The Last of the Literary Outdoorsmen

Thomas McGuane—fisherman, hunter, rancher, writer—says “good riddance” to his kind.

- By Tyler Austin Harper Photographs by Pat Martin

Not long after I walked through the open door of Thomas McGuane's Montana farmhouse, his dog Cooper at my heels, he ushered me back out for a tour of the ranch and the trout-studded freestone stream that bisects it. It occurred to me to ask if I should be watching for rattlesnakes as we pushed through the brush in the sweltering heat. McGuane told me there was nothing to worry about, then added that he had stepped on, and been bitten by, a rattlesnake the year before last. “That's how I learned I need a hearing aid,” he said dryly. He apologized for being an unsteady walker, though I was having trouble keeping up with his brisk pace across unfamiliar terrain.

McGuane, an athletic 85, lives on 2,000 acres of rolling prairie in the Boulder River Valley, 75 miles east of Bozeman. Along the back roads that lead to his property, which is in the remote community of McLeod (one bar, one post office, population 162), quarter-mile-long irrigation systems sprayed huge, unattended agricultural fields. And everywhere, in every direction, cattle. In preparation for the trip, when I'd asked if there was an address to put in my GPS, I'd been rebuffed: “There's not.”

I'd ostensibly arrived here to interview McGuane about his new collection of short stories, A Wooded Shore. The more honest truth is that I was in McLeod because I am a fisherman and a writer, and had come to pay homage to the master. McGuane, who possesses the singular distinction of being a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Fly Fishing Hall of Fame, and the National Cutting Horse Association Hall of Fame, is the author of 10 novels, four story collections, and numerous essays, most of which are, directly or indirectly, about the sporting life. He is arguably the only major American fiction writer still living whose work is inextricably connected to fishing, hunting, and ranching. And he may be the last.