Mice in the Freezer, Owls on the Porch Mice in the Freezer, The Lives of Naturalists Frederick & Frances Hamerstrom Owls on the Porch Helen McGavran Corneli Foreword by George Archibald The University of Wisconsin Press The University of Wisconsin Press 1930 Monroe Street Madison, Wisconsin 53711 www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/ 3 Henrietta Street London WC2E 8LU, England Copyright © 2002 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System All rights reserved 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Corneli, Helen McGavran Mice in the freezer, owls on the porch: the lives of naturalists Frederick and Frances Hamerstrom / Helen McGavran Corneli. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-299-18090-5 (cloth: alk. paper)— ISBN 0–299–18094–8 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Hamerstrom, Frederick. 2. Hamerstrom, Frances. 3. Naturalists—United States—Biography. 4. Conservationists—United States—Biography. I. Title. QH26 .C63 2002 578´.092´273—dc21 2002002338 For Kip Who took me to the sand counties and turned my life around The whole human race spends too much emotion on itself. The happiest and freest man is the scientist investigating nature or the artist admiring it, the person who is interested in things that are not human. . . . We can best fulfill . . . humanity’s claims by keeping our emotional sanity, and this by seeing around and beyond the human race. —Robinson Jeffers Contents Foreword by George Archibald xi Acknowledgments xv 1 Prologue 3 2 The Complexities of Childhood 13 3 Self-Discovery and Love 34 4 Students, Teachers, and New Horizons 53 5 Conservation Beginnings in a Midwestern Appalachia 67 6 Enter Leopold and the Chickens 88 7 An Interruption: World War II 110 8 The Action: Postwar Scientific Solidarity 119 9 The Return: Deer and a Decision 132 10 The Setting, the Task 142 11 Booming Chickens and a Land Boom 157 12 The Prairie Chicken War 181 13 Hamerstroms’ Kingdom: The Complexities of Success 194 14 A Naturalist Family 208 15 Of Hawks, Humans, and Freedom 227 16 Free at Last 248 17 The Making of a Legend 265 18 Death of a Biologist 282 ix