Getting Home: Veteran Wesley Smith and His Pigeons

As part of our 60th anniversary celebration at Arizona Raft Adventures (AzRA and ARTA Grand Canyon), we’re honoring stories from our early days—tales that shaped the spirit of the company and the community of Grand Canyon river running. Few are as unforgettable as the story of Wesley Smith—Vietnam veteran, river guide, and the only boatman we know of who brought homing pigeons down the Colorado River.

In the mid-1970s, on trips taking out at Diamond Creek (river mile 226), the massive pile of gear in the bed of Blackie—our stake-side truck at the time—sometimes included the curious remains of a handmade pigeon crate. Built from chicken wire and old produce boxes, the battered crate was a quiet testament to Wesley Smith’s layered past: a man who had survived the Vietnam War and returned not only to civilian life, but to guiding people through one of the most harshly beautiful—and humbling—places on Earth, the Grand Canyon.

Wesley had served as an infantry private in a unit that suffered one of the highest casualty rates of the war, turning over four times during his tour. He didn’t speak of it often, but when he did it was clear he was traumatized by the tragic loss of so many of his fellow infantrymen.  He once recalled a brutal jungle battle where Vietnamese enemy soldiers had dug interconnected foxholes and held off American troops with surprising force. When it was over, Wesley approached the fallen Viet Cong trenches seeing the aftermath. He said quietly to his squad mates, “They were kids… they didn’t get home.” Then added, “We were all just kids.” Though marked by trauma, Wesley radiated compassion. His experiences didn’t harden him—they deepened his empathy. That kindness showed up in his relationships with guests, fellow guides, and even his beloved flock of pigeons.

After a few years guiding the Colorado River, Wesley brought along a very different kind of crew: homing pigeons. Carried in a that homemade crate lashed with life jackets to the side tube of his 22-foot snout boat (built from Vietnam-era bridge pontoons), a few cooing colorful birds joined him on select trips. Typically, near Phantom Ranch, Wesley would release them one at a time. The pigeons would soar high above the canyon walls, wings catching the thermal updrafts, before turning south—toward their home coop in Williams, Arizona. But like the men of his old infantry squad, not all made it home. Peregrine falcons, fierce and fast, would sometimes rocket out of the sky striking like a bullet mid-air—iridescent feathers and blood drifting down through the sunlight. Others became disoriented in the canyon’s maze of rock and sky and mysteriously disappeared. But a few lucky ones learned to survive. They flew fast and low, followed the river’s circuitous course, and navigated the canyon’s twists and turns until they found the open sky and a direct line to their home loft in Williams AZ. Wesley always brought several pigeons in his squad to even have one bird make it home. Some guides reported Wesley’s pigeons landing on their rafts mid-trip—battle-weary and catching their breath before pressing on, ever watchful for enemy falcons on the cliffs above.

It wasn’t just raptors the pigeons had to fear. On one trip, while camped at Bass Camp, ringtail cats raided Wesley’s pigeon crate. In the morning, his voice rang out through the camp: “Goddamn cats!” The scene was marked by blood, feathers, and torn chicken wire mesh—a chilling echo of the vulnerability that life carries, even when seemingly safely ensconced in a temporary river crate home. To Wesley, these pigeons weren’t just his pets or companions. They were also part of a makeshift backcountry emergency communication system he was hoping to be useful for rescue on river trips in the canyon. Before satellite phones or GPS, river parties relied on signal mirrors or flares—tools with mixed reliability. Wesley’s plan was to strap tiny message tubes to the birds’ legs. If someone was injured far from help, a pigeon could fly the note home, alerting his family in Williams, who would then contact Grand Canyon Search and Rescue. It was creative. It was bold. But the National Park Service didn’t see it that way. Citing the park’s no-pet policy, they eventually shut down Wesley’s “emergency homing pigeon” experiment.

On one ride out of the canyon, the guides were piled on top of gear in the back of Blackie, hot wind and dust in their faces, shirts soaked in sweat. One of them glanced at the battered pigeon crate—now empty—and perhaps thinking how many of the pigeons didn’t make it home, asked Wesley, “So, Wesley, how did you survive Vietnam and make it back home?”

Wesley stared forward for a moment, then answered softly: “I learned to never take off my boots.”

Domestic pigeons—especially homing pigeons—are survivors. Once vital to humans for communication, food, and even in war, they’ve since been discarded as useless. They no longer possess the instincts needed to live fully wild. They need human companionship and civilization to survive. In many ways, their story mirrors Wesley’s. Both carried burdens from war service (either directly or inherited in the case of pigeons). Both endured harsh, unpredictable environments. Both were cast aside, and yet still gave something of themselves—whether through flight, or quiet service. Wesley Smith’s story is more than a quirky chapter in Grand Canyon rafting history. It’s a testament to the lasting effects of trauma, the beauty of healing in nature, and the unexpected forms that resilience can take. In a canyon carved by time, a compassionate war veteran brought birds, once considered useful wartime assets but now cast away as useless —not just to help others—but because, like him, they knew what it meant to survive.

Written and edited by Sharon Hester, from the recollections of from ARTA/AzRA guides Michael Bronson and Dave Lowry