In The Country He Loved

"It's the only thing that works if they chase rabbits," Jack explained. "One fellow suggested I tie a dead jackrabbit to Basil's collar and hunt him for a morning like that. The guy said the dog would get so sick of the smell and the weight of the rabbit around his neck that he'd never think of chasing one again. So I tried it. After a while Basil's head was dragging and all of the fur had rubbed off that rabbit so it looked like a naked baby hanging there. I couldn't stand the sight of it. So I took off the carcass and the first live rabbit that comes along, off Basil goes."

Some of the more famous, or infamous, hunts that Ernest Hemingway organized were for jackrabbits. One fall, in the town of Dietrich, Idaho, the Frieze farm was being overrun by jackrabbits until Hemingway, calling himself the General, directed a troop of beaters and gunners in driving the pests to an intersection of two irrigation canals. Jack was one of the gunners. "The rabbits could either double back through you, or swim the canal, which they didn't much care for." he said. "With 10 guns, we shot about 1,750 jackrabbits in one day. After something like that the farmer was happy as a bedbug to have you back to shoot some pheasants. It was incredible to see so many rabbits in one place, like the whole earth was moving in front of you." Jack grinned. "I'm not trying to be funny about the earth moving, either."

When we rejoined Lou and Fred for lunch, two huge sage grouse lay craw-less beside their 4WD. "They look like airplanes trying to get off the ground." Lou said. We ate off the tailgate on civilized fare of freshly baked French bread, cold cuts and Foster's Lager, and Jack shared with us the secret that one of his father's favorite sandwiches was peanut butter and onion. A golden eagle soared nearby, scouring the hillside for chukar.

We'd driven about 10 miles after lunch when Fred, in the lead 4WD, pulled over to the side of the dirt farm road and stopped. Just ahead, in the long grass, we could see the profile of a sage grouse watching us nervously. It was the scout for an entire flock, and fortunately for us, George Armstrong Custer had taught this bird its trade. We crept out of the vehicles, retrieved our guns from the back and headed toward the flock, three abreast. Lou stayed behind to hold the dogs. The grouse were moving now, aware that something was up, but the scout hadn't given its warning cry. We were no more than 10 yards away when the first four flushed, each flying in a different direction. We knocked down three, and as I hurriedly reloaded, I could hear the remaining birds continue to flush in ones and twos, seconds apart, giving us ample time for another salvo. The sage grouse, clearly, isn't an intelligent bird. The dogs by this time had bolted from Lou, so that the prairie was boiling with activity—birds flying, birds falling, hunters filling the air with pellets, dogs retrieving. We shot five of the 12-bird flock. "Got to leave a few for seed," Jack said, deciding to stop one short of our limit rather than pursue the others. We were all aware of the irony: After trudging through difficult country for a day and a half without result, we'd finally found this peanut-brained quarry by spotting it from the 4WD.

Late that afternoon, as the others walked on, I took a seat on a bale of alfalfa hay to enjoy what Jack had casually referred to as Paradise Valley. There was a sheep wagon parked on the valley floor. As one's glance went upwards, the colors and terrain changed three times before one's line of sight reached the sky. The lowest slopes of the valley were sage-covered and broken by lava outcroppings 10 to 12 feet high. In the late afternoon shadows these outcroppings took on the shapes of spires, or buffalos or wagons. Above that the hills turned reddish-brown, and veins of aspen trickled down. One slope was flecked with white dots—a herd of sheep grazing in the sunlight. Finally, high above us, were the jagged white tips of the Lost River Range.

It's never a good idea to separate yourself from your party while hunting, and I would soon find out why. Up ahead, the others flushed two Huns. Hearing shots, I looked up to see one of them flying low along the hillside with Rickey, far behind, in pursuit. The bird went down, but before the setter could retrieve it, Fred had whistled him back, thinking that the bird wasn't hit.

I marked the spot and jogged up the hillside to retrieve the dead partridge. I had never seen one before and examined it before slipping it into my pocket. It was larger than a quail, with brownish-gray coloring, a rounded head and short tail feathers—altogether lacking in distinguishing characteristics. I started down the hillside toward the others, who were some 200 yards away, still hunting. They flushed another bird, and, to my annoyance, it chose the exact flight path of the Hun I'd just retrieved. The lava around me was suddenly dancing with buckshot. One pellet smacked against my thigh. I dived behind a shrub, squeezing off two shots at the Hun as it flew past, missing badly. This little bird was a different proposition from the jumbo-jet sage grouse. Turning my attention to my wound, I expected to find my pants leg awash in blood, but a thorough search—I went so far as to remove my pants—revealed only a tiny red welt. At 200 yards, a 20-gauge cartridge filled with number 7½ shot doesn't carry much mustard. Still, I determined it would be prudent to hurry back to the others, and after massaging my badge of stupidity, I ran down the hillside as conspicuously as possible, shouting and waving my arms.

Silver Creek is one of the West's most famous spring streams, a clear, cold confluence of a myriad of creeks that bubble to the surface some 35 miles south of Sun Valley. The stream bed is smooth, the trout smart and the natural food abundant. "The vegetation of Silver Creek is a miracle of nature," Fred was saying as we arrived the next day at the six-mile fly-fishing-only, catch-and-release section managed by The Nature Conservancy. "Silver Creek supports 1,500 fish per square mile of water, whereas a freestone river like the Beaver Kill back East supports about 100 fish per square mile. Within a half mile of where we are standing, there are probably 500 fish weighing over five pounds."

Jack is modest about his record as Idaho's Fish and Game Commissioner, but one change that took place during his tenure pleased him greatly—a change of attitude. "Fish and Game had always thought in terms of yield," he said. "Everything was measured in creel censuses: how many trout got into the frying pan. During my term—and this was a slow, evolutionary process—people started to think in terms of quality fishing. Catching and releasing. So you reused a trout as many times as the poor little bugger could stand it. If you want fish for the frying pan the place to go is one of our reservoirs, which grow fish very, very fast."

Jack's first love has been fishing since his boarding school days, when his passion for wetting a line earned him the nickname Hemingtrout. When he parachuted into Occupied France during World War II, he did so with a fly rod in his pack. His father's Big Two-Hearted River stories are generally considered the finest on trout fishing ever written, but when it came to fly-fishing, Jack was always Ernest's better. "My father was a fine wet-fly fisherman," Jack said, "but he gave it up entirely when the Railway Express lost all his equipment one year as he was shipping it out here. Hundreds of old gut leaders with the flies pre-fastened to them, all his rods and reels. He could never have replaced some of that stuff. I think he figured it was a good time to stop anyway, because he was never going to catch as many fish as I did. It became my whole life, you see, and he was competitive that way."