This
page is a tribute to Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt, a great man, hunter
and President of this great country that so many of us don’t
appreciate as we should. Hunting in this country would not be what
it is today with out Theodore Roosevelt.
Here
are some facts:
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Theodore
Roosevelt was the 26th presdent of the United States. He
was President from September 14, 1901 until March 4, 1909.
Created
53 national
wildlife refuges. Click here for more informaton.
Established
the U.S.
Forest Service
and
created 42 millions acres of National
Forests.
Created
5 National
Parks
and 18 National Monuments. Click here for more information.
Overall
he provided federal protection for almost 230 million acres.
Formed
the Boone
and Crocket Club in
1887.
He
wrote numerous books that contain wisdom of yesterday that needs to
be remembered today.
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These
are HUGE accomplishments! I hope that visitors to our web site will
learn more about Theodore Roosevelt - the information is out there.
One just has to find it and I will try to help in this web page.
Some
of the books that I own are: "Outdoor Pastimes of an American
Hunter", "Hunting Trips of a Ranchman" and "The Wilderness
Hunter" - all were written by Theodore Roosevelt. As one reads
these books, one can feel how he felt. He was passionate about
nature and hunting. He knew that someone had to preserve it and he
did just that. He was a man of honor and integrity and doing the
right thing was important to him. Theodore Roosevelt was a great,
great man!
Here
are some web sites that you can visit and learn more about Theodore
Roosevelt.
http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/life/biotr.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt
You
can buy Theodore Roosevelt’s books at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
You
can read " Hunting
Trips of a Ranchman " online or you can download the PDF file.
I
could not find " Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter " on the
internet except at stores.
" The
Strenuous Life "
is not about conservation and hunting but is worth reading. You can
read it online here.
Here
is an excerpt from " Hunting Trips of a Ranchman ":
CHAPTER
IX STILL-HUNTING ELK ON THE MOUNTAINS
http://www.bartleby.com/52/9.html
AFTER
the buffalo, the elk are the first animals to disappear from a
country when it is settled. This arises from their size and
consequent conspicuousness, and the eagerness with which they are
followed by hunters; and also because of their gregariousness and
their occasional fits of stupid panic during whose continuance
hunters can now and then work great slaughter in a herd. Five years
ago elk were abundant in the valley of the Little Missouri, and in
fall were found wandering in great bands of over a hundred
individuals each. But they have now vanished completely, except that
one or two may still lurk in some of the most remote and broken
places, where there are deep, wooded ravines. Formerly the elk were
plentiful all over the plains, coming down into them in great bands
during the fall months and traversing their entire extent. But the
incoming of hunters and cattle-men has driven them off the ground as
completely as the buffalo; unlike the latter, however, they are still
very common in the dense woods that cover the Rocky Mountains and the
other great western chains. In the old days running elk on horseback
was a highly esteemed form of plains sport; but now that it has
become a beast of the timber and the craggy ground, instead of a
beast of the open, level prairie, it is followed almost solely on
foot and with the rifle. Its sense of smell is very acute, and it has
good eyes and quick ears; and its wariness makes it under ordinary
circumstances very difficult to approach. But it is subject to fits
of panic folly, and during their continuance great numbers can be
destroyed. A band places almost as much reliance upon the leaders as
does a flock of sheep; and if the leaders are shot down, the others
will huddle together in a terrified mass, seemingly unable to make up
their minds in which direction to flee. When one, more bold than the
rest, does at last step out, the hidden hunter's at once shooting it
down will produce a fresh panic; I have known of twenty elk (or
wapiti, as they are occasionally called) being thus procured out of
one band. And at times they show a curious indifference to danger,
running up on a hunter who is in plain sight, or standing still for a
few fatal seconds to gaze at one that unexpectedly appears…
…No
sportsman can ever feel much keener pleasure and self-satisfaction
than when, after a successful stalk and good shot, he walks up to a
grand elk lying dead in the cool shade of the great evergreens, and
looks at the massive and yet finely moulded form, and at the mighty
antlers which are to serve in the future as the trophy and proof of
his successful skill. Still-hunting the elk on the mountains is as
noble a kind of sport as can well be imagined; there is nothing more
pleasant and enjoyable, and at the same time it demands that the
hunter shall bring into play many manly qualities.
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Here
is an excerpt from " The Wilderness Hunter: "
In
September, 1891, with my ranch-partner, Ferguson, I made an elk-hunt
in northwestern Wyoming among the Shoshone Mountains, where they join
the Hoodoo and Absoraka ranges. There is no more beautiful game
country in the United States. It is a parkland, where glades,
meadows, and high mountain pastures break the evergreen forest ; a
forest which is open compared to the tangled density of the woodland
farther north. It is a high, cold region of many lakes and clear
rushing streams. The steep mountains are generally of the rounded
form so often seen in the ranges of the Cordilleras of the United
States ; but the Hoodoos, or Goblins, are carved in fantastic and
extraordinary shapes ; while the Tetons, a group of isolated
rock-peaks, show a striking boldness in their lofty outlines. This
was one of the pleasantest hunts I ever made. As always in the
mountains, save where the country is so rough and so densely wooded
that one must go a-foot, we had a pack-train ; and we took a more
complete outfit than we had ever before taken on such a hunt, and so
traveled in much comfort. Usually when in the mountains I have merely
had one companion, or at most a couple, and two or three pack-ponies
; each of us doing his share of the packing, cooking, fetching water,
and pitching the small square of
canvas which served as tent. In itself packing is both an art and a
mystery, and a skilful professional packer, versed in the intricacies
of the " diamond hitch," packs with a speed which no
non-professional can hope to rival, and fixes the side packs and top
packs with such scientific nicety, and adjusts the doubles and turns
of the lash-rope so accurately, that everything stays in place under
any but the most adverse conditions….
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Here
are some quotes from " Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter "
Chapter
IX
Wilderness
Reserves; The Yellowstone Park
The
most striking and melancholy feature in connection with American Big
game is the rapidity with which it has vanished. When, just before
the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the rifle-bearing hunter of
the backwoods first penetrated the great forests west of the
Alleghanies, deer, elk, black beer, and even buffalo, swarmed in what
are now the States of Kentucky and Tennessee, and the country north
of the Ohio was a great and almost virgin hunting-ground. From that
day to this the shrinkage has gone on, only partially checked here
and there, and never arrested as a whole. As a matter of historical
accuracy, however, it is well to bear in mind that many writers, in
lamenting this extinction of the game, have from time to time
anticipated or overstated the facts.
…skipping
to the next page…
While
it is necessary to give this word of warning to those who, in
praising time past, always forget the opportunities of the present,
it is a thousand fold more necessary to remember that these
opportunities are, nevertheless, vanishing; and if we are a sensible
people, we will make it our business to see that the process of
extinction is arrested. At the present moment the great herds of
caribou are being butchered, as in the past the great hers of bison
and wapiti have been butchered. Every believer in manliness, and
therefore in manly sport, and every lover of nature, every man who
appreciates the majesty and beauty of the wilderness and of wild
life, should strike hands with the far-sighted men who wish to
preserve our material resources, in the effort to keep our forests
and our game beasts, game birds, and game fish-indeed, all the living
creatures of prairie, and woodland, and seashore-from wanton
destruction.
Above
all, we should realize that the effort toward this end is essentially
a democratic movement. It is entirely in our power as a nation to
preserve large tracts of wilderness, which are valueless for
agricultural purposes and unfit for settlement, as playgrounds for
rich and poor alike, and to preserve the game so that it shall
continue to exist for the benefit of all lovers of nature, and to
give reasonable opportunities for the exercise of the skill of the
hunter, whether he is or is not a man of means. But this end can
only be achieved by wise laws and by a resolute enforcement of the
laws. Lack of such legislation and administration will result in
harm to all of us, but most of all in harm to the nature lover who
does not possess vast wealth.
The
chapter continues but this should suffice for you to see that
Theodore Roosevelt lived the life of Adventure. He saw the problem
of the game and forests being depleted. He had a vision of what
needed to be done. He executed his plan. He was a great President
and everyone needs to know this.
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" The
Strenuous Life "- Here
are some passages that were true over 100 years ago and still are
true today.
Chapter
1 - The Strenuous Life:
I
wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of
the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife;
to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man
who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from
danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins
the splendid ultimate triumph……We admire the man who embodies
victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is
prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary
to win in the stern strife of actual life. It is hard to fail, but it
is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing
save by effort…….In the last analysis a healthy state can exist
only when the men and women who make it up lead clean, vigorous,
healthy lives; when the children are so trained that they shall
endeavor, not to shirk difficulties, but to overcome them; not to
seek ease, but to know how to wrest triumph from toil and risk. The
man must be glad to do a man's work, to dare and endure and to labor;
to keep himself, and to keep those dependent upon him.
Chapter
VI - Character and Success:
Bodily
vigor is good, and vigor of intellect is even better, but far above
both is character. It is true, of course, that a genius may, on
certain lines, do more than a brave and manly fellow who is not a
genius; and so, in sports, vast physical strength may overcome
weakness, even though the puny body may have in it the heart of a
lion. But, in the long run, in the great battle of life, no
brilliancy of intellect, no perfection of bodily development, will
count when weighed in the balance against that assemblage of virtues,
active and passive, of moral qualities, which we group together under
the name of character; and if between any two contestants, even in
college sport or in college work, the difference in character on the
right side is as great as the difference of intellect or strength the
other way, it is the character side that will win. 2 Of course
this does not mean that either intellect or bodily vigor can safely
be neglected. On the contrary, it means that both should be
developed, and that not the least of the benefits of developing both
comes from the indirect effect which this development itself has upon
the character.
Chapter
VII- The Eighth and Ninth Commandments in Politics:
THE
two commandments which are specially applicable in public life are
the eighth and the ninth. Not only every politician, high or low, but
every citizen interested in politics, and especially every man who,
in a newspaper or on the stump, advocates or condemns any public
policy or any public man, should remember always that the two
cardinal points in his doctrine ought to be, "Thou shalt not
steal," and "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy
neighbor." He should also, of course, remember that the
multitude of men who break the moral law expressed in these two
commandments are not to be justified because they keep out of the
clutches of the human law….…….No community is healthy where it
is ever necessary to distinguish one politician among his fellows
because "he is honest." Honesty is not so much a credit as
an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public. Unless a
man is honest we have no right to keep him in public life, it matters
not how brilliant his capacity, it hardly matters how great his power
of doing good service on certain lines may be………..It is, of
course, not enough that a public official should be honest. No amount
of honesty will avail if he is not also brave and wise. The weakling
and the coward cannot be saved by honesty alone; but without honesty
the brave and able man is merely a civic wild beast who should be
hunted down by every lover of righteousness. No man who is corrupt,
no man who condones corruption in others, can possibly do his duty by
the community. When this truth is accepted as axiomatic in our
politics, then, and not till then, shall we see such a moral
uplifting of the people as will render………..We need absolute
honesty in public life; and we shall not get it until we remember
that truth-telling must go hand in hand with it, and that it is quite
as important not to tell an untruth about a decent man as it is to
tell the truth about one who is not decent.
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Wyoming
Expeditions does old fashion wilderness hunts much like the ones that
Theodore Roosevelt talks about in his books. You
too can experience a hunting expedition with Wyoming Expeditions just
like Theodore Roosevelt’s hunting expeditions over 115 years ago.
We travel on horses and mules into “true” wilderness. There are
no fences nor domestic elk herds. If you want a real hunt and a real
adventure, then Wyoming Expeditions has the hunt for you. It will be
an adventure that you will remember and treasure for the rest of your
life. The real treasure from a back country elk hunt is not the
horns on the wall but rather the memories that will last a lifetime.
And don’t forget, we owe it all to Theodore Roosevelt.
Click
here to read what our hunters had to say about their hunt with
Wyoming Expeditions.
Return to Wyoming Expedition Home Page.
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