Gore Vidal calling Teddy Roosevelt a sissy? Puh-leeze!
I can speak to this particular little smear, I think, based on Morris' book. Roosevelt was an enthusiastic hunter who played fair, and once refused to shoot a trophy bear that had been captured and tied to a tree for the purpose - he insisted the bear be released. Hardly the practice of a "sissy."
But it might be better to learn about how Roosevelt treated hunting from that man's own very articulate pen. I have read, and highly recommend, his Hunting Trips of a Ranchman and The Wilderness Hunter, a double volume that is a treasure for the real student of the art. Click Here
As for Gore's claim that Roosevelt "who didn't know it until he could so something about it," a cursory glance at that man's life will tell you different. He was a frail, asthmatic boy whose father had to ride him around at night on an open carriage so he could breathe, a nonathlete who forced himself to become a boxer, swimmer, and horseman, a city boy who ran a ranch in the West and earned the admiration of the tough, no-nonsense men on it who tend to see through back-East pretension even today. I do not think they'd consider Roosevelt a sissy today, either, but they might so consider one Gore Vidal.