Why the Club Is Named after Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett

When the Boone and Crockett Club was founded by George Bird Grinnell and Theodore Roosevelt in 1887, it was named after two legendary frontiersmen. Here’s why.  

Imagine being invited to dinner by Theodore Roosevelt, and then being asked to help him create (and name) a hunting organization dedicated to conserving the last remaining wild places and wildlife that lived there. This was no small order, but 10 of his close friends did just this. 

One of the first orders of business was naming this organization. While there are no actual transcripts or minutes from this dinner, there is evidence to suggest why this group chose to name the Club after their heroes: Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, “...names that are synonymous with America's pioneering vitality and with rugged individualism, the very personification of the soul of Nimrod, the hunter,” as noted in the the Records of North American Big Game, 9th Edition. 

Who was Daniel Boone? 

Daniel Boone was born in 1735 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Lacking a formal education, Boone’s adventurous nature led him to acquire exceptional skills in woodcraft at a young age. Even at a time when self-reliance and courage were commonplace virtues among the people of frontier communities, Boone was distinguished for his uncommon boldness, enterprise, and skill as a longhunter—a woodsman who spent months away from home in the wilderness building a cache of meat and hides.

Whatever the true measure of Daniel Boone’s motivations, character, and skills, he came to symbolize that mythical cadre of leatherstocking frontiersmen who bridged the time and place between wildland and civilization.

At 34, Daniel Boone, in the company of five others, pressed into the wilds of what is now Kentucky. At a site along the Kentucky River, he constructed a fort (Boonesboro) and soon settled his family and 30 volunteers there.
Boone’s proficiency in carving a settlement from the wilderness, provisioning it by trapping and hunting, and defending it, became legendary. Boone remained in Kentucky until 1795, playing a prominent role in the territory's history until statehood in 1792. When the state was surveyed, his land claims were disputed. So, Boone moved to Missouri, then a Spanish province, where he had been awarded a grant of 8,000 acres. With the Louisiana Purchase, Boone again lost his holdings, but Congress awarded him a parcel of 850 acres.

A popular notion about Daniel Boone is that he moved westward from Kentucky to find “elbow room”—solitude and distance from advancing civilization. While a man contemptuous of urban surroundings and the trappings of regimented life, Boone was never in retreat from civilization. His pluck and woodsmanship were the stuff of tales and folklore. Boone himself was both amused and sometimes annoyed by his celebrity status.

Whatever the true measure of Daniel Boone’s motivations, character, and skills, he came to symbolize that mythical cadre of leatherstocking frontiersmen who bridged the time and place between wildland and civilization.

At the end of his life in 1820, Boone recognized and lamented the unnecessary loss and decline of wildlife from the expanding civilizations he had helped establish. Yet, he remained drawn to the hunt and continued hunting into his 80s. Boone became one of the first folk heroes of a young nation. He blazed the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap in 1775—a crucial passage into Kentucky for thousands of settlers. He served as a militia officer during the American Revolutionary War, particularly involved in conflicts in Kentucky between settlers and British-allied Native Americans. His real-life exploits inspired numerous stories (some even true)  and his enduring status as an archetypal American frontier hero, sometimes overshadowed by myth. 

Who Was Davy Crockett? 

Davy Crockett (1786–1836) was an American frontiersman, politician, and folk hero famously known as the "King of the Wild Frontier." He grew up in eastern Tennessee, earning a reputation as a skilled hunter and storyteller. He ran away from home as a teenager, living independently for several years while honing his frontier skills. Crockett published his autobiography in 1834, which was most likely written by him, although perhaps with some assistance from a ghostwriter. “In the following pages I have endeavoured to give the reader a plain, honest, homespun account of my state in life, and some few of the difficulties which have attended me along its journey down to this time,” he wrote in the book’s preface. One of his numerous claims to fame is that he, along with his dogs, killed more than 100 bears in a seven-month stretch. 

Crockett served as a militia officer and fought in the Creek War (1813–1815). Later, he entered politics, being elected to the Tennessee state legislature in 1821 and then serving multiple terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Notably, he opposed President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act, which contributed to his defeat in the 1831 election. In 1833, he bid Tennessee farewell, stating, “You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.” 

After he moved to Texas (then part of Mexico), he participated in the Texas Revolution. He died at the Battle of the Alamo in 1836, either in combat or by execution after capture. 

“Both Boone and Crockett were the archetypal American buckskin hunter, full of grit, determination, and savvy afield,” wrote George B. Ward and Richard McCabe in Records of North American Big Game, 9th Edition. “They symbolize still the restlessness and sense of adventure that lie deep and indelibly within the breast of every true hunter. And for the past 100 years, their names have been linked in the title of an organization that is widely and correctly associated with conservation of America's natural resources, and with the best traditions of sport hunting.”