The Bull-Moose is the first person I would choose for my early 20th century Tennessee monster hunt!
From the Examiner:
The year is 1918 and some thing is stalking the woods around Knoxville, Tennessee.
The mysterious beast is killing farm animals – hogs and calves and the occasional hunting dog – and residents are afraid to leave the house at night. Children are kept home from school. Local efforts to stop the beast have failed so desperate residents make a plea to America’s foremost outdoorsman and big game hunter to come to their aid.
President Theodore Roosevelt.
The former president’s glory days were behind him at this point in his life. His health was poor. He was sixty and suffered from severe rheumatism and carried a bullet in his chest from a failed assassination attempt in 1912. He also had flare-ups of malaria, contracted during a 1913 expedition to the Brazilian jungle, and a leg injury from the same trip that sapped much of his legendary energy. But he remained a prominent figure in American affairs. Surely this old warhorse could be called upon for one last hunt.
And Roosevelt was indeed the man to call. A respected naturalist, he had hunted game as far afield as Africa.
And he had at least a passing interest in monsters.
In Roosevelt’s 1890 book The Wilderness Hunter, he recounts a terrifying tale related to him by an old trapper name Bauman. Bauman and his partner had gone deep into the wilds of Idaho looking for beaver pelts when they decided to hunt a remote pass where a man was rumored to have been killed and half-eaten by a mysterious beast. Despite the area’s evil reputation, the men pressed on.
It was a mistake.
[Read more at the Examiner]
