Theodore Roosevelt: Naturalist and Outdoorsman

If you had known Theodore Roosevelt as a child, sickly and suffering from asthma and poor eyesight, one could never imagine him growing up to be come a proficient big-game hunter, outdoorsman, leader of a military unit, to become the 26^th President of the United States. He was also an accomplished author, his best known work being The Winning of the West, published in four volumes. He was a charismatic man that gained the love of the public, who stated upon his departure from the White House at the end of his presidency:

I do not believe that anyone else has every enjoyed the White House as much as I have.

Nicknamed “Teddy”, a stuffed toy bear was named for him by a toymaker after a cartoonist portrayed Roosevelt with a bear cub. 

Theodore Roosevelt: Hunter and Outdoorsman

Theodore Roosevelt was a dynamic person, whether he was a colonel leading the Rough Riders, a hunter and adventurer, or the President of the United States. The following is taken from the Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt, an excerpt where he is found to be deserted by his mountain guide, but continues the hunt regardless …

...the only narrow escape I met with was not from one of these dangerous African animals, but from a grizzly bear. It was about twenty-four years ago. I had wounded the bear just at sunset, in a wood of lodge-pole pines, and, following him, I wounded him again, as he stood on the other side of a thicket. He then charged through the brush, coming with such speed and with such an irregular gait that, try as I would, I was not able to get the sight of the rifle on the brain-pan, though I hit him very hard with both the remaining barrels of my magazine Winchester.

Theodore Roosevelt: Naturalist, Cowboy, Author, Politician, Statesman, Soldier, Explorer, Adventurer, and 26th President of the United States

Prolific Life of Theodore Roosevelt Jr

Much is written about Theodore Roosevelt Jr, the 26^th President of the United States and leader of the famous Rough Riders of the Spanish-American War in Cuba. He was an historian who wrote while attending Harvard University entitled The Naval War of 1812. Theodore was a state assemblyman, a member of the Republican National Convention from 1882 to 1884. He was a rancher and cowboy whose herd got wiped out in the severe winter of 1886-1887, when he returned to the state of New York building the Sagamore Hill estate in Oyster Bay.

Roosevelt built a second ranch named Elk Horn, 35 miles north of Medora, North Dakota on the banks of the Little Missouri River where he practiced riding western style, roping and hunting from horseback. He said of the cowboy:

...few of the emasculated, milk-and-water moralities admired by the pseudo-philanthropists, but he does possess, to a very high degree, the stern, manly qualities that are invaluable to a nation.