Originally published in Points West magazine
Fall 2005
The Wilderness Life of Max Wilde
By Jay Lawson
Former Chief Game Warden, Wyoming Game and Fish Department
By 1910, much of Wyoming had been settled and its once abundant wildlife decimated by years of unregulated shooting and market hunting. Yet the wild country of the Thorofare region remained untrammeled by man. Lying outside the southeastern corner of Yellowstone National Park, this remote wilderness was spared the ravages occurring around. Its wildlife and wildland character remained virtually intact. It was in this setting that a young Max Wilde would discover a second frontier.
Some years ago, the late Jack Richard of Cody, Wyoming, showed me priceless old hunting photographs, which sparked my interest in Max Wilde. As a young game warden, I often stopped at Jack’s photo studio to look at his fascinating collection of photos and listen to stories about backcountry trips that took place in the early days. Thankfully, those wonderful photos are now part of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West collection.
When he retired and closed his studio, Jack invited game warden Dave Bragonier and me over to review his collection and select six photos each for reproduction. The first photo I selected is featured in this article: Max Wilde with Ty Cobb and other baseball greats as they finished a big hunt in the Thorofare. This adventurous scene prompted me to learn more about the famous outdoorsman.
Max Wilde was born in Indiana before the end of the nineteenth century, and as a youngster was fascinated by stories of trapping and hunting in the far north. In 1908, he made a trapping expedition to Canada, and a year later moved to Alaska to pursue his love of hunting and the wilderness. Like many of the rugged individualists of that era, he was off exploring on his own while still a teenager.
In 1913, Wilde stopped in Cody and was so impressed with the country he went to work driving horse teams for the Tex Holm Transportation Service. This company hauled tourists from Cody to Lake in Yellowstone National Park, a two-day journey with an overnight stop at Holm’s lodge. Like Buffalo Bill a few decades before, Max Wilde immediately perceived the intrinsic values this country offered—the mountains, rivers, abundant wildlife, and most of all, raw wilderness in its natural state. Wilde decided to stay, and in 1916 filed for a homestead on the South Fork of the Shoshone River, southwest of Cody. There he constructed a cabin to serve as headquarters for his hunting and trapping operation, which later became his Lazy Bar F Ranch.
Pine marten and red fox pelts were extremely valuable in those years, with marten hides fetching more than $22.50, a tidy sum in 1917. Wilde would run his trapline throughout the winter, traveling on foot or with horses, skiing, or using snowshoes—whatever the terrain and snow conditions dictated. In 1918, Max Wilde met his future trapping partner, Ed “Phonograph” Jones. The two had wrangled horses together on hunting trips and decided to plan a major adventure: They would spend the entire winter trapping in the Thorofare region, southeast of Yellowstone Park. It took 15 horses to pack in their gear, a distance of more than 20 miles. They established two base camps nearly 30 miles apart and grub caches of food and supplies were spaced in-between. Elk meat was the staple, supplemented by beans, rice, dried fruit, and coffee.
It is interesting to note that Wilde and Jones found winter weather in the high country generally tolerable. Old-timer Del Beaver, a former guide for Wilde who spent a similar winter trapping marten in the high elevations of the Absaroka Range west of Cody, also told me that many days were quite pleasant. “You could often take off your snowshoes and walk along the windblown ridges in your shirtsleeves,” he said.
When Wilde and Jones rode out of the wilderness that spring, their heavy packs contained 126 marten, 10 red fox, and 12 coyote pelts. This catch caused quite a stir when the furs were displayed in the storefront of the Cody Trading Company. The entire lot sold for $10,000, and as Wilde put it, “Everyone turned trapper after that.” His share of the proceeds went toward the purchase of a good string of horses. And so began his career as an outfitter, basing his operation from his Lazy Bar F Ranch and hunting the Thorofare.
In the early days, trips lasted a month or more, with no restrictions on campsites or areas to be hunted. Game was plentiful, and each sportsman was entitled to hunt most big game species on a single license. The result was large pack strings that roamed through the mountains with hunters seeking out elk, deer, moose, black bear, bighorn sheep, grizzly bear, and moose, with little or no competition. Those were great days to say the least.
The reputation of Max Wilde spread quickly due to the quality of his operation. As one of the old-time outfitters told me, “In those years, Max Wilde had all the top hands guiding for him.” Many baseball greats hunted with him, including Hall of Fame members Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker. Boston Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey became a personal friend, and Wilde guided him to numerous trophy elk and deer. Other notable clients included Arthur Godfrey, Bill and Dick DuPont, and Bill Rae, editor of Outdoor Life.
On a particularly successful hunt, renowned big game hunter Grancel Fitz took one of the greatest trophies ever taken by Wilde’s hunters. This elk was so famous, it became known as the Grancel Fitz Elk. Its antlers had seven points on one side, nine on the other, and were an incredible 64 1/4 inches wide—statistics that, to this day, still leave hunters awestruck. This and many other Wilde adventures were featured in a number of outdoor publications of that time.
Max Wilde was an ardent conservationist and volunteered to serve on the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission during the late 1940s. A look at old Commission records reveals several causes that Wilde championed, including better salaries for game wardens, a retirement system for game and fish employees, the creation of mobile check stations, and the purchase of the Kearns Elk Winter Range near Sheridan, Wyoming, and the Ocean Lake Waterfowl Management Area.
Max Wilde retired in the 1960s, unable to adjust to the short hunts and crowded conditions of the new era. If everything is relative to your experience, one can see why change would have been hard for him to accept. In his later years, he remained thankful for the wonderful outdoor life Wyoming provided him, often saying he “wouldn’t take a million bucks” for his experiences in the mountains.
Max Wilde was born January 16, 1888, and died on June 11, 1970, He is buried at the Riverside Cemetery in Cody, Wyoming.
About the author
Jay Lawson worked for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department for more than 33 years, serving as Chief Game Warden and Chief of the Wildlife Division at the time this article was written. Since childhood, he had sought out the colorful characters Wyoming produced during the early twentieth century. His book of 25 biographical sketches of the more legendary outdoor men and women of that era, titled Men to Match our Mountains, was published in 2007. Lawson died in July 2014.
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