One for the record book

For decades, wildlife agencies have kept records of the who, when and where of the biggest fish caught in state waters.

But hunters got no such recognition.

For them, the records were kept by private organizations such as the Boone & Crockett Club, and the minimums to make it into the book were almost beyond achievement.

Enter David Morris of Long Creek, Ore.

Morris, realizing there is a market for state big-game trophy books, has produced versions for Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana.

“There was never a state book,” said Morris. “Boone & Crockett is a national book that has a minimum score requirement. We came up with the idea of putting together a publication that recorded rifle, archery, black powder and shed antlers all in the same book.”

The second edition of “Record Book for Washington’s Big Game Animals” was completed in 2005.

Morris said he plans to update the book every fourth year. The number of big-game entries in the second book is more than 4,000, compared with 1,800 in the first edition.

The books have plenty of color photographs of the trophies, taken in the field showing both the animal and the hunter.

“Boone and Crockett is a nice book, but to us it’s just an accumulation of numbers,” Morris said. “So we put a cross section of colored photographs in, all the different species.”

Morris also has created a few different categories than Boone & Crockett.

For example, the Boone & Crockett boundary between mule deer and Columbia blacktail deer runs due north from Cook in Skamania County, jogs around Mount Rainier park and due north again to Canada.

Columbia blacktail are a type of mule deer and able to interbreed readily. The Boone & Crockett boundary is drawn to exclude hybrids.

Morris, on the other hand, has three categories of blacktail in Washington. Between the coast and Interstate 5, deer are categorized as Western blacktail. Between I-5 and the Boone and Crockett line, they are Columbia blacktail. From the Boone and Crockett line east to a boundary along the Pacific Crest Trail and Klickitat River is a category labeled Cascade blacktail.

“We put in a couple of different categories – like the Cascade blacktail deer – that are real popular,” Morris said. “We take our line farther east and a lot of hunters like that.”

Veteran hunter Ray Croswell of Washougal said the minimum score of 125 to list a blacktail in Morris’ book is tough to reach, but far easier than the 135-point standard of Boone & Crockett.

“A typical four-point around here is 110 to 120,” said Croswell, who has taken 55 blacktails in more than four decades of multistate hunting. “We score a lot of 114s and 115s. The standard to make this book is not a ‘gimme.’ “

Croswell said he enjoys the old photos Morris includes in his books.

“It kind of caters to everybody,” Croswell said. “It’s just an excellent product. He took an idea a lot of people have had and really ran with it.”

Morris’ book also includes stories written by the hunters who bagged trophy animals.

The philosophy behind Morris’ books is pretty simple.

“We just wanted to put together a book hunters want to see,” he said.