William Baillie Grohman

William Adolph Baillie Grohman (April 1, 1851 – February 11, 1921) was an Anglo-Austrian author[1] of works on the Tyrol and the history of hunting, a big game sportsman, and a pioneer in the Kootenay region of British Columbia.

[3] As a young man Grohmann roamed out from the family castle to hunt chamois and deer in the surrounding high alps, wandering for days through the still-remote Tyrolese mountain villages.

A crack shot and a passionate big-game hunter, he travelled out to the American West many times the 1870s and 1880s to shoot big game when the Rockies and mountain states were opening up to sportsmen.

His book Camps in the Rockies (1882)[11] gives an account of his travels through Wyoming and Idaho, both as a "topshelfer" (a rich comfort-laden sportsman[12]) and later on – more to his boyhood taste of stalking with Tyrolean mountain huntsmen – roughing it with trappers and Native Americans.

This plan was thwarted by political pressure from the Canadian Pacific Railway and others,[18][19] who managed ultimately to get the concession revoked and awarded to rival interests.

Probably his restless and outspoken temperament and privileged background was not well suited to the political manoeuvring needed to mollify the Provincial Colonial Administration and counter the machinations of the CPR and other interests.

Assisted by his wife, Florence, he produced a lavishly illustrated and authoritative<[37] edition of The Master of Game (1904),[38] the second oldest English book on hunting, a translation (from the French Livre de Chasse (1387) of Gaston Phébus) by Edward of Norwich, 2nd Duke of York.

[41] On the outbreak of the first world war, as British nationals, the Baillie Grohmans faced internment but were allowed to leave Austria after the intercession of Prince Auersperg.