The guy who got Presdient Carter into fly fishing and hunting was a man named Mr Jack Crockford. Mr Crockford had been a "Hump" pilot in the Army Air Force during WW2 in the China-Burma-India theater. Following his discharge after the war, he returned to his native Michigan and attended college focusing on Wildlife Management, graduating in the early 50s.
After college, he was hired by the Stage of Georgia Fish and Game department where he spent the rest of his professional life, eventually becoming the Director of Fish and Game in Georgia. HIs most notable achievement was the successful reintroduction of whitetail deer and turkeys in the state. They had been almost completely poached out and eliminated during the depression and later years. After determining that the offshore islands in GA held some native deer and turkeys of pure GA genetics, he established a program and succeeded in the reintroduction of these two game animals in the state. The key to this success was Jack's invention of the tranquilizer dart to capture the deer without harming them, which is still in use today.
I got to know him because his son was a classmate of mine at the Air Force Academy. When Jimmy Carter became governor, Jack figured that the best way to get the support he sought was to get the governor involved in the outdoors and, in his book "Sharing Good Times", the former President points out Jack's influence on him.
Jack passed away shortly after I retired in 2011 and Jimmy Carter gave his eulogy, pointing out that despite growing up on a farm in rural Georgia his entire life, he had never seen a deer until he was 16. He pointed out that 300,000 Georgians bought deer hunting licenses last year thanks to Jack's lifetime efforts. A great man, to be sure.
Attached is a link to a picture of the President with Jack in the Oval Office in front of a magnificent .45 caliber flintlock Jack made for him. He always made these beautiful guns in pairs, and I have the twin to that one. President Carter took a lot of heat in his move to the White House because he insisted on carrying that fine firearm himself on the helicopter into DC (oh, the drama...). The additional pictures are of my twin rifle.
Maybe somebody can make them come up without the link. My inability to post nice pictures on this site is a great frustration to me and I have not found an acceptable replacement for PhotoBucket (a pox upon them).
https://ibb.co/bHRSdShttps://ibb.co/gevLyShttps://ibb.co/mdPusn