Not long ago, we got an email at IDAHO magazine from Randy Orzalli, an appraiser of firearms and edged weapons in Sacramento, California.

A retired Idaho outfitter in New Plymouth named Trent Bullock had received an old knife and sheath from Con Hourihan, a former caretaker at the University of Idaho’s Taylor Wilderness Research Station in the Frank Church–River of No Return Wilderness. Trent forwarded the knife to Randy for appraisal.

Randy pointed out that the knife was probably made around 1935, to commemorate the friendship of Jess Taylor, who sold the remote Idaho ranch to the university, and another oldtimer, his friend “Cougar” Dave Lewis.

Randy wrote, “The knife is unique and quite complex in its construction—particularly, in that it was produced long before there were power and electric lights at the ranch.”

Cougar Dave, who died in 1936, was a big game hunter of renown around the West. His date and place of birth are uncertain, although a 2019 article in the University of Idaho’s archives contends there is “compelling evidence” that he was born in 1855 in Yoncalla, Oregon.

He was a Union scout at the Battle of Little Bighorn and a packer during the Sheepeater Campaign of 1879. The article, compiled by University of Wisconsin student Burgundy Johnson, asserts that Dave killed more than a thousand cougars, who were considered threats—along with other top predators—to wildlife prized by settlers, such as mule deer, elk, bighorn sheep, and mountain goats.