About me!
Rowdy Claycomb
Hello All! My name is Rowdy Claycomb, and I am this blog’s author. I was inspired to start this page because of my education in Rangeland ecology and management and my childhood spent exploring Southern Idaho’s deserts. I was born and raised in Boise, Idaho. I spent 18 years there until moving to Moscow, Idaho, to pursue my undergraduate degree in rangeland ecology and management. While living in Boise, I was raised by a father who enjoyed hunting, fishing, and camping all over the state. Our hunting pursuits were carried out on the Snake River Plain sagebrush steppe.
When I was little, I would complain to my dad that I wanted to camp in the mountains, not the ugly old desert! He always told me I should soak it in and look closely. He explained that this place wasn’t exactly what it seemed at the surface and that it may never be the same someday. As I grew up, we introduced many of my friends to the beauty and fun held by the rangelands of the Snake River plains. Some of my early childhood memories were group hunting and camping trips with my friends and family. I always looked forward to weekends spent in the sagebrush. Whether it was looking for deer on the King Hill bluffs or chasing glowing scorpions around the Bruneau dunes, I was always looking forward to getting out.
As I grew older, naturally, I started recreating without parental supervision and spent time outdoors, primarily with friends. This is where my love for the Rangelands of Idaho and the West began forming into something greater than just casual hobbies. As soon as my friends and I could drive independently, we would spend every possible second in the desert and sage. We were obsessed with anything that revolved around being outdoors. Our favorite things to do generally depended on the season. In the summers, we would take long drives south of Boise to look for pronghorn and soak in the scenery. This sometimes involved some questionable “mudding” runs with our trucks, which we would return home with broken parts and muddy everything. Sorry, Mom. In the fall, it was hunting season; on the weekends, we would wake up as early as possible. We always tried to beat the old timers, have first dibs on our favorite spots (AKA my dad’s spots), and soak in the most beautiful sunrises known to man. What would we hunt, you ask? A better question is, what wouldn’t we hunt? If there was a season for it, and it was edible, we would hunt it. In the winter, it was all ducks all the time for my friends and me. Cold mornings in the blind sipping coffee and watching mule deer graze on the horizon. Springtime meant fantastic fishing and more time cruising around in the trucks exploring remote parts of the range for us to enjoy without the nosey shadow of parents looming over us.
Besides the occasional lecturing, my parents supported my love of nature. They were happy I spent time outside and not behind a TV screen. For that, I will be forever thankful. Without my father’s love for the rangeland ecosystems of Southern Idaho, I may have never discovered my own. Hunting was a cornerstone in developing my passion for arid range landscapes. I spent significant amounts of time just looking through binoculars. More often than not, I would be unsuccessful in finding the species that I started the day looking for. But I never left without seeing some wildlife, and I was never disappointed. I constantly learned new species and tried to understand how they interacted with the land. These trips left me feeling like so much more was going on than meets the eye.
After graduating from Timberline High School in 2020 during COVID-19 and spending the remainder of my senior year outside, I knew I wanted to seek higher education. I learned about the University of Idaho range program sometime during my senior year and decided that was what I wanted to go to school for. I started my undergraduate degree in the fall of 2020 and became more interested in a range-based career over the next four years. My time at the University of Idaho was undoubtedly the best time of my life and prepared me for a job in range at the same time. I finished my undergraduate degree in May 2024 and am now working towards completing my Master of Natural Resources. Currently, I work as a rangeland fuels technician for the BLM. What the future holds for me and my professional life is unknown, but I charge ahead confidently, knowing I will end up doing something I love.