Just for giggles--I am wondering what you would think of the idea of having different categories for the books. I guess I am trying to ask if you think there is reason, and should there in your opinion be different categories for animals taken on guided versus non-guided?? I guess you could also toss in the thought of private versus public land as well.

I know of course this brings a truck load of factors into play here. But just humor me and tell us your thoughts if you would.

For my thoughts-I guess I favor the idea of having seperate categories?

Who's next?

Thanks

"GET TO THE HILL"

Dog

Interesting concept. I would at least like to see a notation in the records. There are many good and valid reasons people hire outfitters and guides...too many to list. Certainly when I get to Africa, I will hunt with a guide. It's just not feasible for me to attempt it on my own. But that will be the first time I will have been on a guided hunt -- except when I was the guide!

I'm not sure where to start dividing the trophy pie, though. Essentially it would be an attempt to define effort, or skill, or some set of factors that make one trophy more "valuable" or "prestigious" than another. If you hire an outfitter and hunt with a guide and shoot a 375 bull elk, and I hunt on my own and kill a 375 bull -- does that make mine "better" than yours? Does it mean I'm a "better hunter" than you are? Perhaps you got up every morning well before daylight, helped the wrangler find the horses, saddled your own pony, and busted your tail for two weeks. Maybe I live on my uncle's ranch, where I ride the hills every day of the year, and no one else can hunt. If I rode out opening morning to the back pasture where I had seen that bull five days out of seven for the past two months and popped him with my .30-30. Who earned his trophy? Well...we both did...we just earned them differently.

On the other hand -- every trophy on my wall was killed on my own, on fair chase hunts, mostly on public land open to everyone. They are all respectable; none will "make the book". Nor do I care...they are my stories, not anyone elses.

So...I've talked myself into two viewpoints on your question. Which makes it a great question. Let's see what the rest of the folks think.

My views on the B/C books are probably unpopular with a lot of people.

My view is that first we need to either make up our mind if we are honoring the hunter or the animal.

Further my personal thought on this question is we should be honoring the animal and thus just print the score of the animal in the first column with the owner of the trophy in another column. This would make it a moot point whether it was harvested with the assistance of a guide, strictly by the hunter himself, found dead or otherwise picked up, or purchased from another party. It is my personal belief that we have gotten too far away from recognizing the trophy itself and have become too taken up with who killed it and the circumstances leading up to the harvest.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy reading or hearing about a successful hunt as much as the next person, but if we are going to honor the hunter and the situation leading up to the kill or harvest let's just start another book called "Hunters and Their Trophies" or something similar to that. In such a book there could be all the different catagories that led to the kill or harvest of the animal whether by the hunter alone. with a guide's assistance, picked up or whatever other catagory there might be.

I tend to agree with Idared, and maybe take it one step further. With the proliferation of high-fence hunting and trophy farming, records don't mean anything to me. I tend to think the books should have been closed many years ago.

There are just too many unscrupulous "hunters" these days that will do anything, ethically, pay whatever it takes, to harvest a "book" trophy. It demeans the whole process.

It even bugs me to see the whitetail ranches in Texas, where depending on what he scores, determines what you pay. It used to be that if you hunted well and killed a monster buck, you had something to be proud of, now someone is going to jump out of a bush and tax you for it. (About as exciting as catching catfish in those pay-by-the-pound puddles.)

Some hunts in Canada you pay a penalty if you shoot a trophy that doesn't meet their criteria. Hunting private land, the "owner" has the right to call the shots, but it certainly loses my interest.

The more hunting has become a commodity, cash business, the less I've enjoyed it.

I say leave it the way it is. First off there are a number of states and pretty much all of Canada where the law requires a guide like or not. So if you made a different category for guided or unguided to a large degree it would also mean resident or non-resident, which is just silly to me. Second I see absolutely no reason to pit private land against public land either. In many western states there is vast tracks of public land. However as you venture east of the Mississippi the public land dwindles in a hurry. For that matter I live in Montana and the county I'm in has over 80% private land as does much of eastern Montana. Just because it's private certainly doesn't means it's off limits to the public especially not the Block Management areas. In some cases private land may hold better hunting than publicly accessible land and in some cases it doesn't. It's the hunter and the potential for opportunity that makes the hunt interesting for me. Any nit picking over private vs public or guided vs unguided really doesn't mean much to me at all. Just my 2 cents. Believe in or not Mark I can see why you would want to bring this up, but when it comes down to it, I just don't think it is all that practical.

Big Sky made all the points that were whirling around in my head. I take great pride in taking all my Deer of both kinds and Elk myself, with my reloads and help only from my son and close buddies. While I don't have any B.C. heads, each hunt was a trophy hunt. I did depend on a close friend to guide me to a Brown Bear and several Caribou. I also depended on a guide for an awards book B.C. Moose in Alaska, and plan to go back this year for Caribou and Wolfe. A great Wolfe hunt in Alberta was a guided trip, an educational way to see the georgous province. Any system can be cheated upon, however in my opinion the Boone and Crockett is set up as well as possible, emphasizing the "Fair Chase" method. The public versus private would wipe out most entrants from East of the Mississippi, therefore impossible to administer. After all, trophy or not, hunting is hunting, to be enjoyed by the hunter, regardless of recognition. Good shooting.

Thanks for your comments boyz- I was bored and on the puter and thought I'd ask your opinions.

"GET TO THE HILL"

Dog