B&C and our National Parks

In the early 1900s, national parks were under constant threat from private industry, which hoped to capitalize on those unique landscapes. Two charismatic members of the Boone and Crockett Club worked the halls of Congress to ensure management of those wonders fell to a new agency that would prioritize their protection.

George Shiras III was a member of the Boone and Crockett Club, and a member of the governing board of the National Geographic Society for 25 years. He helped write legislation creating Olympic National Park. George also discovered several species of wildlife, including Alces americana shirasi, the “Yellowstone” moose.

Nearly devoid of wild game, North America’s landscape in the late-1800s was a very different place. Bison, elk, and even deer were nearly wiped from the continent to supply a growing demand for meat, hides, and heads. To provide feathers for fashionable hats of high-society ladies, migratory birds were annihilated—sometimes by the hundreds with one shot from a massive “punt” gun. Only a handful of bison remained, and even whitetail deer were hard to find. Wildlife populations were spiraling toward extinction until a handful of influential hunters decided to end the slaughter.