> Although two hunters in his camp bailed out due to severe weather, Lander, Wyoming, building contractor Tony Spriggs hunkered down in his tent and waited out the storm so he could get a crack at his first musk ox. He was hunting in the Northwest Territories in a region known for extreme weather. Spriggs, however, was in capable hands.

"My guide was a 70-year-old Inuit who went out in this white-out and found four good bulls. As soon as the weather broke, we went after them," he said. "I was never concerned about the weather."

After a brief search, they found them and Spriggs and his friend agreed to shoot at the same time. "He got first choice, so I picked one out that I thought was good, also," he says. "It was, boom-boom, that fast." Not only was Spriggs' bull good, it was a quarter-inch shy of the world record. As it turned out, both hunters dropped their bulls within a few feet of each other, something their guide said would be virtually impossible.

> Val Olenski is a die-hard deer hunter from Glenn County, California, and for years, wanted nothing to do with elk. "I was afraid I might like it," he says. After his first hunt, Olenski not only liked it, he was hooked. When the dust settled, Olenski killed a massive 9x10 Tule elk that scored 3414⁄8, the number one bull entered into the most recent awards book.

> Scott Dexter took a massive nontypical whitetail on his family's 150-acre Illinois farm. It scored 2953⁄8 and actually tied the buck taken by Ohio hunter Jonathan Schmucker for the First award for the 26th Annual Big Game Awards.

> Dennis Dunn of Kirkland, Washington, arrowed a twenty-eight-year old grizzly in Alaska to take the Second award in the grizzly bear category. The bear is the largest ever taken with a bow and arrow. It scored 265⁄16. "The bear had one canine tooth left and we found five old bullet scars," he said.

These were just some of the stories being told at the 26th Big Game Awards.