Wildfires & Wildflowers: How Johnny Cash Walked (And Crossed) The Line

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Johnny Cash may have been an avid outdoorsman, but he didn’t always “walk the line” when it came to conservation. Although his relationship with conservation was tumultuous, he was far from an outlaw. He was known for his love of the outdoors, famously writing his #1 chart-topping song “Ring of Fire” while fishing on Lake Casitas. He was also a vocal proponent of environmental causes.

At other times, he found himself embroiled in multiple confrontations with the law over environmental infractions, ranging from starting wildfires to picking wildflowers. His persona teetered between convict and entertainer, often exacerbated by his addictions.

In the comfort and safety of friends, Cash would say, “There are two of us. Johnny’s the nice one. It’s Cash that causes all the trouble.” Filmmaker Johnathan Holiff, son of manager Saul Holif, commented, “He was referring to a kind of dual personality that arose from the abuse of Dexedrine.” Cash’s well-documented problems with prescription pills and alcohol peaked in the mid-1960s.

Filmmaker Robert Elfstrom spent some time with Cash in 1968 and had this to say about Cash’s duality of his personality: “One day, we were hanging out in his house, and he said, ‘I want to go hunting.’ He grabbed his shotgun and was walking through the land around his house when he spied a crow and whipped off a shot that only wounded the crow. When he picked it up, you could feel that something was going through John’s head; he’d almost killed something that maybe he shouldn’t have, and he felt bad about it. So, John carried the crow and sat down in the shade, and I could see he was pissed off at himself. The next thing I knew, he was writing a song to the crow.”

One of the most notable brushes with the law occurred while Cash was fishing in the mountains with his nephew. Cash claims the exhaust from his “Party” pickup ignited the leaf litter at their campsite. Despite Cash’s assertions, his nephew states that he found him drunk on the ground with a pack of matches. “I didn’t do it; my truck did, and it’s dead, so you can’t question it.” Cash had ‘accidentally’ set a fire that burned 500 acres of the Los Padres National Forest, in an area that was home to 53 endangered Yellow Condors. ​​Presumably, many of them died. The government sued Cash over the incident, winning a $125,000 verdict, to which he famously responded, “I don’t give a damn about your yellow buzzards. Why should I care?”

Another incident that placed him on the wrong side of the law occurred while he was drunkenly picking wildflowers by the roadside in Mississippi. Presumably, there is more to the story, but that’s the reason Cash provided for his 1965 trespassing arrest by the Starkville Police Department, which inspired the song by the same name.

Then there’s the flip-side story involving his pet ostrich, Waldo, who attacked Cash and came dangerously close to disemboweling him. Fortunately, the bird’s large talon was stopped by his belt buckle, likely saving his life. Cash could have turned the oversized turkey into Thanksgiving dinner but instead chose to send the bird to a rescue ranch.

One thing is clear—Cash loved to hunt. In the 1960s, his prospective manager, Saul Holiff, came up with the idea to entice Cash with a trip to Newfoundland for some shows and to hunt moose. Cash jumped at the opportunity.

On the first day of their hunt, guide Herman Whalen spotted a cow moose and told Cash of its location, assuming he wouldn’t be interested in an animal without a trophy rack. “It’s a cow moose, no antlers.” To which Cash replied with a grin, “You can’t eat the antlers.” Cash took down the moose with a single shot from 200 yards away and proceeded to butcher the animal himself. Whalen was impressed that Cash was motivated by meat rather than antlers, unlike many of his other clients. 

Whalen was later interviewed about the Man in Black’s hunting prowess, commenting, “He was a real good hunter and a pleasure to hunt with.” He may not have shot a man in Reno, but he did shoot a cow moose at 200 yards with a single shot. Notably, the photos from the Newfoundland trip further reveal the duality of his personality. When photographed during that concert tour, he appears disheveled, and some might say he shows the effects of his addiction. In contrast, the images of Johnny Cash in the woods with his moose and friends look happy and rejuvenated.

Years later, in 1986, while appearing as a guest on The Late Show with Joan Rivers, Cash spoke publicly about his passion for the outdoors and his black and tan coonhound named Molly. He also discussed his love for raccoon hunting and went on to highlight his conservation mindset, stating, “I don’t kill anything I don’t eat.”

His music also reflected his conservationist mentality, with songs like “Don’t Go Near The Water,” which suggests that children in the future won’t recognize water as we do because “The water isn’t water anymore.” He also created the album Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian, using his celebrity status to raise awareness of Indigenous issues. In 1973, he appeared in the American Oil Amoco Energy Crisis TV commercial, advocating for driving slower and keeping homes a few degrees cooler—efforts to reduce fuel consumption decades before the green movement popularized such actions.

Many people attribute his controversies and mishaps to his addiction to alcohol and pills. The evidence of his contributions to conservation movements through his celebrity status is clear. Just imagine how much more he could have accomplished for conservation efforts if he had remained sober.   

In addition to his love for hunting, Johnny Cash could often be found casting a line whenever his busy schedule permitted.

1) One of Cash’s favorite fishing buddies was singer-songwriter Johnny Horton, best known for his hit “Battle of New Orleans.” The two even established a tackle company, Cane River Bait Co., which produced three lures: the Ole Fire Ball Sinker, the Ole Fire Ball Surface, and the Galloping A. 

2) On his way to Lafayette, Louisiana, for a show, Cash pulled the tour bus off Interstate 65, found a roadside park, and tried to catch a few catfish with his young son, John Carter Cash. There, Cash wrote in the liner notes of the Columbia Records release, “I talked to a man on the banks of the Wabash River who was trying to fish away his blues.”

3) In 1988, Cash hooked a big sailfish on a deep-sea fishing trip off Costa Rica, which was filmed for TNN’s Country Sportsman. As bad luck would have it, the fish got off at the side of the boat just before they could land it.

4) Two of Cash’s favorite fishing spots were in Florida—Korman’s Landing or out on the docks in front of the Carter family’s riverfront home. In his autobiography, Cash wrote: “Once you’re on our little street, on Pop Carter’s front porch with the river right across the pavement from you and your boat bobbing at the dock, waiting to zoom you out into the open waters of the Gulf just a few hundred yards away, all the other stuff could be in another country.”

5) It was during a fishing trip with his nephew and regular fishing companion, Damon Fielder, that Cash got drunk and initiated the wildfire that destroyed hundreds of acres of condor habitat.

6) In 2017, Abel Reels, in partnership with the Johnny Cash estate, announced the release of the Johnny Cash Limited Edition Fly Reel. Featuring an anodized black-on-black graphic design that commemorated the Man in Black himself, Abel produced only 250 of these special edition reels for the sporting and collector markets. —Mark Chesnut