World Record Roosevelt’s Elk Smashes Old Mark

When Timothy Carpenter put his tag on a giant Roosevelt’s elk last September in Humboldt County, Calif., he knew that it was a giant bull and then some.

But as it turned out, it was even bigger than anyone could imagine and far bigger than any other Roosevelt’s elk in history, smashing its way to the No. 1 spot in the Boone and Crockett Club record book.

In fact, after receiving an original score of 439 7/8 inches—more than enough to be the world record—the score on Carpenter’s big Rosie bull actually went up by a considerable amount after the conclusion of a recent Special Judges Panel measuring session held by B&C in Missoula, Mt. to verify the bull’s final score.

When the smoke had cleared from that gathering of B&C measurers—which included panel chairman and veteran measurer Victor Clark, along with Tim Humes, John Capurro, Slade Sanborn, and Jeff Simmons—Carpenter’s bull was green-lighted to become the new world record Roosevelt’s elk bull thanks to a final and almost unbelievable official score of 455 2/8 inches.

“The main objective of any panel, whether it be a Special Judges Panel or Awards Judges Panel, is to confirm the accepted entry score,” said Kyle Lehr, the B&C Club’s director of big game records, in a news release. “Sometimes differences in measurements are discovered through this process, and corrections need to be made. In the case of Mr. Carpenter’s Roosevelt’s elk, those differences resulted in an increase in score.”

With its new score, Carpenter’s massive Roosevelt’s elk bull taken on Sept. 21, 2023 quite literally blows away, significantly shatters, and utterly smashes its way past the previous world’s record mark for a Rosie bull by more than 30 inches. For the record, that previous benchmark was 419-6/8 inches, a Roosevelt’s elk taken by Rick Bailey in British Columbia in 2015.

Now that’s some kind of a bull, and then some.

“Every animal is a trophy,” agreed Tony A. Schoonen, chief executive officer of the Boone and Crockett Club, when discussing Carpenter’s monstrous bull. “Sometimes, truly magnificent animals are taken that represent North America’s conservation success story. That’s really what we’re celebrating.”

Carpenter is certainly celebrating that too, both as a hunter and as someone keenly aware of how rare and special such big game animals are, even under the blanket of the North American Wildlife Conservation Model that has brought many species—including elk—back from dangerous all-time lows a century or so ago.

According to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, more than 10 million elk—made up of six different subspecies, once upon a time—once roamed nearly all of the United States and parts of Canada before European settlers arrived. By the early 1900s, the combination of market hunting, habitat loss, and other factors had seen elk numbers tumble to an estimated 41,000 according to the RMEF.

While Roosevelt’s elk aren’t nearly as numerous as their Rocky Mountain elk cousins, they were also suffering a tremendous spiral downward too for all of the above reasons.

According to a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service report, officials with the U.S. Forest Service reported that by 1910, Rosies were “very scarce” along Oregon’s coastal forests on the Umpqua National Forest.

The downward spiral was so severe that in 1902, statewide hunting restrictions were made for Roosevelt’s elk and the season was shut down entirely by 1905. By the mid-1920’s however, their numbers were beginning to rebound in Oregon and elsewhere. Today, while it’s hard to get an exact count on Rosie population numbers in the Pacific Northwest, more than 5,700 are found in California, while similar numbers are found in other parts of the region.

There’s little doubt that Carpenter is a big fan of the North American Wildlife Conservation Model and how it has brought back numerous wildlife species from precarious lows. In fact, according to B&C, the 39-year old Carpenter actually splits his time between guiding elk hunters each fall and being a wildlife biologist the rest of the year.

While he’s rarely afforded a day off to hunt himself, he doesn’t seem to mind.

““It is very rewarding to be part of any successful Roosevelt’s elk hunt,” Carpenter said in the B&C news release. “It is that much more rewarding when we are able to take animals that are mature—or even past their prime—and are Boone and Crockett animals.”

For the record, Carpenter isn’t a one-hit wonder when it comes to hunting Roosevelt’s elk. In fact, he has multiple Roosevelt’s elk in the record books, including a 2011 bull that scored 398-1/8 and is the current archery world’s record.

That makes Carpenter the current holder of not one, but two world’s records for Roosevelt’s elk bulls, an amazing stat in and of itself.

What is a Roosevelt’s elk some might ask? They are found exclusively in the Pacific Northwest and range from northern California up through British Columbia. Named after Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States and the founder of the B&C Club, these bull elk are the biggest (body wise) of North America’s elk subspecies and can have bulls weighing as much as 1,100 pounds..

An interesting sidenote here is that while Rosie’s are named after Teddy Roosevelt—the species has also been referred to as Olympic elk—that naming was well before Roosevelt had ascended to the peak of his political heights. In fact, that naming actually occurred in December 1897 when it’s reported that mammalogist C. Hart Merriam named the subspecies after his friend Teddy Roosevelt, then Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Navy.

Whatever the history behind the species and its Presidential name, the Rosie bull from last September is certainly a special one for Carpenter, who noted that it was probably 11 or 12 years old. “It was probably from a combination of great genetics, perfect environmental conditions, and lots of late rain providing great forage for finishing out antler growth.”

More antler growth than any other Roosevelt’s elk in history, as it turns out. And if you happen to chase any elk species anywhere in North America, then we should all be so lucky.