Owen Gromme 1896-199, “Touch of White Pheasants.” Former Ducks Unlimited Executive Secretary Ken McCreary said of Gromme, “He is a phenomenal man and outstanding artist; there is no question in anyone’s mind that Owen Gromme is one of the greatest wildlife painters of all time.”
Special to United Methodist Insight | September 3, 2026
He first appeared late on Sunday afternoon just before dusk, this striking stranger who seemed absolutely at home in the farmhouse yard, though not one of us human inhabitants had ever seen him there before. He acted like he owned the place, like a medieval Lord come to inspect his holdings.
He came from the willows along the creek bed, next to the old pig lot behind the barn, stepped boldly across the highway and into the front yard of the house, following the course of the line fence that separates our trees and flowers from the neighbor’s cows.
Known as the “dean of U.S. wildlife artists,” Owen Gromme was a native of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. He spent most of his professional life as the curator of birds and mammals at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Gromme’s reputation as a painter of wildlife enabled him to draw attention to and spur action on important conservation issues, such as legislation to protect birds, the protection of the Horicon Marsh, and the formation of the International Crane Foundation.
We watched from the picture window as he quick-stepped for ten yards or so, stopped suddenly, did a rapid scan of the perimeter, and then repeated the process until he reached the weeping willow on the far end of the back yard. There he paused again to gaze out over the marsh grasses that surround the big hole by the cottonwood where the wild ducks gather each night after dusk to squawk and peck at each other.
After about ten minutes, we watched in awe as he turned around and repeated his quick march, all the way back to wherever home is across the road in the willows beyond the pig lot.
I did not think of him again for several weeks, and then only because he suddenly appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, just before dusk, as I stood surveying a row of sweet corn I had just replanted. This time he came on the fly and landed about ten feet away with a thud like a gymnast sticking the landing. If he noticed me at all, I couldn’t tell.
Owen Gromme Plaque. “Gromme was fearless when it came to speaking out about issues, as in the 1930s, when he pushed for a closed season on ducks, bag limits on geese and other environmental legislation. He worked with Aldo Leopold to influence legislation that would protect herons, hawks and owls.
He looked at the corn with his head held high, as if to say, “What the **** is going on here? Nobody asked me about this.”
I didn’t move, held in thrall by the brilliant colors of his plumage and long flowing tail. The sun glistened on the iridescent greenish-black hue of his head and neck. There was a bright red patch on his head just above the striking white ring that crowned a torso marked by dark reddish copper breast feathers. His sides were covered with lighter earth tones, and his brownish train of tail feathers was at least thirty inches in length and mottled with crisp black bars. I felt I was in the presence of royalty, divinity even.
He appeared suddenly like this several more times that summer on Sumwalt farm. Once we happened to look out the window as he landed beside the other weeping willow in the front yard. He stepped out quickly as we had seen him do before, then stopped abruptly, raised his head, and crowed.
I had never seen a rooster pheasant up close before, much less heard one crow. It was an unusual sound not at all like that of a domestic fowl, deep, guttural, in tune with what the theologian Paul Tillich called the “ground of being,” as if he were, as the psalmist wrote, “summoning the earth.”
“The mighty one, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty shines forth. Our God does not keep silence.” Psalm 50:1-3a.
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The Rev. John Sumwalt is a retired pastor and the author of “Shining Moments: Visions of the Holy in Ordinary Lives.” Email him.