Sometimes you have to be in the right place at the right time and get lucky.
That’s what Cochrane area hunting enthusiast Terry Raymond recently said.
The 56-year-old outdoorsman received a First Award for his Roosevelt’s elk at the Boone and Crockett Club’s 29th Big Game Awards Banquet in Springfield, Missouri on July 16.
Every three years, the finest North American big game trophies taken, entered, and accepted into the Boone and Crockett Club’s big game records-keeping program are assembled for public display and followed by a banquet and awards ceremony.
Judges comprised of senior measurers from the organization verify each trophy’s final score, which is the sum total of a comprehensive series of measurements taken from antlers, horns, skulls, and tusks depending on the species.
The club, whose scoring system originated in 1906 and strongly associates itself with the highest standard of hunting ethics, is one of the most prestigious of its kind in the world.
This year, Raymond’s elk – taken from Jervis Inlet, B.C. – which scored 381-7/8 and was brought down with a .300 Winchester Magnum, was included among the 4,000 other outstanding trophies on the Boone and Crockett books.
“It’s the fifth animal I’ve had make the book,” Raymond said. “I’ve got a mule deer, a whitetail, and two Canada moose as well.
“But, in terms of percentages, this is the biggest animal I’ve harvested. It ranks sixth in the Boone and Crockett book, which is amazingly high. None of the other animals I have in the book scored that much.”
Unlike elk that are native to Alberta, the Roosevelt elk is the biggest bodied of its species, but not the biggest antlered, and is mainly found in California, Oregon, Washington, B.C., and along the Alaskan coast.
“I had to hire a guide and hunt outside the province,” Raymond said. “Since I was a non-resident I had to do my homework and found a great place to go hunting.
“I asked to go into an area where older gentlemen can’t usually go, and I had a phenomenal guide and a wonderful time.”
For someone who has been hunting all his life, the thrill of the hunt isn’t so much about taking a trophy but the experience of the adventure.
“When I was old enough to go out with my father, I would always try to beat the dog to the bird he would shoot,” Raymond remembered.
“I’ve been bow hunting in the Cochrane area since 1975, and am fond of all the hunting adventures I have gone on.”
