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The National Collection Of Heads and Horns - The Trophies
Part II
This four part series will narrate the history and legacy of Boone and Crockett Club’s National Collection of Heads and Horns. From its inception in 1906 to the big move next spring to Springfield, Missouri.
It is a story that begins with an undertaking to memorialize through museum displays big game species whose futures, at the time, looked bleak. It is, however, a story that ends on a far more positive note: the dramatic restoration of these same species to healthy and abundant numbers throughout much of their native range.
This historical recap was originally published the 8th edition of Boone and Crockett Club’s Records of North American Big Game.
Excerpt from Fall 2015 Fair Chase Magazine
Lowell E. Baier, B&C Regular Member, B&C President Emeritus, Photos Courtesy of Author
On September 1, 1908, “The National Collection of Heads and Horns, Part II” was published by Hornaday wherein a broader outline of the Collection’s objectives and purposes was stated. This companion to the original brochure called upon the sportsmen of all countries to contribute to the Collection:
The National Collection of Heads and Horns represents an effort to build up a collection that will adequately represent the big game of the world in general, and that of America in particular. Such an undertaking is now rendered necessary by the rapid disappearance of large mammalian life, all over the world. . . The objective of this collection is to afford to the sportsman, naturalist, and every other person interested in animals, a comprehensive and satisfactory view of the big game of the world, with a wealth of detailed information and illustration. The first effort will be to bring together materials of two complete series of heads and horns, one zoological, and the other geographical. In addition to these, it is desirable to form collections of horns and antlers of specially important species, such as the moose, wapiti, mountain sheep and caribou, to show their status in widely separated localities, and under varying conditions of food and climate. . . Such special collections surely will be of real value to everyone who is interested in the species thus represented; and they will form an important feature of the National Collection as a whole.
Individual gifts and entire collections came from British Columbia, China, California, London, and Philadelphia. New York contributed what was by far the most outstanding accession of the first year, the Reed-McMillin collection of heads, horns and skins of Alaskan big game. A.S. Reed was an Englishman who between 1896 and 1902 lived in Victoria, British Columbia. On his frequent hunting expeditions to Alaska and Northern British Columbia, he made it a practice to hunt very late in the fall or early in the winter, and go after only the best and most magnificent specimens. The result was, of course, an unparalleled collection of Alaskan big game that included 6 moose, 6 caribou, 10 sheep, 10 bear skins, 2 mounted walrus heads and 7 pairs of tusks. Mr. Emersom McMillin of New York, a member of the Camp Fire Club of America, donated $5,000 to purchase the entire collection.
Madison Grant donated an extraordinarily large pair of walrus tusks and a family group of white mountain sheep heads, from the extreme northern end of the Rocky Mountain chain, within 50 miles of the Arctic Ocean. He later presented two bighorn sheep and a British Columbia mountain goat. John Roger Bradley sent heads of a Coke Hartebeest, an impala, a common waterbuck, the fine head of a Siberian argali and the mounted head of an Atlantic walrus. George L. Harrison, Jr., of Philadelphia, sent three shipments of African heads, representing about 60 species. The African groups were further enriched by an extensive gift from John W. Norton of New York and Cazenovia, including a greater kudu, an eland, a Baker roan antelope and a Crawshay waterbuck.
Caspar Whitney donated a fine mounted head of a wood bison. Warburton Pike, probably the first sportsman to penetrate the Barren Grounds north of Great Slave Lake, offered a tremendous musk ox head that still stands high among the record heads. From George H. Gould of Santa Barbara, California, came a mountain sheep head that Hornaday described as not only one of the finest heads ever taken on the American continent, but probably the greatest trophy of Ovis canadensis that ever fell to the rifle of a gentleman sportsman.”
Even China contributed in that first year. Mason Mitchell, the American Counsel at Chungking, forwarded what was then the rarest specimen in the young collection: the entire skin, skull and horns of a takin from Szechuan. That form had only recently been discovered and it was named Budorcas texicolor mitchelli in honor of its discoverer. Mr. Mitchell had himself shot the specimen and it arrived safely after five months’ transit, swathed in many layers of cloths impregnated by, “the most pungent powders that are dealt in by the Chinese apothecary to keep off bugs, mice and rats of all sorts.”
A white rhinoceros head, presented by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt early in 1911, was then regarded as the most rare and valuable single specimen of that year. It was the second finest specimen obtained by the Roosevelt expedition, with the best one donated to the National Museum at Washington. Roosevelt shot the rhino in the Lado District, west bank of the Nile, on January 28, 1910. It was mounted by James L. Clark of New York. The length of the front horn was 25 inches and the rear 27-1/8 inches.
A “Combat Collection” of locked antlers was assembled including locked moose, caribou, and mule deer antlers. Other than these, and a “Collection to Illustrate Horn Development and Anatomy”, all other specimens fell into either the Zoological or Geographical divisions of the Collection. No collection of freaks was accepted; a few freak heads were used to fill gaps in the two primary divisions, but they were few in number. Notwithstanding the many heads offered in the formative years, Hornaday was persistent in not accepting a specimen without a specific place for its presence in the collection’s two divisions, zoologic or geographic.
By the end of 1910, four years after it was formed, 695 specimens were contained in the National Collection. The stories behind many of the trophies are themselves separate and often fascinating histories of trophy hunts. The names of a few of the early well-known collectors are enough for the reader to mentally conjure up long, exhausting and dangerous shikars, safaris and treks: Douglas Carruthers, Frank Buck, Sir Edmund Giles Loder, Charles Sheldon, Frederick Selous, William Morden, James L. Clark, and Roy Chapman Andrews, to mention a few.
The Zoological Society’s 1910 Annual Report listed 12 World’s Record heads and 5 number two heads contained in the Collection. While the Collection had grown substantially and provided a well organized scientific foundation, Hornaday continued to stress that, “In all comparisons of horns and antlers, it is both right and necessary that the tape line should play an important part in determining records and fixing comparative values... it is therefore quite fair to judge every important collection by the number of record or World Record specimens it contains...It is fit and proper that New York City should possess and exhibit on a scientific basis to the world at large, one of the world’s finest collections of big game trophies.” Clearly the National Collection was to be more than simply a scientific collection that was a valid and valuable appendage to the Zoological Park. Hornaday also intended it to be the world collection of record big game hunting trophies.
While trophies continued in lesser numbers to be donated to Hornaday’s collection, which grew to 798 specimens by the end of 1912, he complained that the offerings of record heads were few by 1914. His reasoning for this was the lack of money available for outright purchase of record heads, which became a bitter resound in his annual director’s report. With the publication of the Collection’s second reference text in 1908 (Part II), a Contributors’ Fund was created to fund the purchase of many specimens not otherwise available, to pay for taxidermy work and shipping costs of newly acquired heads. A $2,500 goal was established for initial working capital with annual subscriptions sought to maintain this minimum working capital level. Thirty-three sportsmen were credited with contributing to the Contributors’ Fund in 1909. When the fund became exhausted, H. Casimir de Rham, a substantial benefactor of the Zoological Society and National Collection, subscribed an additional $2,500. The first published report of the Heads and Horns Fund on March 1, 1910, shows receipts of $7,610 and disbursements of $5,568.
But such funding and private support was short-lived and declined to a low of $15 contributed in 1917 against expenses of $18. Support for the National Collection was of necessity primarily by private subscription, since the Zoological Society had its own burden of meeting the operating expenses and building expansion program of the Zoological Park. From 1908 through 1917 a total of $8,729 had been raised from 66 sportsmen-benefactors toward support of the National Collection against expenses of $11,638, with the Zoological Society contributing $2,700. The broad base of sustaining financial support Hornaday and Madison Grant had hoped to generate in their 1908 appeal never materialized from the ranks of the sporting fraternity.
When the National Collection was installed in the Administration Building’s picture galleries, in February 1910, it consisted of 688 specimens. By 1916 it had grown to 850 specimens, far beyond the capacity of the two picture galleries to be properly displayed in a scientifically meaningful fashion. In 1916 Hornaday single-handedly raised $100,000 from 10 contributors for a new building to be built along Baird Court, thus completing the grand concourse of the park. Henry A. Whitfield was retained to prepare the building plans and specifications with a view of a building dedication on May 20, 1918.
National Collection of Heads and Horns Spotlight Trophy
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