He could be as blunt as a shovel, as salty as a sailor and wax rhapsodic when talking about his love of the outdoors - and our need to preserve it. He was all that, a very competent politician, a wheeler-dealer par excellence, and a friend.

Yesterday, I got word that my friend Jim Range died Monday night after a short battle with cancer. Personally, I'm shocked. Professionally, I know we have lost one of the people in the outdoors who was unafraid to talk with anyone he felt could help guarantee each of us a place to fish and hunt.

Jim Range (photo courtesy TRCP)

In his career, "Range" as most everyone called him, had covered the waterfront of Washington. Most recently he was a senior policy advisor specializing in environmental, regulatory and legislative policy in the law firm of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell and Berkowitz in Washington. He also served as the Chairman of the Board for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.

He was equally familiar with the halls of Congress, having served as minority counsel to the U.S. Senate's Committee on the Environment and Public Works from 1973-80. In that work, Range was often credited with preserving key parts of the Clean Water Act governing the protection of the nation's all-important wetlands. In the 1977 amendments to that act, Range was a key player in the talks. His ability to "work" both republicans and democrats was a talent he never lost.

I first met Range in the 1980s while he served as chief counsel to then Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker. With Senator Baker's daughter working in our Washington office, it wasn't uncommon to see him roll through our offices, bringing something that Cissy had forgotten.

Standing around a Georgia hunting camp one night, Range and I had a long conversation about his penchant for bluntly speaking his mind. In fact, I asked him how he'd managed to talk to people the way he did all these years without someone punching him in the nose. The thought, I confessed, had passed my own mind more than once.

Laughingly, Range replied "hell, I'm just me. Someone might get offended at how I say something, but they don't ever doubt my sincerity."

That was true. Range could tell an off-color story one minute, then be near tears as he talked about his passion for the outdoors. In fact, he once told me he'd sit down with absolutely anyone to talk about forming coalitions that could protect the outdoors.

He did, in fact, sit down with almost anyone -more than once. And that willingness cost him some support and opened him up to criticism that he was selling out to environmental groups looking to keep hunters and anglers out of the wild.

Range would snort, roll his eyes, and explain that some people just didn't understand that the preservation of those wild places was the reason he'd sit down with anyone, anywhere, to talk.

Once, after a long night talking following a great day of Georgia quail hunting, Range asked me if I would help him get "those damn evangelicals" to the table to talk about conservation. His rationale? I was one of them -as well as someone who understood the outdoors. I passed, telling him that he might not be the guy to handle that meeting.

It was a moment we laughed about afterwards, despite the fact Range never stopped asking if I'd gotten those damned evangelicals ready for a meeting. Thinking back on that night, another of my friends, David Foster, longtime editor of Gray's Sporting Journal, laughed the hardest at the idea. Foster said he'd pay to see that meeting.

Tonight as I write, I'm missing them both.

They brought me back up to speed on the conservation agenda after a twenty-year absence. In the course of that education, they taught me it was OK to miss a bird when hunting, but inexcusable to leave one wounded in the field.

When David died last year, I mourned the fact that he and I had plans for a spring trip in his RV this spring. We were going to call it "Jim and David's First Annual Roadtrip to Celebrate Kicking Cancer's Arse".

Unfortunately, cancer got the last word.

Late last year, I was invited out to an annual media summit at Range's Flyway Ranch in Montana. I'd been invited before, but just never seemed to work it out so I could go.

Today, I'm once-again regretting putting business ahead of hanging out with men who were tireless in their work to protect our hunting and fishing heritage, but understood the importance of taking time off to decompress and experience what we're all working to protect.

My loss is personal, but we've all lost someone who wasn't afraid to do whatever he thought necessary to accomplish good things for America's outdoors. Fortunately, his good work survives.