Boone and Crockett Club

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The Boone and Crockett Club is a conservationist organization, founded in the United States in 1887 by Theodore Roosevelt. The original name was intended to honor Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, who were seen as ethical hunters and honest men who loved the outdoors and manly pursuits. In addition to authoring a famous "fair chase" statement of hunter ethics, the club worked for the elimination of industrial hunting, creation of wildlife reserves and conservation-minded regulation of hunting generally.

Key members of the club have included Theodore Roosevelt, George Bird Grinnell, Madison Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, Gifford Pinchot, Frederick Russell Burnham, Charles Deering and Aldo Leopold.^[1]

Today the club is known largely for maintaining a system by which big game animals may be objectively measured and given a "B&C score."

Key dates in the history of the organization include:

1887: Founded by Theodore Roosevelt
1922: National Collection of Heads and Horns established at the Bronx Zoo in New York City.
1930: American Committee for International Wild Life Protection is founded by the Boone and Crockett Club for the purpose of representing American sympathy and interest in international wild life protection. John Charles Phillips (1876-1938) was made the chair. This committee is later incorporated into the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.^[2]
1932: First big-game records book published, Records of North American Big Game by Prentiss N. Gray.
1947: Big Game Competitions, with the winners being chosen by a Judges' Panel
1950: Scoring system for big game records first adopted.

[edit] Books

Hunting on Three Continents, Grinnell, George Bird, Kermit Roosevelt, W. Redmond Cross, and Prentiss N. Gray (editors). New York: The Derrydale Press (1933) --

The seventh book of the Boone and Crockett Club, this wide-ranging collection includes accounts of Expeditions toward the North Pole and to the south of the Equator, articles relating to wild animals, and other pieces that speak the perils of hunting game to the brink of extinction. Among the most noteworthy contributions are "The Vanished Game of Yesterday" by Madison Grant, "An Epic of the Polar Air Lanes" by Lincoln Ellsworth, "Aeluropus Melanoleucus" by Kermit Roosevelt, "Taps for the Great Selous" by Frederick R. Burnham, "Volcano Sheep" by G.D. Pope, "Three Days on the Stikine River" by Emory W. Clark, and "Giant Sable Antelope" by Charles P. Curtis.