Famous Hunters in the Record Books: Part Two

By PJ DelHomme 

We’ve got country music stars, inventors, entrepreneurs, race car drivers, and international dignitaries in the second installment of famous hunters in the Boone and Crockett records.

The Boone and Crockett Club has more than 60,000 big game entries, with some dating back to the 1800s. Along the way, a few entries are tied to recognizable names. Other names aren’t quite as recognizable until you mention what those individuals accomplished in their lives. Here are a few more of those entries, some household names, others not so much.

George Strait, Country Music Legend

With over 60 #1 hits, George Strait is known as the King of Country. Even if you’re not a country music fan, you’ve likely heard of "All My Exes Live in Texas" (1987) and “Amarillo by Morning” (1983). When he wasn’t selling out stadiums—his final concert of "The Cowboy Rides Away Tour" in 2014 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, set an indoor concert attendance record with over 104,000 fans—he was trying to relax at his ranch in South Texas. Thanks to his Texas roots, he hasn’t been shy about his love for hunting. In a 2013 interview with Cowboys & Indians magazine, Strait said, "I just love being out on the ranch—hunting, roping, or just riding around checking things out." As for his record entry, Strait has a typical whitetail entry from Webb County, Texas. It scores 182-6/8 points and is ranked at #34 for the state, according to Big Game Records LIVE.

Joseph-Armand Bombardier, Inventor of the Snowmobile

Joseph-Armand Bombardier (1907-1964) was a Canadian inventor, businessman, and founder of Bombardier. His most famous invention, the snowmobile (particularly the Ski-Doo launched in 1959), revolutionized winter travel. His passion was mechanical engineering and solving winter transportation problems. By 1958, he was focused on developing and perfecting his recreational snow vehicles, which would later become the Ski-Doo snowmobile. His company, Bombardier, was already successful in producing snow buses and tracked vehicles for various commercial and military applications.

There isn’t much known about Bombaridier’s hunting exploits except that he loved to go moose hunting around Gouin Dam in Quebec. This is the area where he killed a Canada moose in 1958, which scored 185-6/8. André Beaudry was a B&C Official Measurer and researched some background info on Bombardier’s moose. He found a letter from one of Bombardier’s hunting companions who hunted with him from 1952 to 1962. The letter described hunting trips of at least two weeks, with plenty of moose, pike, and card games for any appetite. Today, the moose Bombardier killed in 1958 is a prominent feature of the J. Armand Bombardier Museum of Ingenuity in Valcourt, Quebec.

James Liautaud, Founder of Jimmy John’s

Jimmy John Liautaud, founder of Jimmy John’s sandwich shop, has four bighorn sheep in the records, including a potential New Mexico state record. According to an interview on the Blood Origins podcast, his journey into hunting began in the mid-1980s, when a friend invited him on a sheep hunt in Alaska. Liautaud had never hunted before, aside from shooting squirrels with a BB gun as a kid. But his Dall’s sheep hunt in the Alaska Range proved transformative and sparked a lifelong passion. Since then, he has completed the Super Slam and Goat Slam, describing hunting as a journey that evolved with time, providing him a sense of balance for his personal and professional life. In addition to those bighorns, Liautaud has three pronghorn, a Rocky Mountain goat, and mule deer, according to Big Game Records LIVE.

His Imperial Highness Abdorreza Pahlavi of Iran

His Imperial Highness (H.I.H) Prince Abdorreza Pahlavi of Iran was the half-brother of the last Iranian monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Before his exile from Iran because of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the prince used his position and contacts to conserve big game resources in both Iran and around the world. A Harvard graduate who studied government and economics, Prince Abdorezza was the founder and president of the International Foundation for the Conservation of Game (IGF). He also worked to create Iran’s first game laws and more than 20 million acres of reserves and parks in Iran. For his conservation efforts, he was presented with the Weatherby Award in 1962, whose winners include Jack O’Connor, Jim Shockey, and Craig Boddington.

We know the prince hunted Alaska and Wyoming, with his first record-book entry being a barren ground caribou from Alaska’s Talkeetna Mountains in 1960. He killed an Alaska brown bear on Kodiak Island in 1967 and a Wyoming bison the same year. His last official entry was in 1988 with an Alaska-Yukon moose from the Kugururok River region of Alaska. The records show that he spent a week in Alaska and shot his moose at 80 yards with a 7mm mag. It scored a respectable 225-6/8 points.

Johnny Unser, Race Car Driver

Johnny Unser is a member of the Unser racing dynasty, with plenty of racing accomplishments himself. He competed in five Indianapolis 500 races, with a best finish of 18th, and participated in the Indy Racing League and CART series during the 1990s. Beyond IndyCar, he won championships in the American IndyCar Series, earning rookie of the year honors there, and claimed victory in the 12 Hours of Sebring endurance race in 1989. He also finished second in class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and competed eight times in the 24 Hours of Daytona. He won the challenging Alcan 5000 Rally three times. After retiring from active racing, he has served as a race steward, driver coach, and technical advisor, and he owns a racing and karting facility in Colorado. In 1992, Unser found time to kill Idaho’s third-largest pronghorn in the records at 86-6/8 points.

 

The Importance of Records in Big Game Management

When you enter your trophy into the Boone and Crockett system, you aren’t just honoring the animal and its habitat. You are participating in a data collection system that started in the 1920s and was refined by Club members in 1950. Today, there are nearly 60,000 trophy records. By establishing a records database more than 70 years ago, the Boone and Crockett Club established a scientific baseline from which researchers can use to study wildlife management. If you’re still  on the fence about entering your trophy, we encourage you to read Why Should I Bother to Enter My Trophy. To the best of our ability, we ensure that the trophies entered into the records were taken in accordance with the tenets of fair chase ethics. Despite what some may think, the Boone and Crockett records are not about a name or a score in a book—because in the end, there’s so much more to the score.