Jack Hemingway Conservation Day

This year, Jack Hemingway Conservation Day will coincide with National Hunting and Fishing Day on September 28. The day is set aside to honor the late Jack Hemingway, son of Ernest Hemingway, and a prominent Idaho conservationist. "I've spent some of the best moments of my life hunting, fishing and exploring Idaho and its rugged terrain," said Hemingway in a 1991 interview. "It's captured my heart, much as it captured my father's years and years ago." Angela Hemingway, wife of the late Jack Hemingway said, "It is a great tribute to a man who treasured Idaho's wild outdoors and delighted in spending countless hours fishing her trout streams and hunting her ridge tops." Sportsmen groups, conservation organizations, school children and individual volunteers are encouraged to plan habitat restoration projects, take a youth hunting or fishing and generally enjoy Idaho's magnificent outdoors. In honor of Jack Hemingway Conservation Day, a waterfowl hunting clinic for youth is scheduled at Mud Lake in eastern Idaho. In Malad, 40 kids will be attending a pheasant hunting clinic that will feature a seminar on hunting with dogs. And up in Idaho's Panhandle, the Kootenai National Wildlife Refuge will host a youth waterfowl hunt. Last year, as part of the first annual Jack Hemingway Conservation Day, Governor Dirk Kempthorne announced the re-instatement of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game's Community Challenge Grant Program in which $50,000 is available annually in small grants for projects proposed by sporting groups, individuals, cities, counties and organizations. In the year since the first annual Jack Hemingway Conservation Day, $47, 000 was awarded in challenge grants to build boat ramps, put up interpretive signs, improve sportsmen access and enhance habitat. The purpose of the Community Challenge Grant Program is to preserve, protect and enhance wildlife or wildlife habitat, to benefit the public and increase awareness of the mission of the department through cooperative partnership agreements. The department solicits proposals from individuals, groups and other agencies for such projects and, where appropriate, assist by providing partial financial support. Interested individuals and organizations can contact their local Fish and Game office for details. Jack Hemingway served as a Fish and Game Commissioner at the request of Governor Cecil Andrus from 1971-1977. He called it "the most challenging, gratifying, and exciting job I ever had" in his 1986 autobiography Misadventures of a Fly Fisherman. Jack was instrumental in introducing catch and release regulations on waters that held wild fish and could not withstand the heavy burden placed on them by increasing numbers of anglers. He also pushed to stock more hatchery fish into reservoirs and lakes and to discontinue stocking selected streams where there already were strong populations of wild trout. Fly-fishing was Jack's passion and it took him to the far reaches of the planet. Even a world war couldn't dampen his fervor for fishing. In 1944 as a lieutenant in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), precursor to the CIA, Jack parachuted into France with a fly rod hidden in his pack. He was eventually wounded and captured by the Germans, but not before a few French fish rose to his flies. Jack poured his passion for fly fishing into preserving one of Idaho's premier trout streams, Silver Creek near Sun Valley, spear-heading a tremendous effort to set aside this pristine paradise. Now a Nature Conservancy Preserve, the clear waters of Silver Creek beckon fly fishermen from all over the world. It is a living legacy to a true conservationist. Jack Hemingway died at the age of 77, on December 2, 2000.