With a mix of apex predators, big game, migratory songbirds, and a wide variety of small woodland creatures, the Boone and Crockett Club’s Theodore Roosevelt Memorial (TRM) Ranch is a true wildlife cornucopia.

2009 Spur Awards Honor Best Westerns

Much like Wyoming, Colorado is a sporting paradise. Roaming those sage-covered hillsides, record-book mule deer were quite numerous, especially in the top 20. A few pronghorn and black bear make an appearance in the top 100. The antlers belonging to John Plute’s famous “meat bull” were pulled out of Dark Canyon after the locals didn’t believe him when he told them how big the antlers were.…

Not surprisingly, Arizona is home to a number of desert-dwelling, record-book entries. From pronghorn to desert sheep to Coues’ deer and even a century-old jaguar. This is Grand Canyon country in the north and to the south, you find yourself in true organ pipe cactus territory. Pronghorn have a solid grip on the top 10 entries, but desert sheep reign supreme in Arizona record-book entries.…

This may be the Land of 10,000 Lakes, but it doubles as the land of big whitetail bucks, some Canada moose, black bear and even a top five non-typical elk that died of pneumonia after it got its antlers stuck in the mud—true story! The big typical whitetail deer made the records many, many years ago. To be honest, the top black bear entries and that non-typical elk all happened in the 21st…

California is long, like more than 1,000 miles long. Thanks to that north-south spread and being along the Pacific Coast, it has some truly unique antlered animals that happen to like wet climates—and they can get pretty big, too. Granted it’s the only state with tule elk, so it has a lock on those entries, but Columbia blacktail have a solid showing in the records, as do Roosevelt’s elk.…

The all-time records overflow with pronghorn entries from New Mexico, and Mike Gallo’s buck from 2013 is the current World’s Record at 96-4/8. Not to be outdone, Coues’ deer have a number of high-scoring entries, and desert sheep are scattered through the top 50. A handful of non-typical elk, cougar, and mule deer round out the state. While there are no Boone and Crockett categories for them,…

It’s deer, deer, and more deer for Illinois in the Boone and Crockett records. To be fair, the state does offer hunting for turkey, waterfowl, small game, upland birds, and furbearers, but we do not keep records for longest spurs on a turkey or fluffiest squirrel tail. Illinois made waves back in 2018 when Luke Brewster killed a giant non-typical whitetail in Edgar County that scored a mind-…