Scoring and Its Aftermath

Today, when hunters talk of an animal's score, they often consider the information from only one perspective, the record books. But the scoring system developed by the Boone and Crockett Club had a much more important purpose than simply putting numbers on a page--it was to keep our big game from going the way of Audubon's bighorn sheep and the eastern and Merriam elk.

When Theodore Roosevelt and others were charged with heading the Records Committee in 1902, they didn't have bragging rights, endorsements or trophy fees as their goal. The purpose was to create a system to record biological, harvest and location data on the vanishing big game animals of North America. The system they created is still in use today.

The club's scoring system measures the lengths, widths and circumferences of antlers, horns and tusks, and the length and width of skulls in 38 categories of native North American big game.

The harvest and location data collected by the club were instrumental in helping conservation teams monitor successes and failures in management practices. The belief that a trophy animal was a mature one was the cornerstone of early game management philosophy.

Record-keeping activities also enabled the club to promote its doctrine of ethical hunting by accepting only those trophies taken under fair chase rules--the foundation of the North American model for conservation. The acceptance and success of the records book, first published in 1935 as the Records of North America Big Game, helped the club promote a new understanding of big game biology and the need for careful game management.

For instance, when it was reported that the club would not accept cougar entries from states that classified the big cats as vermin, cougars were eventually elevated to big game status, which meant they were managed and protected. The same kind of status protection became available to other species as well.

The club continues to use its records program to celebrate the success of our conservation system and to promote the practice of fair chase. Without the Boone and Crockett Club's vision more than 100 years ago, big game would not be the trophy it is to the sportsmen of today.