In the main lodge of his Trinchera Blanca ranch in Colorado, Louis Bacon, the founder of the giant hedge fund firm Moore Capital Management, takes in his pristine and wild 172,000-acre tract from a plush leather chair. A ghost herd of animals–the heads of elk, mule deer, bison and bighorn sheep, a few of which he killed himself with a bow and arrow–silently watches over him from the surrounding walls.
The 54-year-old Bacon, who is compact, blue-eyed and handsome in the manner of an Eddie Bauer catalog model, is doing something he almost never does and generally despises: sitting down with a member of the media. Right away he begins shifting uneasily in his seat, unable, it seems, to get comfortable. He parries away the first few questions, answering in short declarative bursts. “How did Annie get me into this?” he wonders aloud, referring to Ann Colley, the head of his charity, the Moore Charitable Foundation, and the person who had pushed him to do this rare interview.