The Ishi Award

PRESERVE.

PROMOTE. PROTECT.

From Bowhunting Big Game Records, 1 ST Edition, 1975 e infrequently presented Ishi Award is the highest honor that the Pope and Young Club can bestow upon a bowhunter. It is awarded only when a truly outstanding North American big game trophy animal is deserving of recognition. A nomination and selection committee, comprised wholly of the to civilized man until daybreak on the morning of August 29, 1911. at day the dawn stillness was shattered by the excited barking of dogs. Roused from their sleep, the occupants of a slaughterhouse near the village of Oroville, California investigated the racket. e story behind the award really begins with its Indian namesake who was completely unknown e professors took Ishi back to San Francisco with them and gave him living quarters in the University’s Museum. It was here that Dr. Saxton Pope, an instructor at the University School of Medicine, was called in to make a physical examination of the Indian. is professional meeting developed into a strong friendship. Soon Ishi was showing Dr. Pope and his companion, Art Young, how to make and use bows and arrows for hunting. Although Ishi lived only five years in civilization before succumbing to tuberculosis, his memory lives on in the writings of Pope and eodora Kroeber, the wife of one of the professors who first befriended him.

Cowering in a corner of their corral, emaciated from starvation and near the limits of fear and exhaustion, was a primitive Indian. e terrorstricken man, obviously believing he was about to be killed, was taken into custody and housed in the Oroville jail.

Communication with his captors and “civilized” Indians living nearby proved impossible; however, news of the savage’s capture soon spread and reached the attention of two professors of anthropology at the University of California. ese two men, Professors Alfred Kroeber and T.T. Waterman journeyed from San Francisco to Oroville with the hope of discovering the ancestry of this “wild man.” Finally, a er unsuccessfully trying many different tribal tongues, Professor Waterman spoke a word in the Yana language, which was met with an instant response.

Club’s Board of Directors, determines each selection a er careful evaluation.

At last, the Indian could be told he was not facing imminent death at the hands of the white men. Reassured, his appetite improved, and he began to quickly adjust to life in what for him was surely a strange new world. And so Ishi, the last surviving member of the ancient tribe of Yana Indians, was transported directly from the Stone Age into a complex, modern society.

Consequently, in late 1962 when the Pope and Young Club introduced the idea for a special bowhunting award, Dick Mauch’s suggestion that it be named in honor of Ishi was met with an immediate and enthusiastic response. A er all, it was Ishi who had instilled in Pope and Young the love of the bow and its use as an efficient hunting tool. What then could be more appropriate than honoring the individual who had done most to inspire the “fathers of modern bowhunting?”

Luke Brewster’s Non-Typical Whitetail Deer e Ishi award concept belongs to Mauch, Glenn St. Charles, Fred Bear, and Chuck Kroll. ey had been searching for an award like the Boone and Crockett Club’s coveted Sagamore Hill Medal