Quebec offers French Canadian big game traditions

Home to Mount Rushmore and the Badlands, South Dakota is also a great state in which to hunt bison, whitetail and mule deer, elk, and even pronghorn. Bison entries abound from Custer County in the southwest. The state’s largest bighorn killed in 2018 sits solidly in the top five of all time. Deer entries aren’t as common as they were decades ago, but elk are starting to make the book there.…

Saskatchewan delivers legendary whitetails

Elvis Presley wasn’t a big game hunter, which is too bad. His Graceland estate sits in Shelby County, which according to the Boone and Crockett Club’s County Search Tool, holds a number of the state’s record-book whitetail deer entries. Montgomery County, though, is the big winner with the most book entries of the state’s counties. And the real wild card is Sumner County, home to an insane non…

Utah is home to the current World’s Record non-typical American elk and black bear. It’s great for mule deer, too. The problem is that everyone knows that. If you apply for a tag to hunt in a trophy unit there, buy a Powerball ticket at the same time—your odds of winning are likely the same. Fear not wishful hunter. There are “average Joe” hunts if you take the time to look. With varied…

For such a massive state, Texas boasts very little public land. Hopefully you know a buddy with a big ranch. If not, plenty of guides and outfitters will be happy to lead you to find some decent whitetail bucks and some even better (scoring) pronghorn. There’s even an elk entry from 1934, but because they are not considered a game animal today, elk can’t be entered into the records. There’s…

The Palmetto State palms trophy whitetails

Yukon offers true wilderness big game hunting

For hunters and anglers, the great state of Washington may only be rivaled by Alaska. A number of record-book Columbia whitetail deer came out of the state before Y2K never happened. Since then, the pickings have been slim. Never fear; there’s plenty more to hunt. You can always shift your sights on elk—Rocky Mountain in the east or Roosevelt’s in the west. There’s Shiras’ moose for those…

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.…