 anybody hear me you can hear me okay see if I can see it what a great introduction now look at me you believe anything she said but I did indeed go down the river it was the first trip since the one that disappeared as a matter of fact and it was quite a river but I'm not going to talk about that today we'll say that I was I am well I was extremely impressed and enjoyed your talk last night and extremely impressed with the book there's I guess not many other people who could look at it with such a critical eye and I didn't think I could learn anything from the book you know I didn't think I thought I knew that everything I needed to know when we went down I I'm not much of an explorer look at me but we did have some people who knew what they were doing now one one of them was our doctor he's a guy from Marshall Medical School in West Virginia Huntington West Virginia and but all his life he had traveled in the Amazon region and I mean travel I've the idea of traveling the Amazon it was sort of TR-ish he would travel with Indians for days weeks at a time sometimes with nothing more than a little food sometimes for four or five weeks and also delivering medicine here often too if occasionally uncontacted tribes but often people who had never seen outsiders so this man really knew about these sorts of things and he went on our trip and when he read Candace's book there was some things that even he hadn't thought of one of the most impressive there's a beauty it's beautifully written there's a beautiful piece that's those couple of pages at the end where she talks about the Indians dogging the expedition and making an internal decision about whether or not to kill them off and they decided not to and the point was that they could have at any time and they decided to let them through and you know that had never occurred to John Walden who knew Indians so well it's a wonderful book it's very well written as this is not going to be an ad all for your book it's very well written and I highly respect that but it's not the well writtenness that I respect no two three authors here it's the ability to write a book and the work that goes into it I'm often asked you know why don't I write a book about my trip down the down the river of doubt why don't I write a book about this and that I don't think I could do it I just don't think I could do it and anybody who can write a book or like Doug many books I really respect well enough of that I'm not here today to talk about Brazil those of you were here last night heard that story that's another lecture in fact I gave it here once so some of you may have heard it before I have a different subject and it relates to the overall theme of this symposium I'm going to talk about TR as a hunter particularly as a big game hunter and I'm going to use mostly the lesser known stories about that many of them are very well known some of them probably pretty well known to many people the audience and so all of them occasionally I'm basically going to focus on his lesser known hunts but I think you'll find some things of interest and the reason I'm doing this and it plays off what Clay said is to try to use his honey experience to understand the man and to understand how both the experience these experiences shaped him and therefore shaped his presidency and also what they demonstrate about some of his perhaps natural characters in extraordinary man on a personal note when I was the age of many of you in this audience the last thing I wanted to be known for was the great grandson of Theodore Roosevelt I mean it makes you feel like a monkey in a zoo you know all these people come to look at you because of what your great grandfather did who as a school kid a college kid or a young man wants people to see you that way and yet virtually everybody that comes to you first thing they say is you know how are you related to theater oh your theater was a great grandfather oh well tell us you know it's it's tough to take and I paid little attention to TR and I also realized what an extraordinary man he was and inside that I wasn't anything like that and so that was a further kind of deterrent it wasn't until I was in my 40s believe it or not I'm older than 40 it wasn't until I was in my 40s and I was forced to give a speech somewhere I joined a club and everybody had to take turns giving speeches so I had to give a speech this club contained some of the most brilliant men in the country many of them were university professors of Harvard and MIT and by university I don't mean professor I mean university professor that's the small group of Harvard of about 20 or so of their very best scholars and I knew no matter what I had to say to them they all knew more than I did about it and they were known to be a very tough audience that really give it to you if you had and so I figured the only thing I could do is talk about Theodore Roosevelt because if I got into trouble some historian luminary challenged me on something I could always say well the family knows and I got away with it so then I began to get interested in TR and I began I realized I was never going to be TR and didn't have to worry about it and I had settled somewhat you know I was fairly comfortable with myself so then I began to study an extraordinary guy so we're going to look at some of these adventures I'll tell you some story and we'll see how these relate to his development TR was clearly the most sportsman experienced president we ever had and certainly in the White House the most active sportsman we ever had but I will focus primarily on the pre-presidential hunts that happened now we'll start in Maine TR was a very puny sickly little kid and as was mentioned by somebody at one point his father encouraged him said he had a great body a great mind but a bad body had to build it up but TR who had asthma now asthma today is still a serious disease but in those days it was a killer and darn near killed him but he took his father seriously and he began working on it well he went to Harvard he wanted to be a naturalist he switched to politicians but his first opportunity at a at a big game hunt in a kind of a small way took place in Maine he went up with a couple of other guys including a fellow who tutored him to get ready to go to Harvard and they went up to northern Maine northern Maine is even more remote than North Dakota and it's really hard to get there it's particularly in those days and Maine is a much bigger state than people realize I mean it's a huge state and the whole northern tier of it is wilderness and he met two guys one really particularly Sewell who was going to be his guide and Cutler his tutor had taken Sewell aside as I think Candice mentioned last night and said look be careful this boy he's you can see he's not very athletic but he's got a lot of spirit and he'll just go and go and go and you got to be careful he'll go till he drops and you know we've got to worry because he's a delicate thing well Sewell took one look at this guy and made the mistake that you see over and over and over again of guides and first met him in his earlier years of underestimating him and Cutler underestimated him as well any case Sewell became impressed with the ability of this kid they were hunting Whitetail and other things who were to keep it up keep going so that was really his first experience and he made a couple of couple of trips there but his first real big game hunting trip was here in North Dakota just southeast of here and he came to hunt Buffalo and I won't tell you much about that story because it's so well known but he arrived at Pyramid city as it was called at the time now Madura in the middle of the night and the next morning he got up early from what was rather minimal hotel and looked around to find a guy and he he came across by sort of accident Joe Ferris and Joe Ferris took one look at this guy who was clearly an eastern dude and who of all things most outrageously wore glasses and glasses was considered at the time as a sign of moral degradation and people didn't like that I just take off my glasses here and but he saw what he thought was a rich eastern dude and so TR kept after him to take him as a guide so that he didn't really want to do it Ferris didn't really want to do it but TR kept after him and after him and finally they started off well the hunt lasted to get now it in they came south they went up the little Missouri near the cannonball and they started the hunt now they stayed in a cabin of somebody named Lang Gregor Lang who was a rancher just arrived to Scotsman actually and they used that as a base and the first morning arrives it's pouring rain it's in summer gumbo mud all over the place Ferris thinks this is easy and I said well why don't we wait another knock no no TR wanted to go out day after day out they went they go out they spend all day no sign of a buffalo they come back in Ferris exhausted would fall asleep right after dinner TR would talk to one or two o'clock with Lang about all kinds of they ranch and then they go out again on the final day this was now I think day 12 or so Ferris had begun to change his opinion about TR because of this incredible life he had and willingness to put up with all kinds of discomforts they start out they have nothing but you know maybe a little bit of hard tack and some salt they finally see buffalo tracks they follow it all day a couple of shots they miss they go on the end of the day comes they're going to sleep they sleep out they got no tent or anything no food dancing water or any more than just the rainwater which at least was enough they sleep outside using their saddles as a pillow with the horses because they're afraid that maybe Indians or some or wrestlers will steal their horses in the middle of the night the horses take off dragging the saddles they follow the horses so you know most of a couple of the horses they bring them back they go back down the rain starts pouring down Ferris's comment to TR was I haven't ever done anything in my life of a criminal or immoral to deserve this have you TR says no it's that's great they wake up at dawn now in two inches of water and the first thing that Ferris hears is TR muttering to himself and thinks I've finally broken it what's he saying he listens and TR is saying bully this is the best time I've had it ever well I finally shoot the buffalo and they come back Ferris completely transformed about his view about TR the beginning of as I say of many examples of people who underestimated him but when spent time with him particularly interestingly his hunting buddies he really want to know a person go hunting with them particularly