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The cowboy pictured below
on the bucking bronc is
Les Fontaine
of Russell Country.
He is the grandfather of the author of "God's Creation" featured on this web page - DAVE P. FISHER (pictured below with his horse). As regards his
grandfather, Dave says this: He
died when I was about 7 years old. He was
Blackfoot and was born in a tepee on the
Blackfoot reservation in Columbia Falls,
Montana. This was before the turn of the
century. He hunted the Mission Range with his
father. When he was young he left the
reservation and worked as a cowboy and did some
rodeoing (thus this rare photo of him). One of
my most prized possessions. He was an avid
hunter and fisherman. He fought in World War
Two. He was in the SeeBees and he fought in many
of the major island battles in the Pacific.
To show how we were influenced, when I was a
deputy sheriff in Colorado, we had to take a
cultural diversity class taught by a Hoppe
woman. We talked a lot and discussed matters of
race and family values. She was amazed at how
much my ways and attitude paralleled the Indian
way. I told her about grandpa, and she said "Oh
yes, I can see that in you and your ideas are
definitely Blackfoot." I was pretty proud of
that. That shows how much influence he had on
us.
Dave P. Fisher
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ABOUT HIMSELF, DAVE P. FISHER SAYS: I
ran with a bunch of good ol' farm boys chasing rodeos. I rode
saddle broncs and had the time of my life. The bronc riders of that
day had little to fear from me, although I heard the whistle a time
or two, my six-foot-four frame made me less than a stylish rider.
(The picture to the left is Dave Fisher at a rodeo in Oregon.)I went on to punch cows for a cattle company in western Oregon, and then moved on to wrangling horses and packing for hunting and guide outfitters. I worked in the wilds of the Alaska Bush for three years where I saw some of the greatest beauty left on earth. I also served as the official horse shoer at two different outfits.
These horses received one shoeing a year, and except for hunting
season, ranged free most of the year fighting off wolves.
Anyone who ever did any shoeing can imagine what it was like to shoe
these guys. In fact I told the story in a poem called Packstring
Shoer. (You
can read this poem at http://www.cowboypoetry.com(The picture to the right of Dave was taken in Horsfeld, Alaska,while he was shoeing and calming a particularly skittish packhorse.) In Montana, I took out ten day, 100 mile trips over the divide through the Bob Marshal. I later went to Wyoming and ran horses in the shadow of the Tetons. I finally ended up in Colorado packing for Rocky Mountain National Park, that was the best job I ever had. Along the way I broke horses in the good old way. Unlike rodeo, style isn't important when breaking horses to ride, they still bucked as hard, but no one was scoring. Now I'm in Reno, Nevada, working my way up the writer's ladder. For a good many years I spent more time with horses and mules than people. I could understand the four-legged critters, but to this day I still scratch my head trying to figure out the two legged variety. I met my wife in Colorado, I was barely housebroke and she came from a cultured background. Over the years she has managed to have some positive influence over me and can actually take me places now. She is raising our three daughters to be fine young ladies and has succeeded wonderfully. As I always tell the girls, "Listen to your mother and she'll make ladies out of you, but I'll teach you how to fight." When she wasn't looking I taught the girls how to spit like a cowboy, but I warned them not to tell their mother. In addition to my years in the world of the cowboy I spent several years as a Deputy Sheriff in Colorado. It was here that I gained an inside view of what the modern lawman is up against, his Old West counterpart had his hands equally as full. I knew lawmen that were as honest as the day was long and others who had no business with a badge on their chest. You will find lawmen a frequent subject in my stories, the good and the bad. I spend as much time as possible hunting and fishing, my passion is fly fishing and fly tying. I tied professionally for over twenty-five years and still do. I've had several articles on fly tying and my outdoor experiences published in outdoor magazines and hope to continue adding outdoor articles in between my westerns. My attention these days is mainly focused on writing Western novels and short stories. I used to write small poems on the bottom of letters to friends and when they insisted I write longer poems and publish them - I did. I published Reflections in the Stocktank, Vol. 1 - Cowboy Life and Vol. 2 - Reflections. My third book of Cowboy Poetry is called Shootout at the Old Pancake Corral, a poem telling the story of a deranged cook I worked with once in Alaska. My fourth book is Campfire Yarns, which is a collection of short stories put to rhyme in the Robert Service tradition. Dave P. Fisher You can read more of Dave's poetry at http://cowboypoetry.com
|Dave's novel, Yates, U. S. Marshall, which takes place in a fictional town in Nevada. Dave's book, The Strawberry Mountain War is about a range war in eastern Oregon. He just published his first collection of short stories of the American West...."BRONC BUSTER". Several of these stories have been chosen for special awards. To order a copy, log on to Dave's web site: www.DavePFisher.com
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