By Dalton Valette

To celebrate this year’s Presidents’ Day, let’s look at the long history of America’s heads of state who enjoyed the great outdoors. For us, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, one mustachioed man may come to mind, but there have been plenty of other hunters and anglers who’ve resided in the White House.

George Washington (1st president, 1789-1797) 

Throughout his illustrious career as a surveyor, farmer, soldier, and president, Washington enjoyed a great amount of time in nature, both hunting and fishing. Though Washington traveled throughout the colonies, he was most attached to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, which he labeled the “Garden of America.”

Washington regularly hunted birds—from mallards to turkeys—and often hunted on horseback or used his hounds for fox and boar hunting. Deer were plentiful in the acres around his home at Mount Vernon, and he enjoyed deer so much that he set about having a deer park overlooking the Potomac River. Washington imported them from England, writing that he admired English deer, which were “very distinguishable by the darkness of their colour, and their horns.” Washington even owned a pure white doe, which he regarded as “a very great curiosity.” 

Always one to innovate and expand business operations at Mount Vernon, Washington also set about having fisheries along the Potomac—during a time when the Virginia tobacco market was beginning to shrink. Washington routinely fished for shad, herring, bass, carp, perch, and sturgeon, though he focused his fishery stocks on shad and herring. Though enslaved men and women supported this business venture at Mount Vernon, Washington was also known to haul, fish, and filet catches himself, as fishery work was of great importance to him.

Chester Alan Arthur (21st president, 1881-1885) 

A more obscure president by today’s standards, Arthur is perhaps best known for his impressive mutton chops and his “dandy” appearance, owning more than 80 pairs of pants and regularly wearing full tuxedos to dinner. Just because he liked to dress well, though, doesn’t mean he was afraid to get out into nature. Arthur the Angler can also be credited with saving one of the U.S.’s most cherished national parks—Yellowstone. 

In 1883, Arthur was invited on a three-week long horseback fishing trip in the national park. He was the first sitting president to visit, and he explored the area extensively—all while fishing along the Green River and Gros Ventre River. With $50 of newly purchased fishing gear for fly fishing (just over $1,500 today), Arthur had significant success, with an Associated Press reporter claiming that Arthur caught three trout totaling four and a quarter pounds on a single cast, and two more trout on six other casts. 

Arthur enjoyed the trip thoroughly and directed the Department of the Interior to curtail their plans to shrink Yellowstone’s physical footprint by opening it up to farming and mining.

Theodore Roosevelt (26th president, 1901-1909) 

The man, the myth, the legend. Roosevelt’s love for nature began in earnest—though not in a way that most today would likely experience—as a child when he found a dead harbor seal by the docks in Manhattan and dragged the seal to his family brownstone to dissect it. Roosevelt would spend the rest of his life pursuing adventures. He hunted and fished in North America, South America, Europe, and most famously, Africa. No president up to that point had been as well-traveled as Roosevelt, and with each of these varied trips, he had a story to tell and experience to lend as a rancher, biologist, and ornithologist. 

Roosevelt’s hunting experience was diverse and extraordinary: bison hunting in Texas; grizzlies in the Bighorn Mountains; Montana moose; cougars at his Elkhorn Ranch in North Dakota; and, of course, the famous black bear in Mississippi that inspired the teddy bear. Those don’t even include Kenya or Brazil, where some of Roosevelt’s most dangerous and famous stories originate. A fan of the Fox 12-gauge shotgun and Winchester lever-action rifles, his favorite and most prized weapon of choice was his “Big Stick,” a Holland & Holland Royal Double Rifle in .500/450, which he described as “a perfect beauty. The workmanship is like that of a watch.” 

Perhaps no hunting story embodies Roosevelt as an individual and as a leader more than his jaguar hunt in 1914. A hunt that was so wet and exhausting that the comrades who accompanied Roosevelt and his son, Kermit, needed a full two days of rest afterward. The two Roosevelts even had to carry one of their compatriots to their boat. And after all the men’s clothes had been torn to shreds and waterlogged, Roosevelt was asked, “Are you alright, Colonel?” to which Roosevelt responded, “I’m bully!”

Herbert Hoover (31st president, 1929-1933) 

Roosevelt is unquestionably the hunter-president, but would Herbert Hoover be the angler-president? Don’t believe me? Hoover even has an entire biography titled “The Fishing President.” He likely has the most years of any president fishing—from ages 8 to 88—and even has an entire section of his Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa, dedicated to his angling exploits. Few presidents have taken the time to write an entire book about their hobbies, but Hoover did exactly that with his book “Fishing for Fun and to Wash Your Soul.”

Hoover wrote, “Fishing is a chance to wash one’s soul with pure air, with the rush of the brook, or with the shimmer of the sun on the blue water… It is discipline in the equality of man—for all men are equal before fish.” 

Hoover enjoyed any and every kind of fishing—from freshwater streams to saltwater flats. He pulled hundreds of trout from streams in Oregon and set a record at the Key Largo Anglers Club for bonefish, landing a 12-pounder. Hoover’s Florida guide and friend, Calvin Albury, remarked, “Once Hoover hooked them, they were caught.”

Harry S. Truman (33rd president, 1945-1953) 

If you wanted to enjoy some deep-sea fishing, you would have had a good companion in Harry S. Truman. Of all the presidents, Truman likely had the most experience with tropical and deep-sea fishing. Truman loved vacationing in Florida and Bermuda and regularly fished on his trips. Despite claiming that he “would never make a great fisherman. I haven’t got the infinite patience required,” Truman had some remarkable luck whenever he picked up a rod. 

Stories abound of Truman’s successes, but most notable might be a competition off the coast of Bermuda in the summer of 1964. Truman and two others in his vacation party teamed up against a team of his friends to see which group would catch the most. Not only did Truman catch the largest fish of the group (a 6-pound salmon rockfish), but Truman’s three-man team caught forty fish during this multi-day trip, totaling 75 pounds, while the Marks four-man team caught twenty fish weighing 61 pounds. 

The losing team, though, attempted to one-up the Truman team by filling one of their fish with lead sinkers, but they eventually acknowledged their loss. The ship’s log recorded, “they gallantly acknowledged their perfidy.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (36th president, 1963-1969) 

Johnson was a Texan through and through, and that included a deep love for hunting—both deer and turkey. He was a master in the Senate and the White House but would routinely escape to his ranch in Gillespie County to drive, ride, and hunt away from the scrutiny of the press. He often used excursions at his ranch to test others' toughness. No one was spared from this “Johnson treatment,” even John F. Kennedy. 

In November 1960, after Kennedy and Johnson had won their campaign for the presidency and vice presidency, Johnson brought the young Massachusetts senator down to his ranch for deer hunting. Kennedy had never been a big hunter or angler, which made for an odd sight to Johnson. Jacqueline Kennedy was probably the best source of what transpired on the trip, where, according to her, Kennedy arrived wearing “a checkered sport coat, white button-down oxford shirt, and penny loafers.” Kennedy held hunting in low regard, having said, “all killing was senseless,” but goaded on by Johnson, “looked into the face of the life he was about to take,” then “fired and quickly turned back to the car.” 

Johnson had the deer head mounted for Kennedy, at his expense, and presented the mount to him months later in the White House. Though Johnson thought the deer should go in the Oval Office, it wound up being hung in the West Wing’s Fish Room (now known as the Roosevelt Room). 

Over the centuries, presidents have come and gone, but a love of nature and fondness for hunting and fishing has endured and even crossed party lines. We haven’t had many recent presidents who have been big outdoorsmen (though Donald Trump’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric are big hunters), but there’s always the future—maybe a Backcountry Hunters & Anglers member? And crucially, on this Presidents’ Day, there’s always the past to learn about and measure up against and see which head of state you would want to enjoy the great outdoors with.