One December, while I was out on my ranch, so much work had to be done that it was within a week of Christmas before we were able to take any thought for the Christmas dinner. The winter set in late that year, and there had been comparatively little cold weather, but one day the ice on the river had been sufficiently strong to enable us to haul up a wagon load of flour, with enough salt pork to last through the winter, and a very few tins of canned goods, to be used at special feasts. We had some bushels of potatoes, the heroic victors of a struggle for existence in which the rest of our garden vegetables has succumbed to drought, frost and grasshoppers; and we also had some wild plums and dried elk venison. But we had no fresh meat, and so one day my foreman and I agreed to make a hunt on the morrow.
We dismounted to examine them. |
It was necessary to get to the hunting grounds by sunrise, and it still lacked a couple of hours of dawn when the foreman wakened me as I lay asleep beneath the buffalo robes. Dressed hurriedly and breakfasting on a cup of coffee and some mouthfuls of bread and jerked elk meat, we slipped out to the barn, threw the saddles on the horses, and were off.
The air was bitterly chill: the cold had been severe for two days, so that the river ice would again bear horses. Beneath the light covering of powdery snow we could feel the rough ground like wrinkled iron under the horses' hoofs. There was no moon. but the stars shone beautifully down through the cold, clear air and our willing horses galloped swiftly across the long bottom on which the ranch house stood, threading their way deftly among the clumps of sagebrush.
As the dawn reddened, and it became light enough to see objects some little way off, we began to sit erect in our saddles and to scan the hillsides sharply for sight of feeding deer. Hitherto we had seen no deer tracks save inside the bullberry bushes by the river, and we knew that the deer that lived in that impenetrable jungle were cunning whitetails which in such a place could be hunted only by aid of a hound. But just before sunrise we came on three lines of heart shaped footmarks in the snow, which showed where as many deer had just crossed a little plain ahead of us. They were walking leisurely, and from the lay of the land we believed that we should find them over the ridge, where there was a brush coulee.
Riding to one side of the trail, we topped the little ridge just as the sun flamed up, a burning ball of crimson, beyond the snowy waste at our backs. Almost immediately afterwards my companion leaped from his horse and raised his rifle, and as he pulled the trigger I saw through the twigs of a brush patch on our left the erect, startled head of a young black-tailed doe as she turned to look at us, here great mule-like ears thrown forward. The ball broke her neck, and she turned a complete somersault downhill, while a sudden smashing of underbrush told of the flight of her terrified companions.
We both laughed and called out "dinner" as we sprang down toward her, and in a few minutes she was dressed and hung up by the hind legs on a small ash tree. The entrails and viscera we threw off to one side, after carefully poisoning them from a little bottle of strychnine which I had in my pocket. Almost every cattleman carries poison and neglects no chance of leaving out wolf bait, for the wolves are sources of serious loss the the unfenced and unhoused flocks and herds. In this instance we felt particularly revengeful because it was but a few days since we had lost a fine yearling heifer. The tracks on the hillside where the carcass lay when we found it told the story plainly. The wolves, two in number, had crept up close before being discovered, and had then raced down on the astounded heifer almost before she could get fairly started. One brute had hamstrung her with a snap of his vise-like jaws, and once down she was torn open in a twinkling.
Turning to go into the log house. |
This was all we could carry. Leading the horses around we packed the buck behind my companion's saddle, and then rode back for the doe, which I put behind mine. But we were not destined to reach home without a slight adventure. When we got to the river we rode boldly on the ice, heedless of the thaw; and about midway there was a sudden, tremendous crash, and men, horses and deer were scrambling together in the water amid slabs of floating ice. However, it was shallow and no worse results followed than some hard work and a chilly bath. But what cared we? We were returning triumphant with our Christmas dinner. Theodore Roosevelt, 1909 Tazewell Republican
More Sites About Theodore Roosevelt:
- Theodore Roosevelt at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
- "East of the Sun and West of the Moon – by Theodore and Kermit Roosevelt".
- "Biography from WhiteHouse.gov".
- "Theodore Roosevelt entry at NobelPrize.org".
- "Theodore Roosevelt – Congressional Medal of Honor entry; including citation and pictures".
- "Theodore Roosevelt: A Resource Guide from the Library of Congress".
- "Theodore Roosevelt Dies Suddenly at Oyster Bay Home; Nation Shocked, Pays Tribute to Former President; Our Flag on All Seas and in All Lands at Half Mast". The New York Times January 6, 1919
- Detailed biography from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1911)
- "Theodore Roosevelt Association – Founded in 1920 by Roosevelt's friends and admirers to preserve his legacy. Online resources and bibliography".
- Julian L. Street Papers on Theodore Roosevelt at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University
- Almanac of Theodore Roosevelt
- Theodore Roosevelt Collection at Houghton Library, Harvard University
- Hunting in Many Lands: The Book of the Boone and Crockett Club (1895), Roosevelt, Theodore (Editor). Project Gutenberg. (Also contains a chapter written by Theodore Roosevelt.)
- Theodore Roosevelt at C-SPAN's American Presidents: Life Portraits
- Theodore Roosevelt at C-SPAN's American Writers: A Journey Through History
- Booknotes interview with Nathan Miller on Theodore Roosevelt: A Life, February 14, 1993.
- View works on Natural History by Theodore Roosevelt online at the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
- Roosevelt, Theodore (1911). "Revealing and concealing coloration in birds and mammals". Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 30 (Article 8): 119–231.
- An American Lion Documentary from YouTube
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