5/19/2010
First of all, if shooting a Boone and Crockett Club (B&C) caliber buck were as simple as hunting those counties that consistently produce bucks of absurd proportions, you might think more of us would have one by now. For instance, in the past 15 years I’ve hunted four of North America’s top 10 B&C counties—two of them regularly—but I’ve yet to see such a buck, let alone get a shot at one. And make no mistake, these are counties whose B&C heritage is thriving, so much so that they’ve made the club’s top 10 every year for more than a decade.
I even live in one of them. My home county, Waupaca, Wisc., put 17 bucks into B&C’s book from 2000 through 2009, ranking it 10th behind longtime standouts like Wisconsin’s Buffalo County, Texas’ Maverick County and Illinois’ Pike County. Nine Waupaca County Booners fell between 2005 and 2009, tying it for seventh place among the top B&C counties.
But free-ranging B&C-caliber bucks will never be numerous nor easy to find. Even whitetail breeders who utilize high fences can’t crank out clean-antlered B&C bucks, even though they control the bucks’ breeding, weaning and feeding.
The fact remains that few whitetail bucks have the potential and the opportunity to grow antlers meeting the B&C’s minimum record-book scores—160 inches for each triennial “Awards” period and 170 inches for “All-Time” records for typical antlers; and 185 for Awards and 195 All-Time records for non-typical antlers.
Consider the B&C odds in my home county. Waupaca’s nine B&C qualifiers from 2005-09 came from a combined buck harvest of 23,350 bucks during the past five seasons, or one Booner per 2,595 antlered bucks. If boiling maple sap rendered such results, who would bother making syrup?
But deer hunters are optimists when heading for the treestand or ground blind, especially after studying B&C records during the offseason.
And if you have bucks making the B&C book, then you have a lot of bucks being killed that are mature and big, which is really the whole point. Mature bucks in a herd means the herd is well balanced and has good nutrition. Big bucks are not just the stuff of dreams, they also show that a herd is healthy and that hunters are doing a good service for the habitat that helps everything from songbirds to bears.
Here are some reasons why deer hunters should be more optimistic than ever:
■ Whitetails make up 34 percent (1,708) of the 4,987 trophies qualifying for the B&C’s current triennial Big Game Awards; its 27th scoring period.
■ Of the nearly 37,800 entries in B&C’s all-time record books, almost 7,100 (18.75 percent) are typical-antlered whitetails.
■ From 2000 to 2009, hunters registered 4,423 whitetail bucks with B&C, the most recorded by the club in any decade.
■ Those 4,423 trophy bucks from 2000-09 make up nearly 40 percent of all whitetails in the club’s book.
■ That 2000-2009 cohort is a 31 percent increase from the 3,387 B&C whitetails registered in the 1990s.
■ Further, the 1990-99 totals (3,387) were only 17 bucks fewer than all the B&C whitetails recorded prior to 1990 (3,404).
And the increase in big bucks isn’t confined to the Midwest and Texas. Incredibly, B&C entries from the Northeast’s 10 states jumped to 183 in the 2000s, a 37 percent increase from 133 in the 1990s. This includes Rhode Island, which put three bucks into the book after recording none in previous history. And B&C entries from the Southeast’s nine states reached 188 in the 2000s, a 9 percent increase from 173 in the 1990s. The most noticeable changes were Mississippi, which jumped 71 percent to 48 entries. Also, the number shot in Tennessee leapt 150 percent to 25 entries.
Of the top 10 whitetail states in 2000-09, eight increased their entries from 1990-1999, and Indiana made the short list for the first time. Only the province of Saskatchewan saw a decline, though merely by eight bucks. The top states with increases were Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri, Kansas and Minnesota.
Minnesota’s B&C staying power is without peer; it posted increases for six straight decades and never once fell from the top 10. Its 193 entries for 2000-09 placed it 10th on the list. It was No. 9 in the 1990s with 168, No. 1 in the 1980s with 142, No. 1 in the 1970s with 138, No. 1 in the 1960s with 94 and No. 1 in the 1950s with 53.
Wisconsin’s Buffalo County remained the No. 1 county for the third straight decade by placing 44 bucks into B&C in 2000-09. It was also No. 1 in the 1990s with 25 and No. 1 in the 1980s with 14.
Illinois has no equal for B&C non-typicals; it recorded 251 of the 1,637 entries (15 percent) in 2000-09. It was also No. 1 during the 1990s, with 161 of the 1,145 entries (14 percent).
