Written during his days as a ranchman in the Dakota Bad Lands, these two wilderness tales by Theodore Roosevelt endure today as part of the classic folklore of the West. The narratives provide vivid portraits of the land as well as the people and animals that inhanbited it, underscoring Roosevelt's abiding concerns as a naturalist. Originally published in 1885, Hunting Trips of a Ranchman chronicles Roosevelt's adventures tracking a twelve-hundred-pound grizzly bear in the pine forests of the Bighorn Mountains. In asides as compelling as the hunt, Roosevelt muses on the beauty of the Bad Lands and the simple pleasures of ranch life. The Wilderness Hunter, which came out in 1893, remains perhaps the most detailed account of the grizzly bear ever recorded and an intensely personal portrait of the man who would be president.
