Post by Woody Williams on Jan 5, 2006 12:57:18 GMT -5
Boone and Crockett No. 12 almost too heavy to lift
Bob Scammell
Calgary Herald
Thursday, January 05, 2006
"Records of North American ig Game, 12th edition, Boone and Crockett Club, Missoula, MT, hard cover, 904 pages, $49.95 US.
The publication of a new edition of the bible of serious big game
hunters every five years or so inspires hours of poring over "the book,"
as aficionados call it, to determine the state of big game and hunting
for it in North America.
The book swells from edition to edition, causing me worries that it
risks extinction from its own weight, as happened with the giant Irish
elk, partly because it could not raise its head from the weight of its
ever-increasing antlers. This 12th edition, at more than four pounds, is
twice as heavy and has more than twice as many pages as my oldest
version, the revised 1973 printing of the 1971 sixth edition.
The heft comes from the increasing number of listings of new trophy
animals in virtually every category. In that earlier edition of mine
there were only 10 pages of listings in the typical white-tail deer
category; in this new edition there are 82 pages.
Each time a new edition of the book arrives I turn immediately to the
mule deer category to see what is going on in Alberta with the only
species I trophy hunt and also in other places in North America where I
dream to hunt them, even always bitterly checking on Saskatchewan, where
we non-residents are not allowed to hunt "their" mule deer.
In the approximate last 10 years there have been only three new entries
from Alberta in each of the typical and non-typical mule deer
categories, 15 and 6, respectively from Saskatchewan, which wipes us out
21 to six in the combined categories. The Broder buck, taken at Chip
Lake, Alta., in 1927, is still the number one non-typical mule deer ever
taken and still shown as taken by Ed Broder, but is now listed as owned
by Montanan Don Schaufler who bought the mount for $225,000 US after
that ugly lawsuit in 2003 among Ed Border's heirs.
As you surf the listings, you have to be amazed at the number of heads
that have obviously been purchased, for example by Cabela's for display
in their store. I would like to see an article in a future edition of
the book on the bull market in trophy heads, racks and horns and the
disputes, like the Broder lawsuit, that trade can create.
Saskatchewan really wipes out Alberta for new white-tail trophy
listings: 125 to 69 in the typical category, 78 to 61 in non-typical.
The cougar category seems to verify what I have been writing for several
years now about a very large, unruly population of the big cats in
Alberta. In the last approximate decade there have been 21 new cougar
entries from Alberta in the book, including the new No. 4 taken at
Tongue Creek by T. Klassen and J.D. Gordon and a new No. 7 taken near
Hinton by Roy Le Page, both in 1999.
Since about 1986 there has been no hunting of cougars in California and
in 1990 a ballot initiative affirmed such total protection that an
article in this new edition of the book, "Management of Mountain Lions
in California," documents that there can, basically, be no management,
not even population counts, in perhaps the worst jurisdiction in North
America for cougar attacks on humans.
bscam@telusplanet.net
The Calgary Herald 2006
www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/sports/story.html?id=974ed415-8a8d-48c2-a7b3-10a9884d380a
Bob Scammell
Calgary Herald
Thursday, January 05, 2006
"Records of North American ig Game, 12th edition, Boone and Crockett Club, Missoula, MT, hard cover, 904 pages, $49.95 US.
The publication of a new edition of the bible of serious big game
hunters every five years or so inspires hours of poring over "the book,"
as aficionados call it, to determine the state of big game and hunting
for it in North America.
The book swells from edition to edition, causing me worries that it
risks extinction from its own weight, as happened with the giant Irish
elk, partly because it could not raise its head from the weight of its
ever-increasing antlers. This 12th edition, at more than four pounds, is
twice as heavy and has more than twice as many pages as my oldest
version, the revised 1973 printing of the 1971 sixth edition.
The heft comes from the increasing number of listings of new trophy
animals in virtually every category. In that earlier edition of mine
there were only 10 pages of listings in the typical white-tail deer
category; in this new edition there are 82 pages.
Each time a new edition of the book arrives I turn immediately to the
mule deer category to see what is going on in Alberta with the only
species I trophy hunt and also in other places in North America where I
dream to hunt them, even always bitterly checking on Saskatchewan, where
we non-residents are not allowed to hunt "their" mule deer.
In the approximate last 10 years there have been only three new entries
from Alberta in each of the typical and non-typical mule deer
categories, 15 and 6, respectively from Saskatchewan, which wipes us out
21 to six in the combined categories. The Broder buck, taken at Chip
Lake, Alta., in 1927, is still the number one non-typical mule deer ever
taken and still shown as taken by Ed Broder, but is now listed as owned
by Montanan Don Schaufler who bought the mount for $225,000 US after
that ugly lawsuit in 2003 among Ed Border's heirs.
As you surf the listings, you have to be amazed at the number of heads
that have obviously been purchased, for example by Cabela's for display
in their store. I would like to see an article in a future edition of
the book on the bull market in trophy heads, racks and horns and the
disputes, like the Broder lawsuit, that trade can create.
Saskatchewan really wipes out Alberta for new white-tail trophy
listings: 125 to 69 in the typical category, 78 to 61 in non-typical.
The cougar category seems to verify what I have been writing for several
years now about a very large, unruly population of the big cats in
Alberta. In the last approximate decade there have been 21 new cougar
entries from Alberta in the book, including the new No. 4 taken at
Tongue Creek by T. Klassen and J.D. Gordon and a new No. 7 taken near
Hinton by Roy Le Page, both in 1999.
Since about 1986 there has been no hunting of cougars in California and
in 1990 a ballot initiative affirmed such total protection that an
article in this new edition of the book, "Management of Mountain Lions
in California," documents that there can, basically, be no management,
not even population counts, in perhaps the worst jurisdiction in North
America for cougar attacks on humans.
bscam@telusplanet.net
The Calgary Herald 2006
www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/sports/story.html?id=974ed415-8a8d-48c2-a7b3-10a9884d380a