Given sufficient time, there'll be many postings in this spot. The plan is for a new weblog produced each Tuesday, look for it. Meanwhile, to scan a few of Roland's old newspaper columns

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Tip o' the Day

When looking for wildlife, there are key fundamentals one should bear in mind:

1. Location

There's no profit in searching for antelope in a forest, or mountain goats in a swamp. But that same swamp offers survival food for bears emerging from hibernation in the spring. In summer and late fall, however, those same bears can be found feeding on mountainside berries.

2. Patience

Wild creatures are usually alert to movement. If you don't believe it, try sneaking up on a rockslide used by pikas, the little alpine rock rabbits. It'll be a barren landscape. Be patient, though. Sit down (I've even gone to sleep). Without movement, the creatures will soon be running all over the rocks.

3. Good optics

There's no substitute for good optics. I do my initial scanning with binoculars, then set up a spotting scope to zero in. I also employ my secret tool -- a wife who's a wonder at spotting animals.

You'll note I listed those fundamentals in their order of importance. One can have the patience of Job and it will do him no good if he's in the wrong location. Similarly, one can carry the best optics made, but without patience and location, his efforts and expense will come to naught.

There's another point to be made here: of the above fundamentals, only one can be obtained with money. Those mose important can only be accessed with the coin of our own efforts.

In case I've not made it clear, I have little regard for those who expect to buy their way to outdoors expertise by relying on ever more sophisticated -- and expensive --gadgetry.

DISTRUSTING THE MEDIA

It pains me to share with you this critical piece of information: You can't always trust what you read. Honesty compels me to admit the advice might someday be applicable to those things you'll read in this column. But in my case, if you're led down a wrong path, it'll not be because I'm so gullible as to swallow everything fed to me by officialdom. If I err, it'll be more likely that I'm flat mistaken. It's an admission for which I'll apologize now so my failure won't get in the way later on.

Unfortunately, not every reporter has either the experience or sufficient training to understand there are folks, sometimes even honored officialdom, who feed colored information to the media. You must draw your own conclusions as to officialdom's reasons. Let me explain; to do so I'll share a few examples from long-running news stories from 50 years ago.

The following excerpts are from newspaper accounts of the chase of a psychologically impaired World War II veteran who three times escaped incarceration to live by his wits in the wilds. The italicized portions are actual excerpts:

The escaped mental patient went off the deep end shortly after noon Tuesday when he committed his first act of extreme violence by dropping special deputy [name] with a .22 slug in the chest.

The shootout between the fugitive and a 7-man posse began at 10:30 in the morning in deeply forested hill country and lasted until dark when the fugitive, who'd been pinned down between two logs, slipped away. An effort was made to deny the escapee any use of roads and bridges in the area:

Members of the state police joined the search in the afternoon and helped on the road surveillance during the night.

There was political involvement when ... people in the area where he is ranging are both frightened and angry State Sen. [name] and Rep. [name] were told Saturday by a group of more than 75 [area] residents ...

Next: ... a squad of 17 [county] sheriff's deputies and reserves sighted wildman [name] ... Members of the party fired a couple shots in his direction and then set off a stick of dynamite to scare him into making his whereabouts known after the mountain man ducked out of sight.

Moments later, a part of the party was rushed to a road below the ridge to cut off an escape route. This group is still stationed along the road, while another party is combing the brush toward the road. [The chief deputy] said when the party went to the road, a shot was fired at a group in a halftrack. By then the County Sheriff ... has issued orders to his men to shoot to kill....

Yet another news report had this: The search is on again for escaped mental patient [name]. This time bloodhounds have been added to the search and they're reported to be close to the escapee today.

Bloodhounds never caught the wily fugitive who, at that point, had been at large for nearly a year. In an earlier escape, the same "wildman" roamed free in the forest for several months. His wounding of the deputy, of course, ratcheted up enforcement efforts. Other news clips told how deputies, upon discovering the fugitive's caches and camps, burned them. Search planes flew overhead. Helicopters were requested.

But let's take a closer look at those news reports:

First, the guy was armed with a .22 rifle. Aren't you a little curious to know the armament of the posse? Let's see, the sheriff's posse tried to get the escapee to expose himself by shooting at him, right? Too, the fugitive fired a single .22 round at an armored vehicle filled with posse members (are you having trouble with that one, too?). Then the posse set off a stick of dynamite to "scare" the fugitive into revealing himself. Don't you suppose a modicum of logic tells the reader that the dynamite stick was thrown? Like a hand grenade? Whatever. But any man would be loony to "expose" himself to a bunch of guys shooting and throwing dynamite at him! Mentally unstable? Maybe. But crazy? No.

So we have a mentally unbalanced fugitive who only wanted to be left alone facing from 7 to 17 posse members who surrounded him and were shooting at him, throwing dynamite, using armored vehicles, airplanes, and bloodhounds. To oppose them, he carried a .22 rimfire rifle. Not exactly an even match up.

In all honesty the fugitive never obtained his .22 rifle by legitimate means. In fact, as crafty a woodsman as he was thought to be, he was unable to sustain himself from Mother Nature's storehouse alone. The rifle was stolen from an unattended farmhouse. He also purloined an axe when he needed an axe. he raided unattended summer cabins for bedclothes, frying pans, shovels, nails, knives, and other necessities.

He killed an occasional domestic sheep for meat. he raided spawning streams for an illegal salmon or two. killed deer out of season, and committed other nefarious deeds calculated to bring frothing from the mouths of the righteous.

And along the way, the longer he eluded capture, the more his efforts seized the imagination of the public, despite the best collaborative efforts of enforcement and media. Letters to the editor began piling up on newspaper editors' desks. They contained such evocative titles as: "Tolerance for [name]," and "Sympathetic Attitude Asked for [name]." Talk radio received calls favorable to the fugitive. There were murmurings about him being a "Robin Hood" instead of a "Wild Man." Finally the editor of the most critical newspaper felt compelled to write a column debunking a whispered myth that the fugitive always left gold nuggets to pay for items stolen.

 

There are lessons here for officialdom, the media, us. First is the obvious fact that the sheriff and his minions were not exactly honest in interviews with the media--not dishonest, understand. Oh no! They just failed to tell the whole story. By doing so, they contributed to public distrust that readily turned to sympathy for the fugitive.

Second is what I can only assume was a too trusting, gullible media. Surely in the early 1960s there must've been one editor on staff somewhere with sufficient military knowledge to discern the unequal difference between a single man armed with a rimfire .22 against an entire posse using airplanes and heavy caliber weaponry, dogs and dynamite, halftracks and helicopters.

Third, us. We can take comfort that at least a few readers failed to swallow the story. A few readers abhored the bureaucrats' attempts to use the media to whitewash their own less than commendable handling of the series of incidents that could've easily ended in the death of the mentally misguided fugitive. That it didn't cannot be credited to either media or county officials.

Instead, credit belongs to sufficient people who saw through the sham enough to cause the sheriff to rescind his "Shoot to kill" order.

 

* For those interested in more of this story, I recently completed The Dogged and the Damned, an unpublished book-length manuscript based on the tale. It's a story deserving wider circulation than Jane and I can achieve through our past practice of self-publication. So here's an idea:

If you'd like to see the novel published, copy this weblog entry and e-mail it to someone you know at a majorNew York publisher (Random House or Simon & Schuster will do), add a note that you'd like to see the book in print. When it is, I'll see that you get an autographed complimentary copy, along with Jane's and my fervent gratitude

Cheek combines his vast outdoor experiences as an outfitter in Montana with solid research to provide a thoroughly readable and enjoyable book. It reminded me of two other books, John McPhee's Coming Into the Country about Alaska, and Sebastian Junger's Perfect Storm

* Franklin Marchman in an amazon.com review

I picked up your book My Best Work Is Done at the Office and I was reading it until 2:00 in the morning. I haven't touched my other books since.

* H. Robert Krear / Estes Park, CO

Dance On the Wild Side is terrific reading, part true life adventure, part inspiration, and part blueprint for a life worth living.

* The Midwest Book Review

A self-made naturalist, Cheek has a thing about grizzly bears that some people feel defies understanding. Readers can thrill to a mesmerizing tale of grizzly bears and humans who, in chilling detail, morph into a lethal mix

* Outdoors Unlimited

I just finished reading The Phantom Ghost of Harriet Lou and it touched my soul. You've illustrated everything I embrace about hunting and elk hunting to be more specific

* Mitch Ratigan email

Montana's Bob Marshall Wilderness

9 X 12 Coffeetable size 97 full-color photos

KNOWLEDGE SHARED

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