Ernest Hemingway In Idaho

By Joe Berk

1500:  Keep that number in mind.  I’ll tell you what it means at the end of this post.


As I mentioned in the introductory blog on our ExNotes Idaho expedition, I was surprised to learn of the apparently well-known strong connection between Idaho and Ernest Hemingway.  My previous ignorance of this connection made me feel kind of illiterate when I read about it at the Basque Museum, and then again in Picabo while we were driving to Craters of the Moon National Monument. I wouldn’t want any of our readers to feel my pain, so I thought I would offer a brief Hemingway biography and explain how the Idaho/Hemingway connection developed.

I previously wrote about the Basque Museum a blog or two back.  Our next adventure was Craters of the Moon, and on our way there as we passed through the small town of Picabo I thought I would top off the Jeep and grab a cup of coffee.  The gas station had a small general store and a restaurant, so Susie and I grabbed lunch.  The place had an interesting corner devoted to Ernest Hemingway and his Idaho adventures.

Firearms Hemingway gave to local rancher Bud Purdy in a Picabo restaurant display case.

Hemingway loved hunting and fishing in the Silver Creek area near Picabo with Bud Purdy, a local rancher and Idaho legend.  Purdy was an interesting man, too.  You can read about him here.

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois (a small town near Chicago) on July 21, 1899. He was wounded in World War I, he went on to become one of the world’s great novelists, he married four times, and he died at age 61 in Ketchum, Idaho. But there’s a lot more to the Hemingway story than just those two short sentences.

As a young man growing up in what was then a predominately rural area, Hemingway’s father introduced him to hunting and fishing. He graduated from the Oak Park public school system in 1917 and went to work as a reporter at the Kansas City Star. It’s been said that’s where he developed his writing style, based on the newspaper’s guidelines emphasizing short sentences and paragraphs, writing in the active style, shortness, and clarity. Hemingway carried the style to his fiction, later explaining “Those were the best rules I ever learned for the business of writing. I’ve never forgotten them.”

When World War I started, Hemingway wanted to serve but poor eyesight prevented his enlisting. He instead volunteered to be a Red Cross ambulance driver in Italy. Hemingway was wounded only a month into this adventure by a mortar round, and then wounded again immediately after that by machine gun fire. All this occurred while carrying a wounded soldier to safety. The Italian government awarded Hemingway their Silver Medal for Valor.

Hemingway returned home and went to work for the Toronto Star Weekly, where he married his first of four wives in 1921. The Hemingways moved to Paris, where he met several of the great authors of the era while still working as a reporter covering such things as the Geneva Conference, bullfighting, and fishing. It was while Hemingway was in Paris that his first works of fiction were published, including Indian Camp and Cross Country Snow.

From 1925 to 1929, Hemingway wrote some of the world’s great literary masterpieces, including Our Time in 1925. It contained The Big Two-Hearted River, The Sun Also Rises, and Men Without Women. A Farewell to Arms followed in 1929, which was quickly recognized as a defining World War I masterpiece and earned Hemingway a reputation as a literary giant. Hemingway became a world traveler, visiting Key West for fishing, Africa for hunting, and Spain for bullfighting. He continued writing, creating For Whom the Bell Tolls, Death in the Afternoon, and The Green Hills of Africa.

For a time in the pre-Castro days, Hemingway lived in Cuba. Hemingway lost his home when Fidel Castro confiscated private property in 1958. He and his fourth wife bought a home in Ketchum, Idaho, where he would live out the rest of his life.

Hemingway had spent time in Idaho prior to purchasing his Ketchum home. Averill Harriman (an American entrepreneur who owned the Union Pacific Railroad and other businesses) was promoting a new resort in Sun Valley, Idaho.  In 1939 Harriman invited Hemingway to visit the Sun Valley Lodge and that set the hook. Hemingway hunted and fished Idaho, and he fell in love with the area.  Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls in Room 206 of the Sun Valley Lodge (known today as the Hemingway Suite).  While a guest at the Sun Valley Lodge, Hemingway also wrote Islands in the Stream, The Garden of Eden, and A Moveable Feast.

Later in life, Hemingway struggled with poor health and depression. Some say he was an alcoholic. He had experienced numerous concussions, a couple of car accidents, and two airplane crashes. Hemingway committed suicide by shooting himself in his Ketchum home in July of 1961 at the age of 61.

Ernest Hemingway was an outdoorsman, a shooter, and a hunter.  In other words, he was my kind of guy, so it’s surprising that the only Hemingway novel I ever read was The Old Man and the Sea.   That’s a character defect I aim to correct in the near future.


It’s probably appropriate that this post is about Ernest Hemingway, as this is our 1500th literary endeavor on the ExhaustNotes blog.  Yep, 1500 posts!  We appreciate you reading our blog, we appreciate your comments, and we especially appreciate you clicking on those pesky popup ads!


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The Rimfire Series: A 1974 10/22 Mannlicher

By Joe Berk

Sometimes picking the featured photo for each of our blogs is a challenge.  Do you select a photo that captures the essence of the story, or do you feature a photo that highlights what you like most?  A Mannlicher rifle almost requires a full length photo of the rifle as the lead, but for me and this rifle it was the wood.  That’s why I went with the photo above.   Here’s a photo showing the entire rifle…a Ruger 10/22 Mannlicher.

Fancy walnut gets me every time.

Introduced in 1964, the standard model Ruger 10/22 semi-automatic rifle has been in production continuously ever since.  During that time, there have been more variations than you can shake a stick at.  Walnut, birch, plastic, folding, Circassian stocks.  Takedown models.  Target models.  Mannlichers, standards, and compact models.  Bull barrels, regular, short, and long barrels.  .22 Long Rifle, .22 Magnum, and .17 caliber rifles.  All kinds of commemoratives.  With production exceeding 5 million rifles, more Ruger 10/22s have been manufactured than any other .22 rifle (the highest production for any rifle in any caliber, though, is the AK-47, with total production quantities unknown but estimated to exceed 100 million).   The 10/22 has a unique rotary magazine design, the rifle is relatively inexpensive, and a 10/22 simple to maintain.  I’ve bought and sold several and I still have three or four stashed in the safe.  I’ve shot the hell out of a few but I never wore one out.  Reliability and longevity are two of any Ruger’s most endearing (and enduring) qualities.

A view of the left side. The rifle has good figure on both sides.

One of my favorite 10/22 configurations is the Mannlicher, which has a full length stock.  This is an early one manufactured in 1974.   You can make a career out of collecting 10/22s, and there have been several variants of the 10/22 Mannlicher.  I’m not a serious enough collector to go after all of them.  This particular rifle caught my eye because of the walnut.  I’m a sucker for any rifle with highly figured walnut, and good wood is not something you see too often on an inexpensive rifle like the 10/22.

Ruger’s recent run of Mannlicher 10/22s featured a laminated stock. There’s one on Gunbroker.com with a “buy now” price of $895. Hope springs eternal.

I paid way too much for my Mannlicher 10/22 several years ago, but that’s okay.  Another way of looking at it is that I bought it too soon.  Prices pretty much always go up on guns.  This one has already caught up to what I paid.

The 10/22 10-shot rotary magazine, a box of old Federal .22 Long Rifle cartridges, and my Mannlicher.
Close enough for government work and open sights.

A Ruger 10/22 rifle can be surprisingly accurate.  I wanted to get out and shoot at 50 yards, but the West End Gun Club is still inaccessible (the stream across the access road is running too high).  So I took the Mannlicher to the Magnum Range (an indoor range) a couple of weeks ago.  The distance was only 50 feet, but sometimes halitosis is better than no breath at all.  I used my range bag as a half-assed bench rest and I managed to shoot a few  decent groups using the Ruger’s open sights.

A simple rear sight. The plate can be adjusted up or down for elevation; the sight can be drifted left or right for windage. This one is pretty much right on the money as is.
The Mannlicher’s front sight…a simple gold bead.  The metal cap at the tip of the stock is a traditional Mannlicher touch.
Another photo of the metal forearm cap on my 10/22 Mannlicher.
The Mannlicher forward sling swivel is another nice touch. Instead of a screw in single attachment point beneath the forearm, a Mannlicher forward sling attachment straddles the stock as you see here.

The Mannlicher style reaches back to the 1880s.  Prussian military officers designed a rifle that featured a full length “Stutzen” stock with a metal cap at the end and a carbine (or short) length.  This evolved into a sporting rifle in 1903 (Ernest Hemingway hunted with one).  The slim profile, compact size, and full length stock came to be known as the Mannlicher style.  I first saw a Mannlicher-style rifle on a limited run, used Model 70 Winchester at the Donn Heath gun shop in Fort Worth, Texas.  That Model 70 was under $200 and I wish I had the foresight to buy it.  It handled beautifully and it just felt right.  Today, those Model 70 Mannlichers are in the stratosphere.

Ernest Hemingway’s Mannlicher.  He took it on his first African Safari.  In 1997, Hemingway’s Mannlicher sold for $6,325.  It would bring considerably more today.
The Winchester Model 70 Mannlicher. These rifles go for $4,000 to $5,000 today.

My 10/22 is an easily handling rifle that fits me well.  I don’t shoot it that often, but every time I do, I enjoy it.  I’m hoping that West End will open again soon so I can put the Mannlicher to work on the 50-yard range.

My 10/22 Mannlicher. It’s not for sale.

This old Ruger 10/22 has a couple of nice features.  One is the pistol grip cap.  It’s plastic, but it still looks good and this one is in good shape.

Another cool touch is the fancier black plastic butt plate.  Other base model 10/22s have a simpler and cheaper butt plate.  This one looks good.

So there you have it…the latest installment in our Rimfire Series.  There’s more coming, so stay tuned.


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If you would like to see our earlier blogs on .22 rifles and handguns, here’s a set of links.

A Tale of Two .22s (a CZ Model 452 and a Remington Model 504)

A .22 Colt Trooper Mk III

¡Siluetas Metálicas!

First Person Shooter

A 200th Year Ruger .22

A Tale of Two Springfields