of North American big game committee, Jennifer and I are inspired to build upon that foundation. n

Scan the QR code to find an Official Measurer in your area.

Uncleaned skull

Dipped skull

Broken skull

OFFICIAL MEASURERS ON THE ROAD

B&C Sign-Up Incentive Program Leader Board

As of January 15, 2024

CONGRATS TO OUR TOP 10 PRIZE WINNERS!

1. Philip A. Herrnberger – 286

2. Stanley Zirbel – 175

3. Bucky Ihlenfeldt – 161

4. Ken Witt * – 113

5. Steven Taylor – 105

6. Dale Weddle – 90

7. Jerry E. Lunde – 58

8. John Bogucki * – 46

9. Matt Olson – 37

10. Robert Wood – 36

SEE THE COMPLETE LISTING IN THE COMMUNITIES SECTION ON OUR WEBSITE .

Each time an OM gets Someone to join B&C we put a credit by their name!

HERE’S THE BREAKDOWN

3 Members – $25 off any item in the B&C store

5 Members – Buck Knife

10 Members – B&C Boyt Sling

25 Members – OM Wool Vest

50 Members – SITKA Gear (value up to $350)

75 Members – YETI Package (value up to $500)

100 Members – Kimber Rifle

*deceased

150 Members – $800 Gift Card to Bass Pro Shops/Cabelas!

200 Associates – Vortex Optics Gear! (value up to $1400)

300 Members – Kenetrek Boot Package (value up to $1,500)

400 Members – Kimber Rifle! (value up to $1,500)

500 Members – Hotel & registration plus $500 travel stipend to the next Awards Banquet

Would you like to give an Official Measurer credit for your renewal? Let them know when it is your time to renew and they will provide their OMID number to include with your renewal so they will receive credit.

ABOVE: HP Giger scores a bison at the Dallas Safari Club convention.

BELOW: Bucky Ihlenfeldt scores a Columbia blacktail deer as Kyle Lehr, B&C Director of Big Game Records (right) looks on.

The Boone and Crockett Club had a booth at the Dallas Safari Club Convention on January 10-14, 2024, and the Wild Sheep Foundation's Sheep Show on January 18-20, 2024. Official Measurers HP Giger, Bucky Ihlenfeldt, Brett Ross, and Carl Frey volunteered at the shows.

FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE OF HUNTING

As the leader in defending your right to hunt worldwide, advocacy is SCI's top priority. Join our team as we stand strong to protect your hunting

By becoming a member of SCI, you strengthen the hunter's voice and join the fight for the future of hunting.

GENERATION NEXT

The Boone and Crockett Club celebrates young hunters who have embraced the outdoor way of life and embody the spirit of fair chase hunting. The following is a list of the most recent big game trophies accepted into Boone and Crockett Club’s 32nd Big Game Awards Program (2022-2024), that have been taken by a youth hunter (16 years or younger). All of the field photos in this section are from entries that are listed in this issue and are shown in bold orange text .

This listing represents only those trophies accepted since the winter 2023 issue of FairChasewas published.

Kaleb B. Blackett

MARK YOUR CALENDARS!

All youth hunters 16 years old or younger, who have a trophy accepted in our 32nd Awards (2022-2024) will receive an invitation to our Generation Next banquet, which will be held in the summer of 2025.

WE HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!

Ryan A. Anderson

Valerie L. Vande Corput

Callie F. Shifflett

RECENTLY ACCEPTED TROPHIES 32ND BIG GAME AWARDS LISTING AND PHOTO GALLERY

The following pages list the most recent big game trophies accepted into Boone and Crockett Club’s 32nd Big Game Awards Program, 2022-2024, which includes entries received between January 1, 2022, and December 31, 2024. All of the field photos in this section are from entries that are listed in this issue and are shown in bold green text .

This listing represents only those trophies accepted since the Winter 2023 issue of Fair Chase was published.

SPONSORED BY

Timothy K. Rushing took this typical Coues' whitetail deer, scoring 101 points, in 2023 while on a hunt in Sonora, Mexico. He was shooting a 6.5 PRC.

22 2/16 Garrett Co., MD Picked Up 2022 R. Newton

21 10/16 Duck Mountain, MB Danny L. Lawson 2023 J. Ramsey

21 9/16 Crow Wing Co., MN Brandon D. Wermter 2022 S. Grabow

21 6/16 Tyrrell Co., NC Travis M. Bonner 2022 R. Medford

21 3/16 Burnett Co., WI Unknown 2013 J. Lunde

21 3/16 Barron Co., WI Douglas R. Robinson 2021 K. Zimmerman

21 3/16 Bronson Forest, SK Bradley M. Rieland 2023 S. LeChasseur

21 2/16 Chippewa Co., WI James G. Springer 2018 J. Lunde

21 1/16 Hertford Co., NC Joseph H. Davis IV 2022 D. Boland

21 1/16 Carswell Lake, SK Michael A. LeMaster 2023 J. Riebel

21 Cass Co., MN Kyle J. Harazin 2022 S. Grabow

21 Riding Mt., MB Tyler C. Waldner 2023 P. Snedden

20 12/16 Dickinson Co., MI Samuel N. Wiltzius 2022 P. Gauthier

20 12/16 Chilliwack River, BC Adam J. Sarich 2023 A. Berreth

20 11/16 Kittson Co., MN Brian W. Field 2022 J. Zins

20 11/16 Lincoln Co., WI Peter J. Sherman 2022 T. Heil

20 9/16 Oconto Co., WI Jeffrey J. Johnson 2013 P. Gauthier

20 9/16 Cumberland Co., TN Jace K. Cowell 2022 T. Buchanan

20 9/16 Bronson Lake, SK Skyler D. Tupper 2023 S. LeChasseur

20 9/16 Polk Co., WI Aaron Zeuli 2020 K. Rimer

20 8/16 Garrett Co., MD Picked Up 2018 R. Newton

20 8/16 Washburn Co., WI Scott A. Kruse 2019 K. Rimer

20 8/16 Mesa Co., CO Jeffery A. Welch 2022 T. Hawkins

20 8/16 Potter Co., PA Corey R. Innis 2022 D. Hollingsworth

20 7/16 Beaver Lake, ON Paul J. Morey 2020 P. Martin

20 6/16 Bayfield Co., WI Jacob M. Livingston 2022 P. Gauthier

20 6/16 Spirit River, AB Wesley R. Kusilek 2023 J. Squires

20 5/16 Perry Co., PA Dayton M. Fulton 2022 M. Smith

20 5/16 Koochiching Co., MN David B. Richter 2022 K. Fredrickson

20 4/16 Monroe Co., PA Kerry T. Reider 2022 C. Scott

20 4/16 Taylor Co., WI Arthur W. Slater 2022 P. Jensen

20 4/16 Wabigoon Lake, ON Jeffrey R. Wockenfus 2023 J. Lunde

20 3/16 Pitkin Co., CO Jeffrey D. Shaw 2021 C. Hartford

20 2/16 Cochise Co., AZ Steven Ward 1996 B. Ihlenfeldt

20 2/16 Iron Co., WI Leslie A. Beyersdorf 2020 A. Sternagel

20 1/16 Ashland Co., WI Thomas M. Modaff 2022 T. Heil

20 Garrett Co., MD Picked Up 2010 R. Newton

20 Centre Co., PA Dwylan T. Krall 2022 R. Conner

TOP TO BOTTOM

In 2023, B&C Member Casey L. Dinkel harvested this 28-3/16-point Alaska brown bear while on a hunt near Unimak Island, Alaska. He was shooting a .375 H&H.

Tyler L. Heule was hunting near the Tanana River in Alaska, in 2023 when he harvested this grizzly bear scoring 24-9/16 points. He was shooting a .300 Winchester Mag.

This Atlantic walrus, scoring 96-2/8 points, was taken by B&C Lifetime Member Danny M. Spindler while hunting near Hall Beach, Nunavut, in 2022. He was shooting a .375 H&H.

Greg S. Neath took this cougar, scoring 14-8/16 points, in 2022 while on a hunt in Utah County, Utah. He was shooting a .300 Savage. This woodland caribou, scoring 283 points, was taken by B&C Member Rick A. Tromble while hunting near Rainy Lake, Newfoundland, in 2022. He was shooting a .300 Winchester Mag.

TOP TO BOTTOM

TYPICAL WHITETAIL DEER CONTINUED

163 6/8 169 Martin Co., IN

163 6/8 175 7/8 Buffalo Co., WI

163 3/8 171 7/8 Bureau Co., IL

162 5/8 186 4/8 Gibson Co., IN

162 4/8 175 Noble Co., OH

Jacob M. Ivey 2022 S. Taylor

Steven S. Bautch 2022 G. Wegner

Tyler R. McCombs 2022 T. Kalsbeck

Kenneth L. Nurrenbern 2022 M. Verble

Hunter D. Schott 2021 R. Huffman

162 3/8 178 6/8 Thames River, ON Harry B. Wust 2022 S. Swinhoe

162 2/8 167 6/8 Henry Co., KY

162 171 3/8 Schuylkill Co., PA

161 6/8 164 7/8 Perry Co., IN

161 5/8 175 6/8 Wabash Co., IN

161 3/8 168 6/8 Wright Co., MN

161 1/8 168 Todd Co., MN

160 6/8 172 1/8 Grundy Co., MO

160 5/8 165 5/8 Essex Co., MA

160 4/8 168 3/8 Orange Co., IN

160 2/8 179 7/8 Woodbury Co., IA

160 1/8 164 1/8 Adair Co., KY

NON-TYPICAL WHITETAIL DEER

Chris E. Lindsey 2010 S. Taylor

Evan T. Corondi 2019 D. Mitchell

Dakota L. Brown 2021 S. Taylor

Jaxton C. Peas 2021 R. Graber

Zachary A. Raymond 2022 R. Rocheleau

Patrick T. Donaldson 2022 J. Lunde

Dale L. Black 2019 R. Falconer

Edmond J. Solomon II 2021 R. Blaisdell

Rodney Stoll 2021 S. Taylor

Steven E. Verbeski 2022 J. Weltz

Gary M. Neuper 2022 R. Estes

WORLD’S RECORD SCORE 333-7/8 - MINIMUM ENTRY SCORE 185

235 6/8 250 6/8 Will Co., IL

216 6/8 225 3/8 Johnson Co., MO

214 1/8 218 5/8 Mills Co., IA

207 212 2/8 Sawyer Co., WI

206 6/8 211 1/8 Adams Co., IA

206 4/8 213 1/8 Logan Co., OH

205 3/8 212 1/8 Wapello Co., IA

201

David A. 2022 R. Holohan Heinemann, Jr.

Leslie J. Frampton 2022 D. Hollingsworth

Tony N. Joy 2022 L. Grimes

Edwin Hanson 1936 J. Haupt

Cory D. Watts 2022 T. Paul

Bryan B. Gantz 2022 R. Wood

Randy D. Van Blaricome 2019 C. Coble

M. Wheeler 2023 R. Wood

195 6/8 202 St. Louis Co., MO Brian J. Gailis 2021 S. Corley

191 5/8 202 Platte Co., MO Jacob N. Kaullen 2022 J. Blystone

190 5/8 202 7/8 Shelby Co., OH Justin H. Wagner 2022 W. Bellman

189 2/8 197 Lyon Co., KS Greg Carroll 2010 L. Lueckenhoff

188 193 2/8 Henry Co., IA Drew B. Theobald 2022 C. Coburn

187 1/8 194 Jefferson Co., NE

D. Gardner 2019 J. Ohmer

187 195 6/8 Saddle Hills, AB Brant N. Dreger 2021 D. Watson

186 4/8 191 5/8 Monroe Co., WI Hunter J. Davis 2020 J. Gander

186 4/8 192 Todd Co., MN

Sipe

TOP TO BOTTOM

This typical whitetail deer, scoring 161-5/8 points, was taken by Jaxton C. Peas while hunting in Wabash County, Indiana, in 2021. He was shooting a 6.5 Creedmoor.

In 2023, Wesley R. Kusilek harvested this 20-6/16-point black bear while on a hunt near Spirit River, Alberta. He was shooting a .300 Winchester Mag.

B&C Member Jacob N. Kaullen was hunting in Platte County, Missouri, in 2022 when he harvested this non-typical whitetail deer scoring 191-5/8 points. He was shooting a 6.5 Creedmoor.

BOTTOM LEFT:

In 2022, Jorden R. Byers harvested this 202-6/8-point Canada moose while on an archery party hunt with her parents near Lake Timiskaming, Ontario.

MOOSE AND CARIBOU

C. Rush 2008 B. Smith

163 3/8 171 4/8 Cassia Co., ID Michael J. Guardipee 2020 E. Bartholomew

160 4/8 162 5/8 Stevens Co., WA Jeremiah G.M. Johnson 2021 J. Weise

155 2/8 165 7/8 Stevens Co., WA Brian E. Jennen 2022 S. Duchow

150 2/8 155 6/8 Teton Co., WY Ella M. Howard 2022 R. Bonander

MOUNTAIN CARIBOU - WORLD’S RECORD SCORE 459-3/8 - MINIMUM ENTRY SCORE 360 387 5/8 396 2/8 Godlin Lakes, NT Harry J. Hooke 2022 E. Swanson

364 5/8 383 5/8 Cassiar Mts., BC Dean McGeough 2021 F. Pringle

WOODLAND CARIBOU - WORLD’S RECORD SCORE 419-5/8 - MINIMUM ENTRY SCORE 265

308 4/8 315 5/8 Middle Ridge, NL Thomas A. Weber 2021 G. Beaulieu

283 290 1/8 Rainy Lake, NL Rick A. Tromble 2022 K. Farmer

281 1/8 293

HORNED GAME

In 2021, B&C Member Kyle E. Kubovcsak harvested this 225-1/8-point Alaska-Yukon moose while on a hunt near the Chandalar River in Alaska. He was shooting a .300 Winchester Short Magnum.

TOP TO BOTTOM

Zachary J. Walton, a B&C Member, was bowhunting in Sonora, Mexico, in 2023 when he harvested this non-typical Coues’ whitetail deer scoring 120 points.

This musk ox, scoring 112 points, was taken by Terrence L. Kraemer while hunting near Baker Lake, Nunavut, in 2022. He was shooting a .300 Remington Ultra Mag. RIGHT:

B&C Member Aldo J. Alonso was hunting in Cochise County, Arizona, in 2022 when he harvested this typical Coues' whitetail deer scoring 119-5/8 points. He was shooting a 6.5 PRC.

MORE TO THE SCORE

BRITISH COLUMBIA BLACK BEAR

LEFT TOP TO BOTTOM

This pronghorn, scoring 82-6/8 points, was taken by B&C Official Measurer Mark D. Sipe while hunting in Navajo County, Arizona in 2023. He was shooting a 7mm Remington Mag.

In 2022, B&C Member Braden T. Herle harvested this 174-2/8-point typical whitetail deer while on a hunt near Peace River in Alberta. He was shooting a .30-06 Springfield.

BELOW:

Paul R. Applegarth was hunting in Uintah County, Utah, in 2019 when he harvested this bison scoring 122-4/8 points. He was shooting a .300 Winchester Mag.

Adam Sarich is no stranger to the Boone and Crockett records. This massive black bear from B.C. is his fourth record-book entry in as many years. He entered a Rocky Mountain goat in 2020, a typical Columbia blacktail in 2021, and a Stone’s sheep in 2022—all from his home province of British Columbia. We can’t wait to see what he’s got coming in 2024.

HUNTER: Adam J. Sarich

SCORE: 20-12/16 points

LOCATION: Chilliwack River, British Columbia

YEAR TAKEN: 2023

See all MORE TO THE SCORE online.

FIELD PHOTOGRAPHY TIP

Taking a presentable photograph of your bear is one of the most difficult shots to achieve, but with a little determination and planning you will end up with a photograph you will be proud to share. Here are a few key point to remember next time you're in the field:

n Remove any visible blood on or around the animal.

n Make sure the tongue is not visible and the mouth is closed.

n Bears generally photograph better belly down with their legs to the front and back, not on their sides. Do not stand over the bear. Get your camera down to its level for the best shot.

n We frequently receive field photos of bears that are hanging or with the hunter sitting on the animal. These shots are not flattering to the bear or the hunter.

TO BOTTOM

N. Tatman

180 1/8 181 Fergus Co., MT Casey J. Wheeler 2022 B. Milliron

178 7/8 180 Missoula Co., MT Chandler L. Paulson 2020 K. Lehr

175 176 Taos Co., NM Joseph R. Doby 2022 R. Henicke

DESERT SHEEP - WORLD’S RECORD SCORE 205-1/8 - MINIMUM ENTRY SCORE 165

174 175 1/8 Sonora, MX Grant R. Smith 2022 M. Verble

172 5/8 173 2/8 Clark Co., NV Kenneth R. Depaoli 2019 J. Mortensen

172 4/8 172 6/8 San Gary R. Schenone 2023 J. Fischer Bernardino Co., CA

168 6/8 169 1/8 Sonora, MX Timothy K. Rushing 2023 L. Gorchesky

167 1/8 167 5/8 Baja California Terry W. Rathert 2023 R. Skinner Sur, MX STONE’S SHEEP - WORLD’S RECORD SCORE 196-6/8 - MINIMUM ENTRY SCORE 160

170 171 Surprise Lake, YT Benjamin J. Rawls 2016 D. Hart

164 164 3/8

B&C Member Terry Rathert took this desert sheep, scoring 167-1/8 points, in 2023 while on a hunt in Baja California Sur, Mexico. He was shooting a .270 Winchester.

In 2022, Joseph R. Doby harvested this 175-point bighorn sheep while on a hunt in Taos County, New Mexico. He was shooting a 7mm SAUM.

WANT TO SEE MORE?

Log in to the Communities Section to see our Searchable Field Photos. You will have access to our database of thousands of field photographs of B&C record-book big game animals in the field—both current images and vintage photos. Use the search filters to view results by year, species, location, or name.

TOP

This Rocky Mountain goat, scoring 47-2/8 points, was taken by John R. Mehall in 2022 while hunting in Summit County, Colorado. He was shooting a .338 Ultra Mag.

IT JUST KEEPS HAPPENING.

NO MATTER THE HUNTER, DISTANCE, CARTRIDGE OR ANIMAL, THE TERMINAL ASCENT™ STORY ALWAYS ENDS THE SAME.

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160 Yards

96% Weight Retention 6.5 PRC Whitetail Deer

400 Yards

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997 Yards

99% Weight Retention 300 Win. Magnum Oryx

CONSISTENTLY TERMINAL

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