WHAT IT TAKES TO WIN THE WEATHERBY HUNTING AND CONSERVATION AWARD

If it is accepted that the Weatherby Hunting and Conservation Award is the world’s most prestigious and desired hunting award, then it follows that the accomplishments required to win it are among the most difficult.

The Selection Committee is a permanent committee of Weatherby Foundation International. It is comprised of the past eight winners of the Award, plus three past winners who are still hunting, so as to provide continuity and history to the committee. Collectively the committee members have hundreds of years of big game hunting experience and thousands of species and hunts. All have exhibited a lifetime of ethical hunting and character befitting a Weatherby Award winner. It is this vast amount of experience in the field and the personal network of guides, outfitters, and booking agents that make the Selection Committee the most qualified judges on the planet to choose the next Award winner.

The Selection Committee reviews the top ten applicants each year by the number of species they have collected. They then choose the top six who they believe – in their experience and knowledge using the qualities of hunting, conservation, education, character, and sportsmanship – should be this year’s winner and five nominees.

The threshold for making the top six nominees has increased from about 200 species when this was first written to about 280 species. One of the criteria is to have hunted all six continents. The nominees often hunt all six continents in the same year. Any hunter is eligible to win and there have been many international winners. There has also been a husband and wife and a father and son who have won the award.

There is no guarantee that once someone becomes a nominee they will win the award. Someone may be hunting harder or participating in more conservation and education activities and thus would be more qualified to win the award. Usually, it takes several years after been nominated to collect the species and accomplish the level of conservation and educational achievements that it takes to be the winner.

Character and ethics play a “win/don’t win” part in the selection process. After a hunter becomes a nominee, a lot of attention is focused on their character and sportsmanship. The winner of the award must represent the morals, ethics, and behavior that will reflect well on the top hunting conservation award in the world.

The winner is decided by a numerical score, six for the most qualified, five for the next and so on down to one. The scores from each of the eleven committee members are totaled and the nominee with the most points is presented to the Board of Directors for ratification.

There are no politics involved in picking the winner. When an applicant first becomes one of the six nominees, they are assigned a mandatory one for that year, no matter where their qualifications would otherwise rank them. This gives the committee a year to learn about the nominee’s hunting ethics and character. By the time someone becomes a nominee they are usually well known by the committee members.

In order to be considered properly, nominees must document their activities and qualifications in ancillary hunting-related areas of character and sportsmanship, youth education, and wildlife conservation in as much detail as their hunting accomplishments. No one can win the award without been held in high esteem in these categories. If the applicant with the most hunting accomplishments has lapses in character or hunting ethics or has not participated extensively in conservation or educational activities, then there is a slim chance the applicant will win that year.

The hunting part of the Ballot has over 480 species some of which are no longer able to be hunted because some of the hunters have taken the species. The Master List is continuously under review as new countries open and as new species are recognized. All species must be hunted free-range; no high-fenced hunting is allowed to be included. A significant problem for the judges is when the nominees list species in places that they don’t exist. It takes a major time commitment to go through all of the 280 to 330 trophies to confirm the accuracy of a Ballot. A few mistakes are assumed, but the judges frown on practices such as listing species taken in high-fence areas, inflating the score or size of the trophy, or entering a trophy that was taken by the guide or someone else.

Each judge has their own method of judging as each judge places different emphases on the many factors contained in the Ballot. The award criteria and ballot are an evolving process that continues to improve and reflect hunting’s highest and most prestigious honor: The Weatherby Award.