It’s early morning and most people are rolling out of bed. But Hunt Hatch isn’t most people.

“Hey, how’s it going?” a voice too young to belong to a 76-year-old greets me.

Hatch and I have played a two-month-long game of phone tag. By all accounts he’s hard to get a hold of because he’s constantly working on his land in Idaho’s Clearwater country near Kooskia.

	Hunt Hatch, fighter pilot, forester and hunter, savors every moment of being a good steward on his Idaho ranch. Photo by Mike Mueller/Elk Foundation

“I figured I’d call you before I’m out of service,” Hatch says as the line crackles.

Tomorrow he is having his knee scoped. Most people would be taking it easy the day before surgery. “Oh it’s no big deal,” he says. “I’ve got to cut down some trees before surgery anyways.”

Hatch graduated from the University of Idaho in 1955. After a seven-year stint as a fighter pilot, he flew airliners for 28 years before retiring to manage his 1,200-acre property full time. During the past six years, he’s planted over 700 acres of native ponderosa pine, benefiting not only turkeys, white-tailed deer and pheasants, but also elk that were virtually non-existent on the property before Hatch showed up. The elk lacked critical cover, but Hatch’s reforestation efforts helped bring them back to the neighborhood. His stewardship over the years won him Idaho Tree Farmer of the Year in 1992 and Northwest Regional Tree Farmer in 1995.

A lifelong elk hunter, Hatch placed 1,100 acres of his land in a conservation easement with the Elk Foundation in 2004. He’s quick to say he gets a nice tax write-off, so he doesn’t want to be deified for his efforts. Yet with gentle, rolling hilltops, endless vistas with steep ridges and draws, his property had the potential to bring big money had he sold to developers.

He bought most of his land during the recession in the early 1980s. Since then the land’s value has increased tenfold, he says.
 
“Our family was dirt poor. My father abandoned us as small children, and we didn’t have a car until I was in my teens. I’ve worked for everything I’ve got,” Hatch says. “But my plan wasn’t to make a profit later on.”

His vision for the land since 1973, when he bought his first tract, has focused on managing and improving the quality of the forest.

“I have had the opportunity to walk Hunt’s land with him,” says Mike Mueller, Elk Foundation lands program manager. “As we wandered among sign of elk, deer and turkeys, all he talked about was where he was planting the next wildlife cover, or where he or his family and friends shot a nice elk over there, a gobbler over there or a rooster pheasant there.”

His reasons for placing conservation easements on his land vary. “The number one reason is because I’m a forester,” he says. “I’ve spent the last 20 to 30 years trying to take care of this land.”

Sharing it is another reason.

“I love the outdoors, and I love when other people can enjoy it too,” Hunt says.

His affinity for the landscape parlayed into active land management that has improved the health of his ranch. Besides doing his own logging, Hunt plants trees, treats weeds and even fights his own wildfires.

“Hunt is leading by example,” Mueller says. “Doing what he knows to be right with the land and wildlife.”