I didn't grow up in a hunting family, so I didn't go on my first hunt until I was in college and went deer hunting with one of my roommates. The deer that I shot was a spike buck and I proudly hung his antlers on my bedroom wall. We also enjoyed eating the little white packages of his venison that winter.
I hunted with that roommate again the next year and I shot my first elk. That bull gave us so much meat that we had to rent a meat locker, and his meat fed us for the rest of that school year. And I proudly hung his 5x5 antlers in our living room.
After college and 3 years with Uncle Sam, I came home, got married, and began my career working in the Colorado and then Montana mountains. For most of the next 40 some years I was able to put an elk in my freezer.
As my enjoyment of hunting grew, I shot my 1st balck bear and my 1st pronghorn antelope. My family enjoyed eating their meat, and those two animals started my taxidermy colllection which has grown to 80 mounts.
After moving to Montana my hunting opportunities really expanded. I have been lucky enough to have drawn tags and hunted all of Montana's big game animals, and have gone on a dozen Alaskan and other international hunts. Most of those hunts ended with me bringing home animal trophies to have mounted, but I have also brought home meat from the deer, caribou, sheep, moose, and muskox that I shot there.
On my paid hunts in Alaska and abroad, I seek the largest animal of the species that I am hunting, but as a Trophy Hunter, I have come home with just tag soup. On my Newfoundland moose and caribou hunt, we didn's see any caribou, and I turned down make able shots on 3 bull moose because they didn't have antlers as big as the Shiras bull moose that I had shot here in Montana.
On one of my Montana Unlimited bighorn sheep hunts I turned down 20 yard shots at standing legal rams beause I had shot a full curl ram the year before was hoping for a larger one. Bighorn sheep meat is some of the best wild meat that I have ever eaten.
Americans cannot legally bring home any meat from African hunts, but all of the meat from the trophy hunted game there is eaten in camp or by the local people. On the morning of the second day of my Leopard hunt in Mozambique I shot a baboon for bait. They put it in a plastic bucket in the back of the truck where it rode all day in 99* heat. We didn't put it out for bait that afternoon and I shot my Leopard that night, so my PH gave it to his staff. They cooked it, guts, feathers, and all the next day and ate it.
I don’t target bigger animals or give them ridiculous names. I’m lucky to draw an elk tag every 4-5 years so I’m not picky. Haven’t killed a deer since 2000 because I can’t draw a tag. My goal is always meat first and trophy second.
