As a scientist, mountaineer, author, and incredibly good liar, Clarence King led a secret double life that has only recently come to light.
Conservation
Where Hunting Happens, Conservation Happens™
B&C Member Spotlight
Boone and Crockett Club members have come from a cross-section of famous accomplished people whose lives and careers have written and recorded the history of this country since the late 19th Century. They have been naturalists, scientists, explorers and sportsmen, writers and academicians, artists, statesmen and politicians, generals, bankers, financiers, philanthropists, and industrialists. Their diversity of ideas and activities during their careers have made the Boone and Crockett Club rich in its fellowship and achievements. Below you'll find spotlights of early B&C members. This is a work in progress and additional spotlights will continue to be featured.
The man who brought us Kodak and revolutionized film photography was a big game hunter and Boone and Crockett Club member.
After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, aviator James Doolittle led a daring bombing mission over mainland Japan, earning him the Congressional Medal of Honor—one of three Boone and Crockett Club members. When he wasn’t serving his country, Doolittle often could be found hunting big game, his self-professed favorite sport.
As far as I know, I am the only white man who kills tigres with a spear.” —Sasha Siemel
In 1887, Theodore Roosevelt returned from his Elkhorn Ranch in the Dakota Territory with an idea. He would assemble a group of like-minded, influential men to turn the tide in favor of conserving our nation’s resources, which, at the time, was vanishing quickly. This is how he did it. Like any good...
By PJ DelHomme At 22, Arthur Dugmore arrived in New York City with 55 cents in his pocket. From there, he conned his way into a good job and found a calling—producing some of the best wildlife photographs the world had ever seen. Before he was 20, Arthur Radclyffe Dugmore sailed a schooner across...
By PJ DelHomme As a writer, war correspondent, journalist, explorer, and sports fanatic, Caspar Whitney combined his love of writing and sport to bring Club members and their words into homes across America. By today’s standards, Caspar Whitney was a jock among jocks. From boyhood to his career, he...
The Boone and Crockett Club's dedication to the conservation of North American wildlife spans 117 years. Yet not all members have been North Americans or involved with conservation on that continent. One of the most recognized of the early B&C members was the Englishman Frederick Courteney...
Sidekicks never get the accolades they deserve. Boone and Crockett member Horace Albright is one of them. As the second director of the National Park Service (NPS) and assistant to the agency’s first director, Stephen Mather, Albright was an honest and devoted employee of the newly created agency...
George Shiras III was a member of the Boone and Crockett Club, and a member of the governing board of the National Geographic Society for 25 years. He helped write legislation creating Olympic National Park. George also discovered several species of wildlife, including Alces americana shirasi, the “Yellowstone” moose.
By PJ DelHomme When he caught wealthy tourists defacing Yellowstone National Park with their initials, he tossed them in jail. When he caught poachers killing Yellowstone’s bison, he kicked the poachers out—and likely conspired to pressure Congress for stricter protections. That was Boone and...
Although the original intent of the Boone and Crockett Club was “to work for the preservation of the wild animal life of this country,” members have not confined themselves to America. Carl Akeley was an African adventurer, explorer, and conservationist who twice nearly lost his life battling African game.
By PJ DelHomme Fred “Papa” Bear’s innovations to bowhunting gear and marketing vaulted the pastime into the mainstream. What is seldom discussed is his passion for conservation and his quest to establish a tax (for conservation) on the very products he sold. What started in the corner of a small...
By PJ DelHomme His adventures started with chasing Columbia blacktails in California, then they spread north to Alaska and beyond. Thankfully for us, Prentiss Gray kept meticulous journals of his travels—all while compiling and editing the Club’s first records book. Boone and Crockett Club members...
By PJ DelHomme Explorer, taxidermist, prisoner, big-game hunter, devoted husband—James Clark was all of them. In the Boone and Crockett library, there are rare first editions, and then there are truly special books that provide a small but significant window into the personal lives of past members...
By PJ DelHomme As a tax lawyer turned conservation warrior, Russell Train had the ear of numerous U.S. presidents in the 1960s and ‘70s. As a result, his legacy lives on in the legislation he helped drive to the finish line. Born in 1920, Russell Train had deep roots in American soil. His forbears...
A Voice and an Artist for Conservation — In the early 1930s, the Bureau of Biological Survey was so poorly reputed that there were calls for its dissolution. One man saved it, a man who was a most unlikely candidate. He had no prior administrative experience, had never worked in a bureaucracy, had never run for public office, and was not even a biologist. He was, amazingly, a political cartoonist.
A Boone and Crockett Club member for 54 years, Lee Merriam Talbot was the primary author of the Endangered Species Act of 1973. That alone is a lifetime achievement, but there is so much more to the man who dedicated his life’s work to conservation—and humbly averted death numerous times.
More than anyone, George Bird Grinnell influenced, directed, and solidified the conservation movement during its early years. He also orchestrated the activity of many other conservation leaders, some of whom will be topics of future biographies. His avoidance of self-promotion, and his desire to often work “behind the scenes,” has left him largely unheralded today.
One of the few books ever issued "With the Approval of the Boone and Crockett Club is "The Rim of Mystery: A Hunter's Wanderings in Unknown Siberian Asia", by John Bird Burnham. Burnham, a Boone and Crockett Club member, along with a companion, Andrew M. Taylor, embarked on a five-month expedition to the remote Chukotsk Peninsula of Northeastern Siberia to determine whether wild sheep existed there and to what species they belonged.
Wildlife artist Carl Rungius traveled extensively across Canada and the American West, sketching and painting the big game he encountered. His work showed city folks on the East Coast what they would lose if they didn’t take seriously a new concept called conservation.
As the father of wildlife ecology and a driving force behind the creation of a wilderness system, Aldo Leopold left a monumental legacy for conservation.
Roy Chapman Andrews was a hunter but not necessarily for big game. He hunted the past for bones and adventure. Hollywood rumors claim that he was the inspiration for Harrison Ford’s character in the Indiana Jones saga. Both men were archaeologists, fought bandits, hated snakes, and explored far-off lands. The parallels are uncanny, but there was one big difference. Indiana Jones was never a member of the Boone and Crockett Club.
Explorer, legislator, public servant, duck lover, and businessman, Frederic C. Walcott was an early member of the Boone and Crockett Club who served as Club president. His conservation achievements still resonate today, especially when it comes to waterfowl and wildlife refuges.
As a young boy, Thomas Gilbert Pearson killed more than a few egrets to make money by selling their feathers. As he got older, he shifted his efforts from market hunting to conservation. Pearson would eventually become a founding member of the National Audubon Society, active member of the Boone and Crockett Club and a friend to birds and big game alike.
Yellowstone’s Rock Star – As a founding member of the Boone and Crockett Club, this quiet geologist wasn’t a hunter, but he was a force for conservation, especially when it came to Yellowstone.
As one of the original members of the Boone and Crockett Club, Albert Bierstadt documented the disappearing landscape of the American West—people and wildlife included. For that reason, he was recruited to help save it. In 1864, the United States had already endured three gruesome years of the...
Six years after George Bird Grinnell and Theodore Roosevelt founded the Boone and Crockett Club, Grinnell sponsored for membership a young, assertive New Yorker named Madison Grant. The year was 1893. Grant had many successful years representing the Club, but he also became one of America’s most...
Conservation’s Most Unsung Hero By PJ DelHomme In a speech promoting passage of the Lacey Act of 1900, Lacey told Congress that, “I have always been a lover of the birds, and I have always been a hunter as well, for today there is no friend that the birds have like the true sportsman—the man who...
Henry Fairfield Osborn was admitted in 1899 as an Associate Member (now called Professional Member) and by 1913 had been elected as an Honorary Life Member. As of 2021, only 42 Members have been so honored. Osborn was the preeminent vertebrate paleontologist (one who studies ancient life forms) of...
The Great American Zoologist By Theodore J. Holsten, B&C Emeritus Member, excerpt from Fair Chase Magazine Hornaday (left) at Max Seiber's cabin (far right) near Hell Creek in Northeast Montana in October 1901. Also pictured is photographer Larry A. Huffman (center). A close associate of many...
Even though he suffered from severe mental illness, early Boone and Crockett Club member Stephen Mather led a crusade to create the National Park Service, where he eventually served as the agency's first director. This is the abbreviated story of a most fascinating American. By PJ DelHomme A trip...
As Euro-Americans spread across our continent, they cleared land for agriculture and consumed raw materials for industry. The “public domain,” land that belonged to the federal estate, was essentially without protection. By the 1880s, this misuse was no longer tolerable, and efforts began to maintain, protect, and manage these lands for the public welfare. One great American—Gifford Pinchot—came to be credited in American history as the early champion of “conservation.” This is his story.
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service was created in 1940 by merging the Bureau of Biological Survey with the Bureau of Fisheries. This is the story of the early years of the Biological Survey, or, more specifically, of the Boone and Crockett Club Member who founded the bureau and guided it...
Artist, Explorer, Hunter, Writer, Mountaineer – “The game’s up: we’ve got to get down.” With these words to his two companions, Belmore Browne conceded defeat only 125 feet from the summit of Mount McKinley, North America’s highest peak at 20,335 feet. A fierce gale, 55 miles per hour, along with blinding visibility and the temperature at –15° made it impossible to continue. They came so close to the summit while setting an altitude record for climbs in North America. A short time later, as they retreated, a major earthquake rattled the mountain.
One can summarize Frank M. Chapman’s achievements by saying that he not only influenced the populace to appreciate our feathered friends, but he was an early ecologist who appreciated nature as a balanced whole and its essential relationship to man. Chapman was the dean of American ornithologists. He continued his research and writing until six weeks before his death from kidney failure on November 15, 1945.
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-Theodore Roosevelt
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