Young Guns

Reed Austin and me ca 1975, when we started hunting and fishing together. He is holding a ruffed grouse and I a woodcock (and a Parker 16).

Two Badass Western New Mexicans

John Davila and Miss BoBo:

The "Mother of Dragons" gets her tattoo

Lauren's amazing ink:

Life must go on...

..... and death, and eating: Kirk Hogan with the year's first woodcock in Wisconsin.

Rock and Hawk

"This gray rock, standing tall
On the headland, where the seawind
Lets no tree grow,

Earthquake-proved, and signatured
By ages of storms: on its peak
A falcon has perched.

I think, here is your emblem
To hang in the future sky;
Not the cross, not the hive,

But this; bright power, dark peace;
Fierce consciousness joined with final
Disinterestedness;

Life with calm death; the faqlcon's
Realist eyes and act
Married to the massive

Mysticism of stone,
Which failure cannot cast down
Nor success make proud."

Robinson Jeffers, Rock and Hawk

Black Gyr on basalt in Iceland, taken by Kirk Hogan theee days ago

Maurice R. "Monty" Montgomery, 1938- 2017: RIP

My friend Monty was always a slightly elusive presence, even in his autobiographical sketch in Amazon, written by himself:

"M. R. Montgomery, known to the various government record keepers as Maurice R. Montgomery Jr., and to all his acquaintances as Monty, was born in eastern Montana in 1938, raised partly in California, and now lives near Boston for reasons that he cannot quite explain. Over the past twenty-five years he has written for the Boston Globe on every subject except politics, a clean record he hopes to maintain until retirement. Other than fishing and a little bit of gunning, he has no obsessive hobbies, although he has been known to plant the occasional tomato and a manageable number of antique rose varieties, these for the pleasure of his wife, Florence."

He was sort of the unknown best writer I knew. ALL of his books were good, but two in particular, Many Rivers to Cross, about native trout, and Saying Goodbye, about eastern Montana and fathers and sons, are absolute classics. Saying Goodbye is the best book on eastern Montana I know.

Monty could write about anything. Though I didn’t get to know him until the 90s, I first wrote to him for advice on bird dogs in 1970s -- he replied with a column called “Find a Gentleman With a Bird Dog”. He also wrote columns I remember on rutabagas and November.

In the end I couldn't even find his obit in the Globe. Monty was erudite, kind, and generous as well as an undervalued writer. He will be missed.

Here is a fine tribute by Corb Lund about their mutual country.

Just for Fun

Larissa ("Lulu") has a great new image up...

James Lee Mansell, RIP

James was Floyd Mansell's oldest son, with the woodsman's heritage and ability one might expect. Perhaps even in extra measure; he was one of the best woodsmen and elk and turkey hunters I ever knew in his youth. I believe he was also a Golden Gloves boxer, as many of Floyd's kids and proteges were. But he had a problem. Before such things were diagnosed properly, at least in rural districts, he was utterly dyslexic and never did learn to read. It was no lack of intelligence or dedication; he spoke Spanish, "Burqueno"- accented English , and Navajo; people tended to think he was Spanish, but he was a quarter Navajo, a quarter Choctaw, a quarter Scots- Irish, and a quarter Lebanese; with his handsome vaguely Asian features he would have looked quite at home in Almaty or any of the Stans...

James worked hard, played hard, and walked more than anyone I knew (he once broke his back in an accident, and was walking three days later!), and he drank. It finally killed him. He was nothing if not realistic about it, and made jokes about it until his last days. I would ask him why he had done something uncharacteristically dumb, and he would look at me and say "Steve... I was drunk!" It reached its peak of heartbreak and hilarity when he insisted on narrating, in a loud voice, in the supermarket at 10 AM, how he had managed to get bitten two times by a big diamondback, which he normally could have controlled with ease, as he was a serious snake collector. In each stage of the narration -- anaphylactic shock from the antivenin, and getting bit again when he released it; I would say "I know James, I know". He kept on going "You know WHY?" I said "Yes, James" in a quiet voice. "PUTA, I was drunk!!"

He remained incorrigibly cheerful, even as his horizons narrowed. After being lost in the Gila Wilderness for three days,he stopped going on extended hunts. Breaking his back, though he walked through the pain, made it still harder than it was. He still came by almost daily, pointing out birds and other creatures he had seen on his walks. Toward the end, his wife Bernice was trying to get me to write about him, saying "You don't know him -- he's Floyd Mansell's son!" James, sitting at a table a few feet away, kept saying "Bernice, he's my friend Steve. I saw him this morning! Leave him alone!"

He left behind an enormous amount of good will and love, many brothers and sisters, his mother Wanda, and a grieving wife, and a wonderful bunch of children and grandchildren, some of them already accomplished naturalists and outdoors people. Although he lived his life on the margins, he'll be missed by many,including me.

James and grandchildren.

No Respect

These fine photos of a cow giving birth are by John L Moore of (near) Miles City, rancher and novelist. If they were of antelope, they would probably be on the cover of a magazine, but domestic animals get no respect. Johnson and Janiga, the authors of the magisterial Superdove, on feral pigeons, say they were actively discouraged from writing about them.

William "Gatz" Hjortsberg, 1941- 2017

Chris Waddington, my old editor at the Minneapolis Star Tribune and now a happier man in his belovcd New Orleans (even though Katrina flooded his house) emailed to tell me that our mutual friend Gatz Hjortsberg died at his home in Livingston after a "short illness" i.e. pancreatic cancer (it's a bad one; it's the one that took down Bob Jones after he survived prostate cancer.)

As I said to Chris, our friendship was cordial, but not particularly close. Still, we were part of the same Montana scene and went to the same parties, where Michael Katakis would groan "Oh God, Gatz and Bodio are both here -- nobody else will be able to get  in a word." Probably true, and I think they're all the better for it.  He was always known as "Gatz", never Bill or William, apparently because of a youthful infatuation with the work of Scott Fitzgerald, especially The Great Gatsby. Besides, he wore all those cool hats.

He was utterly intrepid.He was one of Pat's boys" at Sports Illustrated, and his first assignment was to ride a BULL.He did it, too.

Gatz was undervalued as a writer of books, perhaps because he was a writer of genre books in a  literary field. He followed his friend Tom McGuane to Livingston from grad school, because McGuane was the only writer he knew who fished. Among the schools he attended was Stanford, where like McGuane, he was a Stegner  Fellow; that is, someone whom Wallace Stegner abused. This was good company to be in; among the other people Stegner called bums, hippies, beatniks, and worthless were Robert Stone, Ken Kesey, and the lesser known but fascinating David Shetzline, who wrote one of the only two good novels I know of about  forest fires. Among Gatz's books were the dark fantasy Alp and the darker sci- fi Gray Matters in the early years, and the Mexican thriller Manana recently. But his best knows was Falling Angel , which was made into a movie starring Mickey Rourke. He also wrote Nevermore where he wrote the following wonderful inscription in my copy:

He also wrote a puzzling biography of "Poor Old Richard" Brautigan, which took him about 14 years and was rejected by its first publisher. In the end it ran to 862 pages, any 100 of which were brilliant. I can't help but think that Richard's own words might apply: " In this world, where there is only a little time to spend, I think I've spent enougth time on this butterfly." *

No matter. Gatz Hjortsberg was a gentleman and a writer, and he will be missed.

*The quote about the butterfly is a close paraphrase. I'm not going to look it up at this hour!

"Great Moments in Pigeon Keeping"

..as Jack said in a recent email.The Grand Canyon guides knew long before the scientists about the huge stable non- migratory Peregrine population in the Grand Canyon, the Colorado and its tributaries...

 Photos by the late great Wesley Smith of the homers he used to take down the River in the days of film cameras, to allow his clients to be met with photos,. He used to say that each roll took three pigeons: "One for the tiercel, one for the falcon, and one for the film..."

The REAL Eagle Huntress

... with Annyushka, the Merlin Huntress.

New Gorbatov

Anne Price of the REF</> has just sent a link to an enormous bunch of recent work by Vadim Gorbatov</>. Seems like he is doing a lot of urban wildlife lately... (and no, I don't know why that extra code shows)

Vern Dawson 1962- 2017 RIP

Vernon Dawson died this week, tragically youmg. He was a miner, a craftsman, a drinker, a gentleman, and a friend.  Perhaps his problem was the one mentioned long ago by Jimmy Buffett in "A Pirate Looks at Forty" (Forty!): "My occupational hazard bein' / My occupation's just not around."  The days of the hard rock miner in Magdalena have passed...

His manners were impeccable. Libby remembers the first time she met him. H'e was sleeping in the alley, but woke as we passed. He took off his hat, saying to her, "Ma'am, I don't believe we have met." Then turning to me: "Hello Stephen. Have you written anything good lately?" He then laid his head on his jacket and went back to sleep.

He was meticulous about tools, and it pained him to see them neglected.Once a person who perhaps had more dollars than sense had a flood in his basement that covered his guns with mud. They were not fancy-- a couple of Mosssbergs , a Remington .22, two sporterized SMLE's- but were useful working guns hat had hitherto been well-maintained- and O was just going to leave them encased in mud.

"That aint right", said Vern to me. Then  to O: "See that spool table over there? Pile em up on it, get Stephen a fiifth of vodka and me a  case of beer, and find us a hose, some paper towels, and some oil. We'll put 'em right."

We did, too. By the afternoon's end, we were drunk, but he guns were in better shape than they had ever been in....                                             

The Gun Kids take a Road Trip

..To Cody.

Nathaniel Fitch and Arthur Wilderson with Cody curator  Ashley Hlebinsky. Arthur writes:

"We took this picture in one of the basement vaults-within-a-vault at the Buffalo Bill Museum of the West in Cody, WY.  Nathaniel managed to get us in with a few phone calls.  The lady in front is Ashley Hlebinsky, the curator of the firearms wing of the museum.

The museum has the entire original Winchester-Olin collection, plus quite a bit more that it has acquired or that has been donated to it over time.

The rifle I have is a later model of EM-2, a British rifle design from the early 1950s intended to replace the old SMLE.  This design was unsuccessful, and the British ultimately adopted the Belgian FAL design (which was called the SLR in British service).  Early EM-2s were made in a .280 caliber, but this later one is in .308 Win/7.62x51mm NATO.  The design was innovative, but in my opinion too fragile and very poorly suited to mass production.  As a British design, I am not quite sure how this particular example ended up at the museum.

Nathaniel is holding a Winchester SPIW prototype.  The Special Purpose Individual Weapon program was an attempt to replace the M14 with an extremely ambitious combined rifle and grenade launcher.  It was initially championed by Robert McNamara.  In addition, the rifle was to fire flechettes, little fin-stabilized darts, instead of conventional bullets.  In the meantime, the AR-15/M16 was acquired (by rather complicated, torturous path) as a stop-gap.  McNamara greatly disliked the M14, which had been suffering quite a few budget and production problems of its own.  In the end, SPIW failed to materialize and the US military kept the M16.

Ashley is holding the Winchester Liberator shotgun.  This was an idea for a derringer-type multi barrel shotgun that could be given to insurgent forces.  The reasoning was that someone with no firearms training whatsoever was more likely to inflict damage with a fast-firing shotgun than with a pistol or submachine gun.  In addition the design was fabulously cheap to make, and great loads of them could be made without serial numbers and delivered to, say, Hmongs or something.  Without any manufacturers markings it would be difficult to prove that these primitive weapons had come from the USA.  By the time the design was perfected, however, the Vietnam War had really heated up and there was no point trying to hide the delivery of weapons to US allies."

They always find SOMETHING original..

Rockabilly Poetry!

I finally got Effigies II, the  London- published collection of five Native female poets that includes Ungie Davila;  Most are dutiful to OK, but Ungelbah's are brilliant, partially because she draws upon the  cultural history of New Mexico as seen through the rhinestone - studded red sunglasses and sensibilties of a talented cowpunk artist and pinup esthete who knows history, rodeos, and the Fifties. I have known her since she was born, in 1987, thirty miles south of the pavement in her father's house, a unique passive- solar creation built of stone by Mexican craftsmen and tucked beneath the slopes of a little volcano, a house that stays warm even in winter despite the subzero temperatures of Mangas in winter, especially between the twin peaks, Escondida and Allegre, and watched her grow and travel from the ranch to Quemado to the Japanese diaspora in Taiwan and Brazil to the Prado. She has learned from her father, the bronc rider, chickenfighter, and world traveler; from her mother, born to a Navajo mother, now a professional Culinary- school- trained pastry chef, from her ancient grandfather Pete Daniel, prophet- bearded Jack Mormon gold prospector and hand, who has sought treasure off the coast of Belize and in the mountains of New Mexico; from her girlhood mentor Russell Means; perhaps even from reading her old semi-uncle, me. She is at home on the ranch, in Albuquerque, Europe and Asia, at a keyboard, behind a lens and in front of one. She is indeed The Gothest Girl I Can. And these good poems are not even new; I believe they pre- date her  (recently folded) La Loca magazine.

I  have not gotten permission to reprint these poems, as I don't have Ungie's current numbers and John is off the grid, but I am sure printing them to promote Ungie's career comes under the doctrine of Fair Use. And I encourage Ungie or any of her friends who read this to get in touch with me.

 John when Ungie was about one:

Aaaah, a little more...

Tom Cade

The oldest by a bit of the four Peregrine Fund founders, and the only man among them to be born poor (in the Depression era New Mexico Bootheel), my old  friend Dr Tom Cade is still going strong at nearly ninety, Tim Gallagher caught up to him at the Irish Falconers meet, accompanied by a pair of beautiful Brazilian Aplomado falconers:

 Way to go, Tom! I hope I can be like you when I grow up...

Domenic "Doc" Conca, DDS- 1925- 2016, R.I.P.: on Conca's Lawn.

 One of my unmentioned mentors died at 91 a couple of days ago: Dr Domenic Conca of Randolph, Massachusetts.

 “Doc” was the father of my oldest friend, Michael Conca, who was my schoolmate from first grade through my first year in college (BC: I dropped out), as well as my housemate and partner in a firewood business in the wintry January Hills west of the Quabbin Reservoir an east of the Connecticut valley, one of the wildest parts of Massachusetts, for several years, during my second attempt at higher education; he lives there still, with his wife Mary Lou; more of his story later...

Mike at Rick Rozen's in Golfito, Costa Rica; Mike and Mary Lou a couple of years ago at Karen and George's.

"Doc"' as we called him--- his contemporaries preferred "Dom"-- was born in Rhode Island and went to Tufts. .There he met the love of his life and perfect  partner, "Rose" or sometimes "Ro": Ella Rose Simon, who was working as a secretary at the University. They married on June 30, 1948 at Saint Agnes Church in Arlington, MA. Rose was a Lutheran of Hungarian descent, but converted to Catholicism...

"

Doc was a dentist and a cultivated man, with a bunch of pleasing contradictions. He was the first man with a beard I knew outside of the the tonsured, sandaled  Franciscan monks whose monastery was south of Brush Hill Road in Milton, Mass, where  our weird Catholic private school,  Jeanne d'Arc Academy, was housed in Frances Hamrstrom's  childhood  estate on the north side of the same road). The old Flint ballroom to the right of the entry was our chapel, still with its enormous cut glass chandelier.

Jeanne d'Arc/ Slater- Flint mansion by Elva Paulsen, Fran's daughter

He was also the first man I knew who cooked, seriously;  he was a New England Republican; he was a motorcyclist, a recreational pilot late in life, and an unabashed car nut the way I am a gun nut, with an "enabler", a German dealer and mechanic -- Karl?-- who would let him take and drive cars until he HAD to have them. (Think Ron Petersen with me and guns).

When I first met him, when I was in first grade, he picked up the kids at school in a 1929 Hupmobile with an Irish water spaniel in the rumble seat. That dog was succeeded by Cindy, a long -lived basset of mournful visage who was so self - effacing that one kid-- Chris?-- suggested that she be stuffed and put on wheels when she died because "nobody would know the difference"., especially if they equipped her with a recording of her baying voice.

 He must have been relatively wealthy, as his many antique cars and being able to send his kids to Jeanne d’Arc show, but he had no rich man’s attitudes. His lawn always looked like a used car lo, albeit one with strange taste. There was an antique Mercedes ("The Yellow Car" --all cars were identified primarily by their colors), a 1950-ish job with a black leather roof,  landau irons, and a burl walnut dash, the ONE car none of us "kids" were allowed to drive; this early 50's 220 cabriolet is very close:

...and new ones, like a pagoda- roofed 280 SL:

This one was capable of an honest 140 mph at LEAST-- Mike and I both took it that high, and I took another borrowed one to 160 to beat an old townie rival, Joey Donnelly, in a drag race.We called it the Brown Car; it was  actually a sort of dark cranberry maroon color.

They were parked up against his old red  Cadillac, a finned one ca 1962, that he kept as an antique, a kind of cosmic mechanical dinosaur; my father later offered Betsy and me one just like it that he had long since stopped diving,  for a pet after I told him there were two Edsel and a red and white '56 Chevy with a continental kit in my town owned by the original buyers or at least their familes; no, I do not live in Cuba. At the time, he had  sighed "Cadillacs are irresistible to contractors, whether they are  Armenians, Bomb throwers [Siciilians] or Swiss; at least mine wasn't purple!" but we were afraid  of the gas it would take to get to Magdalena.

 Mike's Fiat Spyder, which he drove for about thirteen years, lived there then, and various  Japanese motorcycles, plus Triumph and Harley choppers owned by Rick Rozen and Jack Semensi, two other schoolmates, Randolph neighbors  and hunting and fishing buddies (Rick, who joined our circle at 13 at Xaverian Bothers, our Catholic prep school, is known to readers of this blog as "CAPTAIN" Rick of the Novi fishing boat Half- Fast, then out of Brant Rock: he was the first of the guys I grew up with to get a classic shotgun, an LC Smith, which we all envied, especially as he got it for $75 and a roll of carpet; he still has it. He made a fortune in the "Tuna Wars" of the late seventies and early 80's-- and drove two identical International Harvesters with  canoes on top-- that story too is still to be told. Jack was another J d'A alum; he was known as Joe there. He is the only person I ever knew who drove a Lotus Elan; it too was often parked on the  Conca's lawn...

Rose, our perfect den mother, was a Catholic convert with a green thumb who used to grow marijuana ornamentally in the 70s, though she wouldn't let her kids smoke it. They raised   their kids and a  whole pack of others in an amiable laissez- faire manner that came as  as a great contrast and relief to me in comparison  to my (then- Betsy Huntington would change him) controlling, rigid father. To give an example, I once went to their house and asked where Mike was. I got the following answers from the kids and Doc: 1) “He’s up in his room.” 2) "He’s at ‘Summahaus' (that’s what they called their house in Plymouth)” 3) “No, he’s on Key Marathon.” It turns out he was in Green Harbor on the Irish Riviera, where we nautical hunter-gatherers used to live.

(At the same time, two typical remarks by my father were "Take your  dog and your wife and get the hell off my property!" and "Look, John; my asshole son just bought a rich man's gun!" It was a 28 bore AyA No 2; that he had a Model  21 Winchester  worth ten of it didn't matter, though it took another decade for me to find one I could afford to buy!)

On the cusp of prep and hippieiedom, 1966?--  me & Mike on the way to the Lime Rock sports car races, in my Morris Minor Shooting Brake:

Doc was, I realize now,  my second father figure, the one I could talk to. From the age of 17, when I left home, until I went to western Mass in the mid seventies, I probably spent more time at the Conca’s house than any other place. During that time, from 1967 to around 74, I barely spoke to my father.

Rose suddenly came down with lung cancer in 1990, though as far as I know she never smoked. She died horribly quickly, and I never got a chance to say good- bye. Doc married  a younger Lydia Miils in 1992. I never met her, but she apparently took good care of Doc for the rest of his days.

Doc also did things  like take out my terrible infected wisdom teeth after I spent two sleepless days drinking his booze to numb the pain while he was away. He did nothing more than shake his head and he didn't even charge me. I called my first wife Bronwen in North Carolina last night, and she said “Shit Steve — we LIVED there!” So did Semensi and our friend Teddy Neves, now among those who went missing because of schizophrenia. (The Rozens, whose extremely original family lived  across the back fence from the Concas, deserve their own post. Soon!) Rather than oppose my hunting as "a waste of time”, as my father tended to do, Doc joined our Thanksgiving double gun hunt in Easton with his Model 12.

Not that he was sentimental about kids. One of Doc’s outstanding accomplishments was to teach the younger bunch of his kids to stand in the doorway when I showed up and chant “Steve’s here — HIDE THE BEER!”,  over and over again. But he also taught me how to do things like pickle squid- and MAKE beer. Both Rozen and Semensi eventually rented houses from him behind the dentist's office, filling the space with bird dogs and sailboats; Doc told us, puffing on his pipe,  that a friend had inquired after his "commune", a pretty funny thing for a life- long Goldwater Republican to have. Both were at his funeral.

Rozen in those days:

Doc (front center) and Rose  (lower left) ca 1983, with the younger kids:

I more or less lost touch with him in recent years. When Libby was living in Bozeman, he flew his personal plane out to see us. I don’t think they took his plane keys away until he was 90. I will add photos as I get them.; Mike has promised one with his plane. He was a man, who will be missed. And he has prompted me to begin what may be a memoir, just by making me think of that time.

A special thanks to Megan (McKenzie) Conca of Santa Fe, for photos and material.Obviously, more TK.

UPDATE: Here is a photo of Doc in his plane! And Mary Lou is sending more by snail mail....

And who is that with him? I am not sure.

The First Eagle Huntress?

However admirable Ashiolpan seems (and she is), and however fine the movie the Eagle Huntress is (and I suspect it is, and I want to see it), SHE IS NOT THE FIRST EAGLE HUNTRESS. This mistaken belief is particularly promulgated by American reviewers and I know I shouldn't expect much of them; I should only be happy they're saying a form of hunting is good.

But for the record, with leaving out dubious semi-contenders like Princess Nirgigma in the 20s, who I very much doubt trained her own eagles, or Frances Flint Hamerstrom, who as far as I know never hunted with her eagle or participated in Asian culture, the FIRST eagle huntress is Lauren McGough, originally of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who I originally helped achieve her dreams when she was 16, when she went over and hunted with the late Aralbai. She was so taken with this that she won a Fulbright Scholarship and spent a year in remotest Bayaan Olgii Aimag in the westernmost point of Mongolia learning both the Kazakh and Mongol languages while training her first eagle, Alema ("Milky Way") which she trapped herself. She subsequently caught 30-odd foxes with her, plus other game. She has not yet written up her experiences, but everyone who knows her knows that she is the real thing. She's hunting right now with her eagle...

Lauren at 16 with Aralbai

With Alema soon after capture