For more than 70 years, Virginia’s record-book entries have consisted of black bears and whitetail deer. That’s not uncommon for a mid-Atlantic state with as many as one million deer. Annual deer harvest typically totals around 200,000 deer, with a few bears and bucks entered into the records each year. In 2022, Virginia made history with a new record-breaker. Elk were reintroduced in 2012,…

While Wisconsin has plenty of game to hunt like turkey, upland birds—and even elk and wolves—it’s the whitetail deer and black bears that make the record book. In fact, their black bears are consistently in the top 100, and they have been since 2000. To hunt one of the state’s 24,000 estimated bruins, hunters have to apply for roughly 11,500 permits. More than 129,000 hunters applied in 2021.…

For hunters and anglers, the great state of Washington may only be rivaled by Alaska. A number of record-book Columbia whitetail deer came out of the state before Y2K never happened. Since then, the pickings have been slim. Never fear; there’s plenty more to hunt. You can always shift your sights on elk—Rocky Mountain in the east or Roosevelt’s in the west. There’s Shiras’ moose for those…

Hunting for English Sparrow, skunk, and pigeon is open year round in the Mountain State, but that doesn’t mean big game hunters should pack up their gear and go home. Deer hunting is robust with more than 100,000 deer being taken there in 2021 alone. That translates into about 30 percent of hunters filling their tags each year. For the big bone hunter, the past couple of decades have been…

When it comes to hunting big game, the Cowboy State has it all—and we’re not getting paid to say that. Just look at the records. With more than a dozen categories and nearly that many species, Wyoming is hard to beat for bison, elk, pronghorn, Shiras’ moose, mule deer, and even cougars. The state leads the records for top entries of Shiras’ moose and a few typical mule deer break into the top…

Yukon's untamed wilderness: a top destination for adventurous big game hunters