While Wisconsin has plenty of game to hunt like turkey, upland birds—and even elk and wolves—it’s the whitetail deer and black bears that make the record book. In fact, their black bears are consistently in the top 100, and they have been since 2000. To hunt one of the state’s 24,000 estimated bruins, hunters have to apply for roughly 11,500 permits. More than 129,000 hunters applied in 2021.…
When it comes to hunting big game, the Cowboy State has it all—and we’re not getting paid to say that. Just look at the records. With more than a dozen categories and nearly that many species, Wyoming is hard to beat for bison, elk, pronghorn, Shiras’ moose, mule deer, and even cougars. The state leads the records for top entries of Shiras’ moose and a few typical mule deer break into the top…
Modern wildlife management through regulated hunting has never pushed any species to threatened or endangered levels, and there’s no science to suggest it would happen with wolves, either.
The Boone and Crockett Club is offering this simple, historical fact to activist groups threatening new lawsuits designed to forestall state management of gray wolves.
2009 Spur Awards Honor Best Westerns
Much like Wyoming, Colorado is a sporting paradise. Roaming those sage-covered hillsides, record-book mule deer were quite numerous, especially in the top 20. A few pronghorn and black bear make an appearance in the top 100. The antlers belonging to John Plute’s famous “meat bull” were pulled out of Dark Canyon after the locals didn’t believe him when he told them how big the antlers were.…
Not surprisingly, Arizona is home to a number of desert-dwelling, record-book entries. From pronghorn to desert sheep to Coues’ deer and even a century-old jaguar. This is Grand Canyon country in the north and to the south, you find yourself in true organ pipe cactus territory. Pronghorn have a solid grip on the top 10 entries, but desert sheep reign supreme in Arizona record-book entries.…
This may be the Land of 10,000 Lakes, but it doubles as the land of big whitetail bucks, some Canada moose, black bear and even a top five non-typical elk that died of pneumonia after it got its antlers stuck in the mud—true story! The big typical whitetail deer made the records many, many years ago. To be honest, the top black bear entries and that non-typical elk all happened in the 21st…
California is long, like more than 1,000 miles long. Thanks to that north-south spread and being along the Pacific Coast, it has some truly unique antlered animals that happen to like wet climates—and they can get pretty big, too. Granted it’s the only state with tule elk, so it has a lock on those entries, but Columbia blacktail have a solid showing in the records, as do Roosevelt’s elk.…
