Michael G. Swyers of Quesnel, British Columbia was recently honoured by the Boone and Crockett Club with the Club’s Hunt Fair Chase Award presented every three years recognizing one of the foundations of wildlife conservation and game management in North America – an ethical approach to sustainable hunting. Michael received a second award for his Rocky Mountain goat 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 are taken, entered and accepted into Boone and Crockett Club’s big game records-keeping program and are assembled for public display followed by a banquet and award presentations. A judges panel comprised of senior Boone and Crockett Official Measurers verify each trophies final score, which is the sum total of a comprehensive series of measurements taken of antlers, horns, skulls and tusks, depending on the species.
The Boone and Crockett system of scoring big game trophies originated in 1906 as a means of recording details on species thought to be disappearing because of rampant habitat loss, market hunting and unregulated harvest. Science-based conservation efforts led and funded by license-buying hunters helped bring those species from vanishing to flourishing. The existence of mature, male specimens remains a classic gauge of sustainable hunting and successful habitat and wildlife management programs.
In addition to its prestigious history and tradition, the Boone and Crockett Club is strongly associated with the highest standards of hunting ethics referred to as, fair chase. Swyers’s trophy scored 55-6/8 Boone and Crockett points and was taken in 2015 from Northwest British Columbia.
It will be listed along with more than 4,000 other outstanding trophies in the Boone and Crockett Club’s 29th Big Game Awards book available this fall.
Founded in 1887 by Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell, the Boone and Crockett Club is the oldest wildlife conservation organization in North America. Over it’s 129-year existence B&C Club has initiated and championed the establishment of national parks, wildlife preservation, funding and management legislation. It is the mission of the Boone and Crockett Club to promote the conservation and management of wildlife, especially big game and its habitat, to preserve and encourage hunting and to maintain the highest ethical standards of fair chase and sportsmanship in North America.