In the latest issue of Safari Times, there is a notice that Alexander Egorov was permanently expelled for falsifying entries into the record book.

A person by the same name was the Weatherby Award winner in 2020 .

Hahaha!

This is very funny!

I GUARANTEE you so many trophies in the record book are NOT, repeat NOT, what they are entered for!

An incredible number of trophies were bought in auctions, kept in pens, and sold to self glorifying IDIOTS to enter in the record books as being hunted fare chase!

It boils down to the official scorer, and professional hunter involved!

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:
Hahaha!

This is very funny!

I GUARANTEE you so many trophies in the record book are NOT, repeat NOT, what they are entered for!

An incredible number of trophies were bought in auctions, kept in pens, and sold to self glorifying IDIOTS to enter in the record books as being hunted fare chase!

It boils down to the official scorer, and professional hunter involved!

The PHs? Maybe. In this case, I believe the scorer was also expelled. I am not 100% certain as I threw the publication away.

I am wondering if Weatherby will rescind his award?

In lots of hunts like these both the PH and scorer are the same person.

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:
In lots of hunts like these both the PH and scorer are the same person.

To win the Weatherby, it takes it takes many hunts in many counties over a period of time. PHs may have participated in some skullduggery. The measurer is the most likely person.

This is the problem we have been talking about before.
All this is hurting all industry reputation.
I strongly believe no hunting award should be related to animals score but to the hunter behaviour.
Is good to select our trophies in the way that it will require more effort from us and will guarantee a kill of a mature specimen I have no problem neither with record books, I even have some animals on it but I dont like awards to the hunter related only to that. Is a really bad message and bad thing to teach to young hunters.

Best regards

quote:

Originally posted by larryshores:

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:
Hahaha!

This is very funny!

I GUARANTEE you so many trophies in the record book are NOT, repeat NOT, what they are entered for!

An incredible number of trophies were bought in auctions, kept in pens, and sold to self glorifying IDIOTS to enter in the record books as being hunted fare chase!

It boils down to the official scorer, and professional hunter involved!

The PHs? Maybe. In this case, I believe the scorer was also expelled. I am not 100% certain as I threw the publication away.

I am wondering if Weatherby will rescind his award?

I just opened my newsletter. There was a female scorer, also Russian, who was expelled. It may just be a coincidence, but likely not. Her name is Julia Zvereva. The allegations mirror those of Mr. Egotov, but as a scorer.

There are certain professional hunters from South Africa.

Who have a very large number of clients who have so many trophies in the SCI RECORD BOOK.

These same professional hunters were listed as scorers.

Their websites looked like WHO IS WHO of the many CROOKED HUNTERS who KNEW what they were entering ILLEGALLY shot animals in the record book.

All these websites have been CLEANED once some facts were brought to their attention!

So if SCI really wish to do a clean up, good luck to them.

I have absolutely no sympathy with crooks.

Whether clients or professionals!

Any time there is a competition, there will be cheaters like these, or even worse!

Hunting should not be treated as a competition, except by the hunter against himself!

The only award for the true hunter is when he overcomes his limitations and kills his quarry, fairly and squarely, in a fair chase, open range hunt.

Trying to turn hunting into a competition, with awards and other nonsense, degrades it, and leads precisely to this sort of crooked behavior.

IMHO, of course.

Turning hunting into a competition is the most unethical, stupid, thing to do.

It is the SCI’s version of clicks on ticktock!

When are going to get a half decent man at SCI to get rid of it??

I understand that get to the level where one can be considered for the Weatherby Award one has to spend millions.

That is beside the point, as each is free to spend his money as he pleases.

But to a set out to gain all these childish awards is beyond my level of intelligence to understand.

In Tanzania, many years ago, a hunter from the far camp, came into our camp for lunch. He was working on some diamond butt plug level of whatever award. Needed a Bushbuck.

This yearling Bushbuck came out to drink at the waterhole. He asked if he could shoot it. Even though it’s none of my business, and not my decision, I told him “No”. That’s the camp Bushbuck and he’s protected.

This guy was the record book chairman for SCI.

The really sad part is we keep being reminded how much money SCI makes out of this sad, SICK, UNETHICAL, form of collecting money!

And the reason for its continuation!

Their annual celebrations of this makes a mockery of what hunting should be.

It becomes a public display of people who have lots of money, but lack any claim to having any character to be hunters.


MINE IS BIGGER THAN YOURS has become the ultimate mantra!

How sick!

quote:

Originally posted by Wendell Reich:
In Tanzania, many years ago, a hunter from the far camp, came into our camp for lunch. He was working on some diamond butt plug level of whatever award. Needed a Bushbuck.

This yearling Bushbuck came out to drink at the waterhole. He asked if he could shoot it. Even though it’s none of my business, and not my decision, I told him “No”. That’s the camp Bushbuck and he’s protected.

This guy was the record book chairman for SCI.

I remember that moment very well Wendell!

I hate SCI's awards. While record books provide some valuable information on where the best trophies of particular species come from, I've never entered anything. Back in 2017, I shot a very nice Masai bushbuck and the PH was convinced it would go top 10 and wanted me to get it measured. I initially resisted, but he was persistent so I went along and he missed top 10 by something like an eighth of an inch and I was actually disappointed for a moment. That's when I realized that I'll never enter anything in any record book. That bushbuck is in my living room and probably the finest trophy I'll ever take.

One gets no idea where the trophy is coming from when it is captured and moved to pull the wool over the public’s eyes.

SCI has singled handidly created this market of crooks.

Both professionals and clients!


Something was forgotten somewhere, as the requirement are stated as:

There are three categories that comprise the awards submission document, the Ballot.

Hunting Accomplishments
Conservation and Education
Character and Sportsmanship

Hunting accomplishments with lots of cheating, and some illegal hunts.

Conservation and education??

Total bullshit!

Character and Sportsmanship?

ONE BIG FAT ZERO!

Self worship more like it!

quote:

There are three categories that comprise the awards submission document, the Ballot.

Hunting Accomplishments
Conservation and Education
Character and Sportsmanship

There should actually be 4 Categories, the 4th, "Money Talks" being the decider that swings the ballot.

I am 100% against the awards . However, it does seem to me that SCI deserves some credit here for doing the right thing.

Carry on bashing them gentlemen.

SCI is An industry and organization founded on exploiting the greedy and their insatiable appetites for attention.

A little research into the global “hunting” history of its founder will make you sick

Unfortunately it has lured in a large number of otherwise good and decent people.

https://vault.si.com/vault/197...e-horns-of-a-dilemma

This article is from April 1971.


On the horns of a dilemma
Big-game awards may lead to remarkable achievements—or to frauds, fakes and bogus records

Virginia Kraft


Big-game hunting is suffering from success. Or at least it is suffering from an overburden of awards and trophies that are the rewards of success. While the most prized of hunting trophies are those horned and hairy heads hung on walls, hunting these days also has a mixed bag of medals, plaques, cups, bowls and statuettes. About $55 million is spent each year in the U.S. on sports trophies of all kinds, and hunting takes a fair share of the business.

But there are complications about big-game hunting awards that are never encountered in, say, winning an Olympic gold medal in the 100-meter dash. A shortage of witnesses, for example. No crowd of cheering spectators, no television cameras are on hand when someone sets a world record by shooting some animal with a larger set of horns than anybody ever shot before. More often than not, only two people—the hunter and his guide—know the circumstances under which a big-game record was set. Later the taxidermist, the official measurer and maybe one or two other people get into the act. But no one knows how many trophies have been taken by illegal chases, trophy switches, guide-hunter substitutions, altered measurements or falsified affidavits. The checks are few, the temptations great and the desire for an eight-point entry in Boone and Crockett's Records of North American Big Game or in Rowland Ward's records of African and Asian game is such that otherwise-honest men have succumbed to fraud.



The pressures of this sort of trophy competition are enormous. One sensational example reached the public recently when Gary Swanson, a California taxidermist-guide, was arrested for the illegal hunting of desert bighorn sheep and it was charged that 32 hunters (all of whom were indicted by the Federal Government) had paid Swanson up to $3,000 a head to hunt these legally protected animals under his guidance. Most of Swanson's clients were respected members of their communities. Normally they would no more consider cheating in sport than they would in their business and professional lives. One explanation may be found in the conflicting requirements that govern hunting awards and trophies.

On one hand, some awards have no meaning at all. Grace Kelly once won an airline's award without ever firing a gun. Winchester selects its Outsdoorsman of the Year by a poll of outdoor writers (4,000 such writers, according to one press release; 1,200, according to another). To Winchester's credit, it expects some experience from its outdoorsmen. The late film star Robert Taylor, who won the first Winchester award in 1954, even hunted occasionally, and so did Walter Alston—for rabbits—although it did not hurt that the Dodgers won the pennant the year he was Winchester's Outdoorsman. (Considerably more sophisticated now, Winchester gives trophies to the winners of two genuinely distinguished awards, those of the international hunting club, Shikar-Safari, and Game Conservation International.)



Air France, which does most of its big-game stalking on Madison Avenue, sporadically bestows its hunting award, a bronze-and-wood plaque, on some recipient chosen by obscure methods, "to tie in with one of our commercial tours or promotions," as an Air France spokesman explained with Gallic candor. It does not follow that because an award is commercially sponsored it must be commercially compromised. To expect sponsors to foot the bills and then decline credit is unrealistic, but it is not unrealistic to expect a sponsor to assume responsibility for the quality of its awards. In fact so many blatantly phony awards involve such improbable recipients that they are ignored by everyone except the promoters who dream them up and the people who receive them.

But if the sham awards are too easy to be of importance, those with real distinction are so difficult as to be almost impossible. It is in the pursuit of these that trophy hunters are tempted to take shortcuts, to buy hides and horns, or claim a head shot by a guide, or pay $3,000 for a desert bighorn sheep.

These top awards represent genuine, even extraordinary, achievements. Shikar-Safari Club International, for example, gives an award for the best Asian and African animal taken by a member—and its membership includes some of the world's best hunters. An awards committee determines the relative merit of each entry and the circumstances surrounding its actual taking. A record head is not sufficient to win the award. The hunter must have earned his trophy the hard way. In years when none of the entries meets the organization's high standards, the awards are withheld.



More important still is the Weatherby Big Game Trophy, the ultimate award for hunters. The trophy itself is nothing you would want to carry with you on a hunt. It stands 3½ feet high, weighs 46 pounds, takes four months to cast and assemble and costs approximately $1,000. It costs a great deal more to win one, though expenditures have nothing to do with such an achievement. C.J. McElroy, a Los Angeles contractor who won the Weatherby two years ago, estimated that he spent five months afield annually for a dozen years and that his trophy cost him more than half a million dollars.

When Roy Weatherby conceived the award in 1956 his goal was not to honor the hunter who set a particular record but to reward the sportsman who made the greatest lifetime achievement in hunting. "Many hunters spend year after year passing up average heads to look for record trophies," Weatherby says, "but we all know that most of the world records are not taken this way but by accident or luck. I wanted to do something to recognize the hunter who does not necessarily hold all the records but who has spent his life hunting and collecting the broadest number of species, the most difficult to hunt and the hardest to find, from the widest range of areas. Such a person must also have made significant contributions to conservation, and he must be a sportsman beyond reproach."

The first award was presented to Herb Klein of Dallas, the dean of all big-game hunters in the world today. Since then only 32 people have qualified as nominees. They have been outstanding, even extraordinary, representatives of the sport, yet 10 withdrew their names from competition because they could not match the accomplishments of other nominees. Except for Herb Klein, no winner received the award the first year his name appeared on the ballot. Several were on the ballot five years or more before winning. The award committee consists of 10 men, including Weatherby and four previous winners—Klein, Warren Page, Jack O'Connor and Prince Abdorreza Pahlavi of Iran. Their job is to sift the qualifications of every nominee, ranking them not only on the formal affidavits that list species taken, places hunted, records held and conservation contributions, but on information gathered from guides, other hunters and business and social contacts. The balloting is secret, and not even Weatherby knows how the other judges voted until the final scores are tallied and he is advised of the winner by registered mail.



Last year's winner, George Landreth, a 43-year-old petroleum engineer, was more relieved than anything else. "I thought, now I can relax again," Landreth says. "It is hard to imagine how much pressure the Weatherby trophy puts on its nominees. At first I did not think that winning it mattered that much, but as time passed and I realized that I had a good chance at it, I began to feel the springs tightening."

Landreth knew there were certain animals one must have to win: all the species of North American big game, and the grand slam of sheep—Dall sheep, found in Alaska; Stone sheep, which range through British Columbia; the Rocky Mountain bighorn; the desert bighorn. In fact, Landreth had four such grand slams. "You know you should have all the major species of Asian and African game," Landreth says, "and then a lot of unusual and rare ones, such as bongo and mountain nyala. Then there are the truly exotic species of Asian sheep—the Ovis poli of the Pamirs, and the Ovis ammon of Mongolia."

Landreth was the sixth person to take an Ovis poli and the first in 40 years to take an Ovis ammon. "As it turned out, I had all the hard ones, but I did not have a tiger," Landreth says. "Roy told me I had a good chance if I had a tiger, but without one he did not see how I could be expected to win. I started that day making calls to book a tiger hunt, squared away my business as best I could and took off. All I wanted was to get the tiger. Suddenly I realized I was not hunting for sport anymore. I was filling a quota, achieving an end. What happens is that you start trying too hard, and you find yourself doing things you would not ordinarily do. Sooner or later the pressure gets so bad you may take a shortcut, and then you spend the rest of your life regretting it."



Landreth did not take a shortcut to get his tiger, but shortcuts are what confuse the record books and lead to sensations like those of the Gary Swanson case. Trying to achieve the grand slam in sheep has been intoxicating to many hunters. All four North American species are demanding to hunt; the desert sheep, because of its limited numbers, also is heavily protected throughout its remaining range. All legal hunting is by permit. These are so few that in recent years only one in 100 prospective sheep hunters has managed to get one.

In Southern California, where there is a protected but relatively sizable population of desert sheep, the Government has charged that Gary Swanson rounded up clients willing to pay heavily to hunt these trophies. Last fall law-enforcement agents arrested Swanson and confiscated his records, alleging he had put 32 desert bighorns, illegal but impressive, in the trophy rooms of satisfied hunters and had also put some hefty deposits in his bank account. Swanson, whose trial is scheduled for next month, denies the charges. Some of the others under indictment have not yet been heard from. The episode illustrates how easily big-game records can be tarnished.

A guide in Angola recently reported taking a roan antelope that would clearly place high in the book. He wanted to sell it before the new trophy reached Rowland Ward's so the buyer's name could be entered in place of his own. He sent out six letters. Within a week he received four offers for the head. Taxidermists report receiving fresh hides accompanied by horns that are years older. Providing "pickup" horns, as they are called—to be substituted for less impressive ones actually taken—has become so profitable that some natives have switched from guiding to hunting pickups.



Only five hunters have taken all 26 species of American big game. This past fall Bill Bond, a Texan, accomplished it when he got a Shiras moose in Wyoming. "When a man is closing in on No. 26," he says, "the pressure on the guide to find the animal, and on the hunter to shoot straight and true, is something else!" And the need to keep the records straight is greater than ever. One flagrant violation of ethics casts an indelible shadow over all hunters.

ILLUSTRATION

April 26, 1971

No one would bash them if they didn’t instigate all this stupid competition!

Throughout their history, ever time we get a new president we are promised that they will clean up their acts.

Never happened.

And I suspect never will.

Too many idiots obsessed with their own importance!

HUNTING SHOULD NEVER, EVER, BE A COMPETITION!

Saeed hunting should never been a competition?
So should it be racing? Investigating for curing cáncer? Investing on space ships? Having more money than others?

Men are copetitive by nature and that is related to our success as a specie.
The problem is not to compete which is part of our nature, the problem is what the competition is about.

I think we just need to change the spirit of all those competitions and make it more ethical and meaningful.

Best regards.

Suprise suprise...
Saeed and I agree on something twice in a week....

Hunting should not be a competiton. The loser is always the animal and ethics....

The Weatherby Award was devised as a way for Roy Weatherby to sell more rifles. He courted movie stars, writers and politicians to accept the award. Jack O'Connor was a "winner" but very reluctant to accept due to the concept.

Personally, if you need an "award" to validate your hunting experiences, you really need to collect Pokemon cards or do something that is just as non-sensical to gain personal value.

What a distressed person you must be to chase an award that was not an award but an advertising campaign to sell rifles by a guy that really struggled to sell them....

Read Roy Weatherby's biography is you think otherwise. He was a salesman first and conservation last.

Hunting is definitely a competition, as it should be, but it is a competition between the hunter and the animal on the same field at the same time. That's the way it's always been for thousands of years. I'm against a competition between hunters, competing on different fields at different times at different places.

On any given day, an expectedly difficult animal could come easy, and a supposedly easily obtained animal could prove difficult. It's between the hunter and the animal and shouldn't be a competition among hunters. IMHO.

quote:

Originally posted by lavaca:
Hunting is definitely a competition, as it should be, but it is a competition between the hunter and the animal on the same field at the same time. That's the way it's always been for thousands of years. I'm against a competition between hunters, competing on different fields at different times at different places.

On any given day, an expectedly difficult animal could come easy, and a supposedly easily obtained animal could prove difficult. It's between the hunter and the animal and shouldn't be a competition among hunters. IMHO.

Well said!

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:
No one would bash them if they didn’t instigate all this stupid competition!

Throughout their history, ever time we get a new president we are promised that they will clean up their acts.

Never happened.

And I suspect never will.

Too many idiots obsessed with their own importance!

HUNTING SHOULD NEVER, EVER, BE A COMPETITION!

Acceptable hunting competitions:

Least distance traveled by a shot animal.
Safest hunter.
Who has the most fun.

Turning hunting into a competition is the most unethical, stupid, thing to do.

yes - a thousand times yes