Sam Hunnicutt

Sam Hunnicutt introduces his book, Twenty Years Hunting and Fishing in the Great Smokies, by stating, “I claim to be a perfect hunter and fisherman for game fish; I know the best kinds of hunting outfit to use, I know the best kind of gun to use for killing game and also the best dogs to use for hunting.”

Though “comfortable in their skin,” mountain folks aren’t inclined to be boastful. Hunnicutt isn’t bragging; he is expressing confidence in his competence. In a similar fashion, Sam’s buddy, famed mountain angler “Uncle” Mark Cathey, said “I’ve been accused of being the finest fisherman in the Smokies.” They were realists, not egotists, and forthrightness endears them to posterity.

Samuel Jeter Hunnicutt was born on March 23, 1880 in Yancey County, North Carolina. When Sam was small his family moved to Swain County, where he spent his youth and “sweet” of his adulthood. Throughout his life sport lay at the heart of his being.

As a young man he married Leah Truett, a relative of famed minister George Truett, and the newlyweds established their home alongside Deep Creek in today’s Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Here they raised a large family, although the house and surrounding acreage belonged to a Yankee named Marion Eppley. 

Fabulously wealthy and a Princeton Ph. D. recipient, Eppley made a major contributions to America’s World War I and II efforts through development of precision electrical instruments and as Admiral Chester Nimitz’s personal representative. He was a patron of Hunnicutt in a fashion reminiscent of affluent Renaissance families such as the Medici. Eppley recognized Hunnicutt as a mountain original, and his friendship, nurturing, and economic backing enabled Sam to enjoy a singularly carefree lifestyle.

Precisely how Sam earned his livelihood remains a mystery. Family tradition has him operating a sawmill, managing a country store, guiding visiting sportsmen like Eppley, and doing subsistence farming. A central feature of Hunnicutt’s adulthood, although it doesn’t feature in his timeless book, was a dream of finding uranium, gold, silver, or precious stones. Another longtime pursuit was “sanging”—hunting ginseng for sale to Asia. In his book Sam recounts locating a sprawling ginseng patch mentioned by legendary moonshiner Quill Rose. Sam also earned “cash money” by gathering other marketable plants, such as yellow root and galax, along with chestnuts.

At times a hard man, his was unquestionably a hardscrabble existence. In the 1930 census he was a “guest” of the county and extant records hold multiple accounts of affray. A grandchild, Barbara Edwards, laughed when I mentioned him hunting in the Park illegally: “I could see him doing just that if he took a notion.” Judging by Twenty Years Hunting and Fishing’s contents, much of Sam’s life involved “notions” to go hunting or fishing. 

For all his shortcomings, Hunnicutt clearly was a charmer. A popular fixture at Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s Mountain Dance and Folk Festival, he exhibited extraordinary abilities as a singer, yodeler, and storyteller while perfectly mimicking sounds of creatures such as bears, turkeys, and panthers. Whenever audience attention waned at Lunsford’s gathering, Sam enlivened things with his “blood-curdling bear dog calls.” Recorded for posterity, Sam’s vocalizations are now housed in the Library of Congress American Folklife Center. 

From his twenties onward, Hunnicutt constantly wore high-topped boots. Bitten by “the biggest old rattler ever I seed,” he would point at the knot on his leg and say: “I can still feel the heat of them fangs.” 

Though rough around the edges, Sam melded well with those of all backgrounds. His sporting mentor was a prominent local figure, Dr. A. M. Bennett, and he hunted regularly with pillars of the community. Regular companions included Rev. O. P. Williams and his boys, the Tom Clark family, members of the Cleveland (Tennessee) Hunting Club, visiting outlanders, and the inimitable Mark Cathey, who figures more prominently in his book than anyone other save Sam the mountain man himself. 

One notable local contemporary missing in Sam’s writings is Horace Kephart. Likewise, while hunters of Hunnicutt’s ilk such as Quill Rose and Granville Calhoun figure prominently in Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders, there is no mention of Hunnicutt (or Mark Cathey). Kephart, ever on the lookout for titillating subjects—witness Hol Rose’s, moonshiners, bear hunting, revenuer raids—would have seen such characters as prime subjects. Their absence in his writings is easily explained. Almost certainly neither wished to associate with him. Independent-minded souls, they would have resented Kephart’s stereotyping of “branch-water people,” a group to which both belonged. 

Sam’s final 35 years of life, from the Park’s 1934 creation onward, found him rootless with no fixed place of abode. Like others of his background, his uprooting left an unrecoverable void in his life. Driven from his beloved Deep Creek homestead, he became a vagabond, camping out or living with one of his children. 

Hunnicutt found some surcease through entertaining his numerous grandchildren. One, Jessie Dyer Cloer, was a school classmate of mine. She fondly remembers time he spent in her parents’ Davis Branch home near Bryson City. “My goodness, could he yodel,” she reminisces. “When he got to goin’ you could hear him all up and down Davis Branch. Us kids loved it.” He also tried to interest his grandchildren in prospecting, hoping they would be “bitten by the rock bug.” 

Between stays with his children, Hunnicutt wandered remote areas of the high country, hunted, fished, camped, and dabbled in geological exploration. The final portion of his life found him in the Asheville area, living first with a son before eventually moving to that era’s equivalent of a rest home. Hunnicutt died in 1969 and is buried in Weaverville’s West Memorial Park.

Had it not been for publication of Twenty Years Hunting and Fishing, Sam Hunnicutt would be just forgotten mountain sportsmen, his legacy consumed by the ravages of time. His book sets him apart. Obviously Sam was no Shakespeare of the Smokies, but he used his remarkable memory to good effect in recalling the 40-plus hunting and fishing trips he describes. Specifics of geographical location (mostly the Deep Creek drainage); participants; game or fish sought, caught, and killed; information on details of the outing’s duration, and particulars about campfire cookery define his tales. Noticeably missing is any chronology.

Hunnicutt even provides a sporting scorecard in the recently reprinted 1926 first edition, the first book ever published by a Swain County native, stating: “I have helped kill 55 bears from dogs, have helped catch over 500 ‘coons with dogs, (and) I have been at the catching of 76 foxes with fox-hounds.” Later, in his 70s, Sam told newspaper reporter Bob Terrell he had “personally killed 33 bears and been in on the killing of 104” along with having caught more than 1,000 ‘coons. The specificity of these figures might suggest a meticulously maintained diary, but what is more likely is that Hunnicutt possessed a near-photographic memory. Interestingly, his thoughts on game management were squarely in keeping with those of today’s wildlife biologists, with controlled burns topping his list. “The Park has grown over with so much underbrush,” he reckoned, “it’s forced the berries and edible herbs out of existence.” Given the fact that vast areas of the Park had been clear cut in the early decades of the twentieth century, along with the demise of the mighty chestnut almost immediately afterward, his statement about wild tangles and sparse mast carries the ring of truth.

Opinions of this sort and careful reading of Sam’s book leave no doubt he was the genuine article. Anyone familiar with the terrain Hunnicutt describes soon realizes he possessed intimate knowledge of vast stretches of the Smokies, and the way he and fellow hunters traversed steep, rugged terrain dominated by rhododendron hells and wooly heads speaks of hardiness absent in today’s world.

Sam Hunnicutt lived life to its fullest and did so strictly according to his own dictates. His nine decades of life may not have defined him as a model of propriety. Yet one can only envy his free spirit and days without number spent amidst the remote fastnesses forming some of the Smokies most beautiful and beguiling areas.

Learn more

Western Carolina University’s Hunter Library recently reprinted Hunnicutt’s exceedingly rare book, Twenty Years Hunting and Fishing in the Great Smokies, the first in a planned series of reprints from the institution’s special collections. Jim Casada, the author of this profile, wrote a new introduction to the reprint. Signed copies of the book are available from him for $25 postpaid at jimcasadaoutdoors.com. Interested individuals can also sign up there to receive his monthly e-newsletter.