RIP to a REAL rancher
Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2014 5:28 am
There are more than a few of these out west who recognize their responsibilities of stewardship and working WITH the BLM. 
Leonard “Bud” Purdy, one of Idaho’s most beloved and respected ranchers and conservationists died Monday at his home on Silver Creek in Picabo.
Purdy, 96, led the ranching industry into rest and rotation grazing on public lands that both protected the range and improved cattle production. He duck-hunted and skied with Ernest Hemingway and hosted Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper at his Picabo Ranch.
He helped start the Idaho Cattle Association, led the University of Idaho Foundation as president and was chairman of the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry. In addition to the ranch, he and his late wife Ruth owned the Picabo Store, the Picabo Elevator and Silver Creek Supply, a seed business.
“Bud Purdy was the very embodiment of the Code of the West – someone whose life was a lesson in cowboy ethics, common sense, stewardship and the value of hard work and perseverance,” said Idaho Gov. Butch Otter. “I don’t know whether Bud was a religious man, but there was nobody with as much faith in his fellow man.”
Purdy donated a 3,500-acre conservation easement on all of the ranch along Silver Creek in the 1990s to the Nature Conservancy, adjacent to its own Silver Creek Preserve. Purdy didn’t even take the tax break on the easement valued at $7 million.
He was inducted into the Idaho Hall of Fame in 2013 and was grand marshal of the 2013 Ketchum Wagon Days Parade.
He loved the cattle business, he explained to writer, producer and author Steve Stuebner in an article in 2012 for the Idaho Rangeland Commission (which he co-founded). “Every morning, you get up and do something different,” he said. “You turn out on the range and ride a horse every day. Even now, I go out and make sure the water is OK, check the fences and make sure the gates are closed.
“It’s just a constant going out there and doing it,” Purdy said. “I was never a cowboy, but I’ve ridden a million miles.”
Purdy was born in Beatrice Nebraska Jan. 2, 1918 He spend the summers on the ranch of his grandfather, W.H. Kilpatrick, who established the ranch along Silver Creek. He graduated from Washington State University and returned to the take over management of the ranch in 1938.
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