Maurice Hornocker Interview, Part Two Item Info
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Jack Kredell:You've witnessed a lot of environmental change in your lifetime, and I was wondering if you could talk about the effect of the Snake River dams on the salmon population of Big Creek. Did you notice any changes?
Maurice Hornocker:Yes, unfortunately. I first drove in the big creek in July of 64, a long time ago. You could hardly stand the smell in the flats there above the gate Ranger station. Rotting salmon. Creek was littered with dead salmon. Any of those views? You get the creek from the road, choked with salmon. The willows were full of coyotes, scavenger birds, ravens, magpies, bears all along there.
It was routine. Routine down at Taylors. I hiked the creek that summer just to meet the residents Dewey Moore, John Bines, Rex Lanham, the Taylors, and got down to Taylors and they invited me to spend the night. I just backpacked, spend the night. And they said, Well, we'll go down and get a salmon and we'll have poached salmon for breakfast.
So we just walked down the creek and bang, nice. 12 £14 salmon. Dorothy I had poached salmon for breakfast. Creek was full of them. I saw that last for quite several years. And I was full time working in there. And by full time, I mean, I was in the country that whole span of years from from 60 the winter of 64 on through 72 and three. The summer of 72.
John Messick and I sat down there above the Cox's hole and counted some 80 salmon in Cox, a whole big one. This was a second run. There were two runs in Big Creek, the Middle Fork and Big Creek. One run came in in June, mid to late June. The other in in July and early August. And they were the bigger ones.
They were always big. But then that was the year I think the Lower Monumental went in the last day and Lower Monumental. The last one. Grab it, ran it. Yeah, that was it. Next year, just no one knew where the salmon were. Salmon were coming and that was the pattern. Since then, a few get a few, but nothing like it was those early years.
It was just as though that they'd closed the door one nail too many and the coffin. But people can't believe it when I tell them about Big Creek in the mid sixties. But that's the way it was.
Jack Kredell:I, I couldn't believe it.
Maurice Hornocker:Yeah. Rex Lanham would fly fishermen in the Cabin Creek and they'd go down there. And I met forum coming out and lugging all these big salmon. I have photos of them somewhere in my piles. But it was routine. Yeah. It's a shame.
Jack Kredell:I want to talk about Wilbur for a little bit.
Science today is done in a very different manner than how you and Wilbur did it in the sixties and seventies and maybe even before that. Could you talk just about the. The logistics and the nonscientific backcountry knowhow that was required to perform the science that you did through through men like Wilbur Wiles?
Maurice Hornocker:Well, radio telemetry had just come in. We were the Craighead brothers were the first to develop it for big mammals. It had been developed back in for mammals of cottontail. Rex Lord did it back in Illinois, but it was from Towers. There was no mobile radio tracking system. I didn't have the funds to get into radio tracking in the early years of the project.
The money just wasn't there. So we had to employ Mach and release. No one had ever done that. It was a common technique with small mammals. They either clipped ears, notched ears, clipped toes on mice and chipmunks, stuff like that to market animals to determine the you might say, the social structure of a species. How many doctors, how many lawyers, how many plumbers, how many schoolteacher was lived in a different community, what the age structure was, how many kids they had.
All of that prior to marking animals you didn't know, You couldn't tell an animal from any other. You couldn't make any determinations. So we had to mark the the Cougars and the way to do that is with cougar hounds. Wilbur had them, we just treated them, immobilize them, and I earmarked them with cattle tags and put rope collars on them, polyethylene rope collars, as as a precursor to radios that I hope to get on a later stage.
So through that process, we had to cover a lot of miles. And to do that, Wilbur's a write off When I met him and I knew he was a guy I wanted as a partner. He said, Most of these stories you hear from old lion Hunters about following a lion for two weeks or a month. And finally again is B.S. said to really keep going in the backcountry, there are two things you have to do well, sleep and eat.
You have to sleep well. You have to eat well. And to do that, we set up different camps. We had seven camps at one point, from Waterfall Creek to Monumental Creek. So we weren't more than six or eight miles from any camp when night fell any night. And a lion can take you through a couple of drainages. He could take you a long way in a day.
And if you only had one camp, you might be a long, long way from home. So you got to go back, go to a camp and and rest and eat to go the next day. And that was a great lesson from Wilbur. He taught me more about living in the backcountry than than John and Frank did. Even though they set up the survival school for the US Navy.
They were young officers in the Navy. The Navy assigned them to train Navy pilots for survival and and crash landings and all of that. And they worked out of call back at Chamberlain Basin. That was their headquarters. And but anyway, that was short term survival. This is long term. All winter. So you had to stock all these camps in the fall.
You had to set them up and bear proof all that. Our biggest enemy were flying squirrels. They had we used Old Navy, a rubber Navy surplus bags to store dog food and food for us. Big poles on trees and flying squirrels would fly in their glide in there. On top of those to haul through that heavy rubber. And then, of course, snow would accumulate in there and ruin everything.
But anyway, that was life in in in the wilderness. And I had to stock a lot of dog feed. We did that in October prior to the season. We'd use Wilbur's elk tag and wild tag and sometimes a deer tiger, too, for meat. And we'd kill those after it got cold enough to keep the made through winter and we'd hang that.
And so we had good fresh meat, you might say frozen fresh meat all winter long. it's a different life than than modern quote. Modern biologists live anymore. A few do. But the old boots on the ground has given way to the computer, to G.P.S., to satellite imagery, to all of that. And and it's. It's a wonderful technique.
It's wonderful technology. You can get information that's just we couldn't at all because you can monitor an animal, you know, 24 seven And, but how you interpret that information is so important. All you get on that computer screen is what's happening in front of that camera. You're not aware of what went on out here prior to that activity on the screen.
You're not aware his failures and successes over here? You're not aware that he avoided the big lion over there and made the turn around here. You're not aware how he tracked that elk and made the final stop all of those things that are so important to his livelihood, to that individual on the screen's livelihood, you can't interpret that.
An example is the Jackson Hole study, which I initiated because we had this beautiful 14 year study out of Yellowstone, a regulated environment for all the animals. National Park Service, no hunting, no all natural, quote, natural. Jackson Hole has tons of things going on. Human activity from thousands of snowmobiles, backpackers, International Airport. You've got a number of different agencies managing the land there.
You've got cattle ranches, you've got outfitter and hunting and all of that. You also have all of the wildlife component from Yellowstone. It's actually the same ecosystem. How do those careers get along? Their stressed they're stressed by wolves, they're stressed by grizzlies stealing there. But they do that in Yellowstone as well. But they make out quite well.
So lions, just like bears converging on a salmon stream, spawning salmon extreme and becoming, quote, social, getting along with that food source like we had on the dumps in Yellowstone way back in the sixties. But then as soon as that food source is gone, they go back to their solitary way of life. Well, cougars cooperate in Jackson Hole and feed on similar kills.
They get along because they're stressed. They they are trying to make a living. And wolves are chasing them off a kill all winter long. They're avoiding all those snowmobilers and all of that activity. And and it's tough for them. So they make do the best they can. But it was interpreted as social behavior. Well, it's a form of social behavior.
But look at Webster. Social behavior means cooperating in a in a group fashion and a group way like bison, like elk, like blackbirds, like so-and-so. So the interpretation is all important with digital age biology. And and I am happy that that many biologists are aware of that. And they do ground checks, they do that. They are aware that that human pro the example I use is a Leopold who was a young predator hater, and he and his companions shot this old she wolf and her pups, and they got to her before she died.
And he watched the fire go out of her eyes as she died. Changed his whole conservation ethic on the screen. He wouldn't have seen that. Wouldn't Annie, a young biologist. I encourage him to to acquaint themselves with the landscape, feel it, feel it. Tough to do in an office.
Jack Kredell:Not many people can make their own snowshoes.
Maurice Hornocker:Well.
Jack Kredell:Like you and Wilbur did.
Maurice Hornocker:Yeah. Well, it wasn't any big deal. We just did it. Yeah, I sure miss him. I think of him every day. Ooh. He was like, again. He was like a brother. And this was a big hole above Taylor Ranch as a 19 pounder, we'd go to the middle for it. every march for our spring tonic. And we had a camp at Waterfall Creek, and we catch those Wilbur called red sides.
He got cutthroat red sides. All the backcountry people did. And so we added red sides for a few days, called it our spring tonic. That was a beautiful fish.
Jack Kredell:The big fish.
Maurice Hornocker:There were lots of them. Lots of them in early seventies. Again, John Messick and I, who counted the the fish, the salmon in Cox, the whole I was grooming him to take to Africa for a leopard study. And he had worked a couple of summers on the on the track and cougars after we put radios on them, which by the way confirmed all our conclusions from from the mark recapture the home ranges that the they respect one male would have for the other male territory resident male.
But they didn't respect you know, transients or strangers. But they would the the neighbor. And but and that was true in New Mexico as well. There's other stories there. But anyway, yeah, where was I going with this?
Jack Kredell:You were, you were talking about Wilbur and kind of what what what modern technologies failed to pick up. And in comparison with boots on the ground sometimes.
Maurice Hornocker:Yeah, I've still lost.
Jack Kredell:But it sounds like Wilbur was the consummate outdoorsman.
Maurice Hornocker:He was, yeah. He and I grew up in Iowa, about 100 miles apart on little 160 acre family farms. Didn't know that it then really is a he was a 15 years older than me. His cousin came west to trap in Jackson Hole, and when Wilbur was in his late teens, he came west. We both played baseball.
We did a lot of similar thing. Trap lines, bought our school books with money for muskrats and mink and skunks. I got sent home a lot from the one room country school that I went to several times for having skunks there. Forget it. Anyway, Wilbur came to spend a winter with him and never went back and he heard about job opportunities over Driggs and the potato fields and all.
And and there there he heard from old Tom Drummond, who was he met out in the potato field out there getting his grub steak. They called it making enough money to buy the supplies for winter flour, sugar, whatever. And and he was a prospector and he talked Wilbur into going into Big Creek with him. And for several summers, they roamed the back country panning for gold.
And Wilbur almost perished on a homemade raft in the Middle Fork. They were couldn't get to this one bar that old Tom knew was the mother lode. The only way they could get there was build this raft at first raft below Big Creek tore the raft all the pieces. And Wilbur down there, didn't make it to the bank.
He said he there at one point he thought he had at. Anyway, they roamed that whole back country for a couple of years and Tom had the cabin there at Monumental Creek that he gave to Wilbur, that old one. And then Will rebuilt the new one that burned in the big fire here several years ago. But no, he was.
And the stories he tells Tramp and Beaver up in Chamberlain, those huge skis, you know, that tall as this ceiling one one you glided on the other you steered with. I'll show you a pair I've got them out here on the that I brought from a Beaver Creek cabin. I found an old cabin on Beaver Creek, but. And he fell through the ice on one of those little beaver ponds up there was.
And and he knew he had to make it back to Monumental or he wasn't going to make it. So he had to come all the way down Ramey Creek and and up to Monumental and or down to monumental and fall out but normal person could have done that. I mean, he he was something else and so under spoken I've said this a lots of times and we'll continue he thought he knew all about cougars in Big Creek.
He thought there were 3011 in there. Based on the numbers he would kill for bounty over the years. And when we found that there was only a dozen or so full time residents, the others were were transients that would come in and of course, kittens of the Year and yearlings and all but only two. There were only three resident males and and 6 to 8 resident females.
And and he pondered that at the end of that second third year and he said, you know, the more a man learns, the more he learns he doesn't know. So true.
Jack Kredell:I read somewhere that that Wilbur saw a grizzly track.
Maurice Hornocker:I suspect he did. Yeah. And down on the salmon. That was over on the salmon, that's. Yeah.
And I'm I'm not surprised at that. North of the river. It's a different climate. It really is striking. you get north of the river, there's a it's much wetter. There's a lot more vegetation. South of the river is much drier. The Selway. We had a ranch in the Selway way for a number of years. The research ranch that we maintained.
And I was just amazed at the difference in, in the soils, the difference in and but mainly the vegetation lots wetter and the people there Selway claim that they periodically would see a grizzly track and that doesn't surprise me because they come you know north Idaho, British Columbia and that population in north west Montana, there's a small population there out of Libby and and the Act River.
And those young males will travel.
Jack Kredell:Did you notice any decline in whitebark pine in your time?
Maurice Hornocker:Very little back. Yeah. Whitebark pine. And a lot of it was in decline. But that's I found more of that when I lived in Missoula and hunted on the Idaho Montana border there out of Hamilton and and Derby up on top. There are ridges there, beautiful ridges of whitebark pine that was dying. That was a long time ago when I lived in Missoula.
But very little whitebark pine in Big Creek drainage or for that matter, any part of the the river south of the salmon that I'm familiar with. I just haven't encountered it. But it's in trouble wherever it is, and it's too bad.
Jack Kredell:Yeah. I don't know why it's in trouble. I mean, I know a lot of the seed propagator is are not in, in their natural abundance. Yeah. And we're also getting drier. Yeah. It's just maybe it's just multiple factors.
Maurice Hornocker:Yeah. Yellowstone, when we started working there, they had a policy of fire suppression to aid the comeback of whitebark pine on the plateau. All of that big watches is lodgepole pine. Now plateau because lodgepole pine is a pretty short lived species and and they wanted to suppress fires to give the whitebark pine a chance to come on after the lodgepole cycle ended.
And they had a really good start, a really good start. Whitebark pine was coming back all across through, though then the administration changed and fire suppression came back and they they just threw away all those years of progress. It's back to lodgepole pine again. But and that shows just what policy change can do in a short period of time for long term results.
Jack Kredell:To go back to Taylor, what would you like to see for Taylor's future?
Maurice Hornocker:I would really like to see it flourish as a, as a recognized, even renowned Wilderness Educational Center, a center for consultation, shining light and in land health and and focusing in the near future on water and the treasure we have in the water. And but also that the we live in a Barnum and Bailey world in a way. Celebrity worship.
People will take the word of a celebrity, you know. And but my point here is to to to create art with facts and with with progress, with actual findings, the credibility to raise the money. I know the university's in a tough financial place. We have a legislature that's totally anti-education. They want to keep a dumb as rattling and pots and pans.
I don't want to get started there either, but they're anti-education, no question. And and it's going to be tough on any administrator there to fund with the university traditional funding, any kind of a program there. The money has to come from somewhere else. And that means someone with charisma, someone with vision, some a Cesar Chavez, Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King for wilderness.
Look what those individuals did. And that's what it's going to take there. Unfortunately, that person hasn't surfaced at the University of Idaho, but that's what it's going to take, the kind of person with vision who can get the money, who has the resources, who has the credibility, who has the the the the base that he can bring that kind of money there.
And it can be done. It can be done. You can get the kind of people Robert Redford would draw attention to it, just as he has the Environmental Defense Fund and the National Resources Defense Council. and but it takes money. The faculty doesn't want to work there because they can do their thing and get their tenure off the interstate.
They don't need to fly into the remote backcountry and live less than the way they do. But if you give them money, if you'd go to George Schaller Well, George is retired. He's out of it now. But Dave Major still active. And, you know, say, Dave, we want you to head a wolf program in the Idaho wilderness. And here is is a million bucks to do it.
Bring the best people you got. Let's do it. Publicize the hell out of it. Which he would. And the media would gladly pick it up here in Idaho. Lewiston Tribune would jump on Spokane. I don't know about Boise Paper there to turn it right, but I better not say that. Edit that out. But you see the point with my students, I say, you know, they who who advance to some administrative post a dean or even a college president or something and they're really good scientist.
I say, God, I'm sorry you're ending your career so soon. And then I follow up with, Do you remember who was president of Notre Dame when when Galileo made his discovery? Do you remember who was who was president when Faulkner won the Pulitzer Prize? People remember good work. They don't remember administrators or politicians unless they're exceptional. And and to give up a career to become what I call a clerk, you're an administrator.
You're dealing with leave and and salaries and all that. You gave up your career. I've seen it happens in any time to good solid people. What we need here again backing up is someone at the university who carries this wilderness message and who can create the interest in it that makes people proud. I'm proud that the University of Idaho is doing this and how fortunate they are to have this facility to do it.
Janet ... would help with that. She really would. But you got to have that person. And so far, Denis Becker's a good guy. He's interested. He wants to see it successful and all, but he's got his limitations in his job and his budget and all of that. And he has his his priorities set by the administration. He can't launch off into that world.
But I'm afraid that's what it's going to take because we've struggled here for a long time now with Taylor Ranch becoming what it could be. And and and the things we've just discussed are the reasons why the past Dean's past administrators have used it as a plaything, a personal playground, you might say. I won't mention any names, but you know who they are.
And you know what? But the results were, We made a mistake early on hiring Al Erickson as a director. He got it off to a terrible start because he it turned out he had absolutely no interest in wilderness. He was a big game hunter, and that's all he was interested in. And he stuck his foot in his mouth at outfitters meetings, at Regents meetings and everything else gave it a bad taste in legislators mouths right off the bat.
A waste of money taking it off the tax roll. So can Dick show it? The taxes were something like $60 a year. I. I better not put those numbers that are not right, but close. But the potential is there. It's no one else has anything like it. No one else is in such a magnificent landscape the size alone.
But I go back to the water. There's nothing in the continue as the United States to match that watershed doesn't exist. Alaska does, but not the 48 and as more and more water becomes critical, it'll be more important.
Jack Kredell:I think some of the issue is that maybe like aside from the the issue of bureaucracy, legislators and people in power, I think, feel they have a hard time making wilderness accessible and valuable as a concept to everyday people.
Maurice Hornocker:Yeah.
Jack Kredell:I think that's part of the issue. Why? Why? It's hard to drum up interest in Taylor and Wilderness projects when today we're talking so much about accessibility and equity and all this. Yeah, you.
Maurice Hornocker:Know. Yeah, but hey, our family, Idaho family will go to Disneyland and spend the thousand dollars a day easily. You can go into the wilderness first class with an outfitter for far less than that. That's my argument against this accessibility thing. It is accessible and raft trips. You can buy one of those cheaper and you can go to Disneyland.
Look how many families go to Disneyland. And and with prices the way they are nowadays, motels, hotels, restaurants, all of that, the cost is astronomical for a lot of family that could go for, frankly, a fraction of that to one of the nice Flying B, they could go to a number of wilderness oriented facilities where they would go get five star treatment and a wilderness experience.
So I, I don't buy that accessibility thing. I think it's television. And today's young families are so tuned to modern entertainment mode that Disneyland has that appeal. And I use Disneyland as an example. There are a lot of other amusement parks and all that stuff, you know, the beach then I know, but I the the people who will seek out the an outfitter, a tourist hospitality business that can provide that they'll find that has a lot expensive than than going to to well Disneyland.
Yeah but I get your point I understand.
Jack Kredell:I get.
Maurice Hornocker:Like, a lot of young people don't want to go into the backcountry. They don't want to go back there when they can go to the beach or go to Disneyland and get Big Macs and all that stuff. It Yeah, yeah.
Jack Kredell:We all have a stake in it. You know, we're we're all it's public. It's held in the public trust. I don't think a lot of people know that.
Maurice Hornocker:No.
Jack Kredell:We're so attached to privacy and privatization. We like we don't have the language for public for commons for now. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Maurice Hornocker:That leads to another issue with public lands and all is grazing leases. They're bought and sold on the market just as though they were private ground. Lake Ranch is on the market for 25 million. They're advertising it as a 800,000 acres. Well, there's 50,000 acres of deeded land. The rest is all grazing leases, BLM and Forest Service, and yet they're bought and sold as as part of the real estate deal utilization.
Got to utilize these land. Well, cattle are the biggest, biggest environmental culprit in the western, dry, arid western United States that we have. They trash every area that they they graze and most of these guys will over graze their grazing lease, government grazing leases for a dollar 35 and a other. The government touts the CERP program, which is wonderful, as a carbon sequestration program.
It and trampled grassland and vegetative land soaks up tons of carbon. It it's a beautiful program. That's true. The Biden administration has has often cited they want to sequester this carbon. They are support programs. And do they have an opportunity right now for a pittance to buy up aging ranchers grazing leases? They and people will say, they won't sell those.
The average age of a rancher in the western United States now is 67. His kids are in Los Angeles and Chicago and New York. They're not going back to that dusty old ranch. They've heard their folks complain about government, the Forest Service, BLM, the markets drove all of that all their life and they struggle. They're not going back to that.
They don't want it. Those old folks would sell. They did in the White Clouds. They did in the ... He's and they would anywhere if you offered them enough money you own a home that's worth appraised at 400,000 and you don't want to sell it. But I can buy and I'll say I'll give you 650,000 for it. You'd think about it and they could take the cattle off most or a big percentage of the Western landscape.
And it would just simply carbon sequester it. It'd be the cheapest sequestered program they can do. No infrastructure or no nothing, just keep the cows off. But that wouldn't go anywhere. My god, it's a way of life. But it would work. And and I know because I know enough ranchers, I know enough that are ready to quit Texas.
I know quite a number because it's all private land down there, but I know quite a few here. They'd sell it. They'd sell that debt. That's their retirement fund.
Jack Kredell:Well, the Bundys would call that socialism, even though they're grazing their cattle on public land for a pittance.
Maurice Hornocker:Well, the old guy, I don't think, still paid anything. Let's talk about government bungling. well, yeah.
Jack Kredell:Before we end it, are there any memorable encounters or experiences you had at Taylor that come to mind or that returned to you? The animal encounters or just moments of Zen, as you've called them or anything like that that sticks out to you over the years?
Maurice Hornocker:Yeah, there are, there are several, encounters with cats and ledges and caves and trees because we really didn't know, you know, I had little experience. They didn't know what to expect. And cats could have attacked us on a number. Both Wilber and I, on a number of occasions had they chose to, but they wanted to get away.
So all they wanted to do. But there's one incident with the dogs and with Wilbur that that is fresh in my mind that will never go away. See, we tracked the cat out of Rush Creek and where we're was a little reluctant to turn loose on it because he couldn't judge. How old it was. And Rush Creek is really.
But we turned loose up there under the tower, and it went down to the mouth of Rush Creek, crossed Big Creek, went three quarters of the way up Horse Mountain, angled around into Cliff Creek and over. And we found one of the dogs after dark over on the ridge into Gold Creek. So we went dropped off into Taylor Ranch for the night and got up early and went back up on the ridge the next morning and found the other two dogs that had had treed a cougar.
But we're off on a cliff and and had to go off a cliff with a rope to get the dogs off that cliff. But we marked that cougar and but Little Red was gone, his favorite. And we tracked him off into the Gold Creek and up on the dense creek ridge, still no red and dark. So we got back to Taylors, and Wilbur figured he was gone.
So we spent all the next day tracking that country and didn't find his track. And Weaver said either a cougar scaled him or is run off a cliff. But we got up the next morning and he said, Well, let's go down and make one more look. In the early years, the first year, Wilbert established a camp at the Mouth of Dance Creek and just a sleepover camp because we didn't have facilities at Taylor that first winter, but we did at Cabin Creek.
But anyway, we, we went down and, and no tracks on the trail, nothing. And we approached that old campsite and here comes red bounding out of the creek bottom, barking his head off at us. And, you know, he didn't recognize. Sorry. But then he got our way and. And here he comes running. I still can't tell it without doing this.
It was just... so the bond was so strong and, well, Wilbur cried. What damn wind in my eyes. And I'm glad he did that because that helps me break it, you know? But I'll never experience a feeling in my life. Haven't and won't. A feeling I had for an individual and his friend. It was just too much.
Yeah, I've had those moments. Nothing like that with dogs I've had to put to sleep. friends, you see several of them here. They're back here under the cottonwoods and across the creek and graves over there. And you, you know, when you get them that that day is coming. But, you you're never quite ready for, like, a family member.
But that was the most powerful moment I had. And and in all the years of that work, it just surpassed anything else for the work, the cats or anything else that's just seared into my soul. That's the kind of person he will.
Yeah. And he didn't want to go the way he did in bed at the facility. He wanted to die back at the cabin.
Jack Kredell:101. Right. Pardon? He was 101.
Maurice Hornocker:103. Yeah. Yeah. And he was, you know, he gardened and everything right up to a hundred and, and love that, that cabin and love Big Creek and. But we, we don't always, always choose everything we want. He wintered in Arizona. He had drive down there two days every year close the place that big creek that last year he was failing.
So when he was 100 or approaching a hundred and I offered to drive him down and he said, no, how would you get home? And I said, you just take me to Phoenix, and I could fly home. no, no, no, no. I'll make it. I'll it. Well, he always called as soon as he got there.
Well, I didn't get any call and I said to Leslie, my wife should not like him, not to let us know he's there. He made it there two days later, and I was all packed up to go birding in Montana. And the phone rang and it was the hospital in Ely, Nevada. Wilbur drove -- driven the end of the night and went off in a construction site access road and smashed into the back of a big truck.
And he was in the hospital in Ely and he should have been killed from the looks of that car. So I went down and got him and brought him up and, he stayed with us. We have a place over in Eagle where we spend the winter near Eagle, and Wilbur spent a month with us until an opening opened up at a VA.
And we got him in there and. And there he was there until, he the Well, I'm skipping some here. Went into a rest home and and, he was up and around, got early, get a shower himself and come out to the mess hall or, or dining room and all. But he wanted to go back and spend some time at Big Creek.
And I objected to it because I could see that it wasn't safe for him in that old cabin and he had to have a walker. But he prevailed and his friends all supported it. So he went back and the first night he fell and and cut his ankle severely. Well, I flew in there and took him immediately. And an infection had set in just literally overnight.
The leg was as red as blood and swollen and all. So I took him into McCall and and they pumped him full of antibiotics and all of that and wrapped him up and everything and said, you know, it's okay, but you can't get around. So we drove back in the Big Creek and I said, Wilbur, I think we should go.
no, I'll be alright. He couldn't get up the next morning, could couldn't move. So I called the LifeFlight and brought him in. And then we started he got him into they they he said, you have two options here. We can amputate that foot and stop that infection or let it go and it'll it'll spread in your system and you'll die.
Well, he elected the bladder. He didn't want his foot cut off. The thing healed up. It astounded, it astounded the V.A. doctors. They couldn't believe it. But anyway, it got him into the V.A., into the hospice, and, and that's where he died. He never got out of bed after that. And it was sad, sad to see He he could still be alive if he hadn't gone in the Big Creek, if he had a you know, because he he was so vigorous even at that age.
Yeah. he was a good one of those people -- A handshake was his bond. I guess everyone should have at least one friend like that. I've had more than one. John Craighead was that way. He lived to 100. We hunted and fished like crazy. He was involved in a lot of things. And, and took on a lot of projects that that people don't know about that took a lot of his time.
And he did get haggard looking in the office. And I worked in the in the lab in the there adjacent to his office in Missoula and at about time, often in the day, he'd stick his head in my door and he said, let's get out of here. And I knew what that meant. Up the Blackfoot or out to Rock Creek or down to Lolo Creek fishing.
And he could look, you know, a hundred years old when we left that office. And and after an hour on the stream, he looked half that age. He just it just totally revitalized it. (laughs) Off the Blackfoot one afternoon, he was catching fish after fish, and I couldn't get a strike, so I angled my way over to him and I said, What are you using?
And he said, It's not what you use, it's how you hold your anus. I'm told that to a lot of people. They say, I works well.
Jack Kredell:You know. Norman McClain Pardon? Did you know Norman McClain?
Maurice Hornocker:I met him, yeah. he had this cabin, you know, the cabin on the Swan up the Swan. And his son just has a book out here recently. I have it. I, my friend has it now. They Still have the old family cabin on up there. Not Seeley Lake. It's on the Sealy side of the Swan Pass. Yeah.
And, who wrote the way West or other Montana writer? He was there one day. We. John and I went over there. We were up the Blackfoot. Answer. yeah. We went up to get a big grizzly that this rancher had trapped and killed there near Ovando and John said, Let's go over and see if MacLaine's are here.
So we did and he was there and well, it's on the tip of my tongue. He was there as well. Big sky, you know, big sky and the way west. and it was really, really interesting. These people were just regular folks. I'll think of it in a second.
Jack Kredell:I'll look it up.
Maurice Hornocker:Guthrie Yeah.
Jack Kredell:Yeah.
Maurice Hornocker:Yeah. Abbey. Guthrie. Yeah, yeah. And Bud Moore was another Idaho backcountry guy, and he knew McClain and spent time in and Swan and and CB country.
Jack Kredell:I know.
Maurice Hornocker:Bill Moore yeah. Yeah.
Jack Kredell:Son, I've been up to the lookout, Fire Lookout? That he likes the man. I've interviewed him before. yeah. But Bud was another real backcountry guy.
Maurice Hornocker:Yeah, it was. Yeah. Selway Bailey walks on. Yeah. Wrote, you know, some interesting books and stuff about it.
Jack Kredell:Do you know, Do you know Dick Walker?
Maurice Hornocker:I know Dick. Well, yeah.
Jack Kredell:Yeah.
Maurice Hornocker:Yeah. I'm working with a friend of his. Is, Do you know Dave Johnson? Yeah, He was a reporter for Lewiston Tribune for 30 years and wrote, everyone has a story, a column. It take a phone book, put his finger on a name, call him and go interview him for a story. Charles Kuralt endorsed that idea when, Moscow paper fired him or didn't fire him.
But Lewiston paper liked it. But anyway, Dick and and, Dave spent a summer together in the same way, and Dave stays in touch with him a lot. he sold his plane. I flew several times in that plane with Dick. First trip in the Selway was with Dick in that plane.
Jack Kredell:Was it Moose? Correct. Moose Creek or somewhere?
Maurice Hornocker:No, no. We went into, Bonk Wolfenburger place and and, Running Creek, and I met, you know, name Wolfenburger? Yeah. He had that ranch outfit in there. He was legendary in the country, and, and then, Running Creek Ranch, which we had our foundation for several years and a nice country.
Beautiful country. So Dick was quite a guy. He's got more history on this Elway than anyone, and he'll never publish it. I'm sure it's stale now to him, I think.
Jack Kredell:Yeah.
- Title:
- Maurice Hornocker Interview, Part Two
- Creator:
- Jack Kredell
- Date Created:
- July 16, 2022
- Description:
- Jack Kredell interviews Maurice Hornocker, a cougar and large mammal researcher at the Taylor Wilderness Research Station. In part one, Maurice discusses why the research station was needed, how it was founded, and other topics. In part two, Maurice talks about the first time he went to the Taylor Ranch, tagging cougars, and other stories about his time at the research station.
- Subjects:
- cougars radio tracking ecology wildlife
- Location:
- Belleview, Idaho
- Latitude:
- 43.4635
- Longitude:
- -114.2606
- Source:
- Voices of Taylor - Jack Kredell Interview Project funded by the U of I Library and the College of Natural Resources
- Type:
- Image;MovingImage
- Format:
- video/mp4
- Preferred Citation:
- "Maurice Hornocker Interview, Part Two", Taylor Wilderness Research Station Archive, University of Idaho Library Digital Initiatives
- Reference Link:
- https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/taylor-archive/items/hornocker_2.html
- Rights:
- In Copyright. Educational Use only. Educational use includes non-commercial use of text and images in materials for teaching and research purposes. Digital reproduction permissions assigned by University of Idaho Library. For more information, please contact University of Idaho Library Special Collections and Archives Department at libspec@uidaho.edu.