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MeatEater Time Machine Bull Moose Hoody
The MeatEater Time Machine keeps rolling. Our yearlong dig through the history that built the outdoor world we live in today lands on this one next.
October 14, 1912. The latest stop on the MeatEater Time Machine is Milwaukee, where Theodore Roosevelt - having split from the Republican Party to run as the candidate of his own Progressive Party - was about to give a campaign speech when a saloonkeeper named John Schrank shot him in the chest.
The bullet tore through Roosevelt's overcoat, a folded 50-page speech, and a steel eyeglass case before lodging against his rib. Any reasonable man heads for the hospital. Roosevelt went to the podium instead, opening with the line that stuck to him for good: it would take more than a bullet to put down a bull moose. He spoke for another hour with a live round in his chest before finally agreeing to see a doctor.
The Progressive Party had already taken its nickname from Roosevelt's own boast that he felt as strong as a bull moose. After Milwaukee, the name wasn't just a slogan - it was proof. He didn't win that election, but no third-party candidate before or since has outpolled a sitting party's nominee the way Roosevelt outpolled Taft that November.
Roosevelt's politics don't fit neatly into any modern box, but his instinct does: that wild country and wild game are worth fighting for. TR set aside more public land than any president before him, and he did it as a hunter, not in spite of being one. That stubbornness, the kind that keeps you standing after a bullet, is the same stubbornness that keeps wild country wild.
Read and listen to learn more about Theodore Roosevelt: Ep. 841: Theodore Roosevelt on Love, Ladies, and Conservation, Did Teddy Roosevelt Ride a Moose?, and Teddy Roosevelt’s Fight Club.
Materials: 70% Cotton, 30% Polyester
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