JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) - Gap Pucci works with his bare hands when he’s feeding and watering, no matter the temperature.
He takes a pair of leather gloves along but drops them on a hay bale or tosses them in the snow while he does tasks that demand dexterity: unlatching pens, scooping grain, scattering feed, reaching in his left pocket for a horse treat or his right pocket for a dog biscuit.
Visitors to Pucci’s snug compound usually find the 81-year-old retired outfitter and author outside, using a shovel to clear his walkway and routes to various sheds, pens and corrals. He spends four to five hours a day out in the elements, even in winter, seven days a week. He spends much of the rest of his time writing his third and final memoir, reported the Jackson Hole News and Guide (https://bit.ly/2j0PB55).
“I’m just playing in the snow,” he said Dec. 15 as he stuck his shovel into a snowbank. “Trying to get things opened up a little bit.”
A massive German shepherd, Nina, “little girl” in Italian, bounded up to greet people.
There’s a lot of work to do providing for the dog, a goat named Valentino, six Morgan horses, 25 peacocks, some chickens, a rooster named Freddie and whatever other critters wander by in search of a meal.
“I’m gonna have to get on those roofs pretty soon,” Pucci said.
He still climbs a ladder every other day to toss hay bales down off a 15-foot stack.
“My routine doesn’t change much,” Pucci said, opening up the shack that holds grain for the fowl and half-filling two gallon coffee cans. The building served as a washhouse back in the 1930s for Howard Ballew, the homesteader who originally lived in this little draw up Hoback Canyon. Pucci hand-hammered the horseshoes that decorate the front wall.
Pucci opened the peacock enclosure, brought in the coffee cans and latched the door behind him. As soon as he spread the grain and let himself out, a flock of birds waiting in a nearby tree beat their wings.
“See that?” Pucci said. “Those birds come in and eat with the peacocks. I feed everything. Anything that needs to eat, I feed it.”
These days Pucci is a friend to the animals. He seems a lot like St. Francis of Assisi, but for nearly 40 years Pucci was known as a man who could help you kill something. Clients flocked to him from around the U.S.
The outfitter and guide spent six to eight months a year in the Gros Ventre Wilderness, taking clients on pack trips, adventures and hunts. He retired in 2008.
“I used to ride 800 to 1,000 miles a year,” Pucci said, watching his horses sprint by the fence. “I don’t need to do that anymore. But I miss it.”
He invites his visitors inside the log homestead, past wooden skis given to him by Dr. Don MacLeod.
Inside the cabin there are 10,000 or more things to discuss, including the fact that Freddie gets to live inside each winter after nearly freezing to death a couple years ago. The rooster serves as a live alarm clock that won’t snooze until he gets a handful of lettuce.
The first thing Pucci wants to talk about is his saddle. He doesn’t like to even go in the tack shed anymore, he said: “It’s like seeing a ghost.”
Back in November, though, Pucci decided to bring his weathered saddle down to the house for some reminiscing. He reckons he put 30,000 to 40,000 miles on that saddle, wearing out the sheepskin until he had to have it relined.
He rummaged through a saddlebag, announcing each item and its purpose.
“Got some rawhide in here, need to fix a bridle or something you’ll need that. A little water cup. You always want to carry fire: a little Sterno. I don’t smoke. But I never travel without a lighter. Fire will keep you alive. Toilet paper.”
At last he found what he was searching for, the mystery item. Eight years ago it was a fist-size navel orange that he shoved in the saddlebag on one of his last rides. He showed off the science experiment with wonder and delight. It had turned greenish-black and shriveled to the size of a clementine.
“I never carried a water bottle,” Pucci said. “I knew where all the springs were. But I always had an orange or two.”
Near the saddle is a trophy case that holds a photo of a bulky 19-year-old Pucci holding a bodybuilding pose. He was getting ready for the Mr. Pennsylvania contest, where in 1959 he said he won the “tall man’s class” at 5-foot-10.
“Either you went to the gym or you got in trouble,” Pucci said. “Mom used to say I’d spend more time in the gym than at the dinner table. And I like to eat. I’d crawl in the window to work out. Crazy. Addicted.”
Storytelling is an important art form for a cowboy. It’s what keeps guests enthralled around the campfire, what keeps them coming back for more adventures with a man they know they can trust with their life.
But what happens when the cowboy has hung up his spurs? Where do the stories go then?
Restless after retirement, one day Pucci got out a legal pad and started writing his tales down.
He published “We Married Adventure,” his first book of memoirs, in 2011.
The next book, “We Do the Damndest Things: Jackson Hole Ranch and Outfitter Stories,” came out in 2015. Earlier this year the Wyoming State Historical Society honored it “in recognition of outstanding accomplishments and contributions to Wyoming’s legacy.” The book won a first-place award in the biography or autobiography category.
“When I got this letter I had to sit down, it was such a shock,” Pucci said. “I don’t know how they got ahold of this.”
There was a ceremony held in September in Buffalo, but attending would have meant driving more than 1,000 miles. He would have had to find someone to feed his animals. And it would have meant time away from writing his next book.
The third - and final - memoir is almost finished. Pucci has been scribbling away for years on the book with the working title “Goliath, the Horse That Disappeared: Jackson’s Hole Horse and Family Adventures.”
The magic happens in Pucci’s dining room, on a Persian carpet near the crystal chandelier and dozens of taxidermy mounts.
A hardback wooden captain’s chair with just a sheepskin for cushioning faces the picture window where one Christmas Day years ago some bighorn sheep came and gathered around his outdoor nativity scene to see Baby Jesus.
“If you notice things, there’s miracles every day in our lives,” Pucci said.
Dozens of yellow legal pads cover the floor, organized in a way only the author understands. Two fistfuls of green Bank of Jackson Hole pens lie in wait alongside a paperback dictionary whose crumbled binding is held together with a rubber band.
His friend Jake Nichols comes regularly to collect legal pads, decipher them, type them in and print out a double-spaced copy for Pucci to line edit.
Pucci entertains his guests by reading them a page: how he added electricity and plumbing to the property, his two girls liked to play in the outhouse, elk sometimes ate through the telephone cable and open-range cattle would rub on the electric poles and knock out the power.
“At least it was the beginning of civilization for us,” Pucci read, “our own little ranch and the start of Crystal Creek Outfitters . It’s a life now forgotten by most. Who would have ever believed that way of living could ever come to end for me and my family? That’s why I write these books, to let people know how it was, and how it can never be the same again. Those wild days are gone, sad to say.”
His voice wavered a little.
“It brings back memories,” Pucci said. “It’s good.”
Pucci could talk for hours about his days as a bodybuilder and in the Army, about his family members - cousin Lou Bondi invented a version of the Philly cheesesteak, Pucci’s dad and uncle hung around with Joe DiMaggio - and, of course, about hunting in the wilderness.
In his living room Pucci is surrounded by tangible memories of the hunting lifestyle. A coyote with a snowshoe hare in its mouth stands in front of the hearth. There are stuffed moose, mule deer, elk, bear, sheep, pine marten, ducks and ermine.
“What you’re looking at in this room is a life’s work,” Pucci said.
Respect for God’s creatures was always the way Pucci approached a hunt, he said, and how he advertised the whole backcountry experience to potential clients.
“An adventure wilderness, not a kill,” Pucci said. “It’s that 24-inch Englemann spruce, it’s the sunset. I studied all these animals. When a hunter missed a shot, then I cheered for the animal. You made it through hunting season.”
Pucci gestured around his living room with one of his fingertips askew. It was broken back in the wilderness decades ago and never set straight.
“You took care of yourself up there, you didn’t run to the clinic,” he said. “I took more supplies for the horses than for the people.”
Now retired nearly a decade, Pucci’s memories still keep him entertained, and he writes his stories so others can experience the bygone era.
“One of the best compliments I’ve gotten on my books is, ’I feel like I was right there with you,’” Pucci said.
He read from the last page of the book:
“The last time I saw Goliath, that beautiful big powerful horse and family member, was 21 years ago on the sandy banks of Crystal Creek. . For those of you who believe, no further explanation is necessary. For those who don’t believe, no further explanation is possible.”
In December, Pucci was finishing the final story for his book. By spring the manuscript will be edited and polished.
Pucci reads from the text that will grace the back cover:
“Dear folks, this is the third and final book in a series of three, each a sequel to the other. The final journey and roundup of an American Sicilian cowboy’s last ride. Staking out a living in the Gros Ventre Mountains . You are now watching the old cowboy ride away. I have run the race, I have fought the good fight, I have kept the faith.”
Pucci’s in good health, he says, although he doesn’t have much cartilage left.
“My joints hurt from all those years of physical work,” he said, “being bumped off and knocked down.”
But he lives alone and climbs 20-foot ladders in below-zero weather without a cellphone, so he doesn’t miss an opportunity to make his last wishes known.
“If something happens to me, get this damn book published,” Pucci said. “It’s all here.”
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Information from: Jackson Hole (Wyo.) News And Guide, https://www.jhnewsandguide.com
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