One Nation, Under God
One Nation, Under God
Sorted by date Results 226 - 250 of 508
It’s finally Ace’s turn. At this time last year I still had four dogs. Two were old and retired from the hunt. One was a young up-and-comer, and then there was Ace, like Dwight Schrute, always a padawan never a Jedi. Ace hunted behind both Spot and Jem until they got old, but didn’t inherit the mantle of top dog when they quit. By then we had Baby Ruth and she quickly rose to the top of the heap. Ace didn’t seem to mind. Like all of us, he too, loved Baby Ruth. But she died last winter of canc...
I don’t like to see my boats upside down in the water. It’s distressing. When I was a kid, however, my friends and I would almost always flip my canoe. Like us, in our youth, it was unsinkable, so it didn’t really matter. I’m still here. So is the canoe. But as I grew older, unplanned dunkings lost their allure. If I want to get wet I go swimming. I’ve owned a number of boats over the years, and with the exception of the canoe, none of them have ever flipped. Until recently. My friend E-dub and...
Only days after the most recent snowfall, it’s finally beginning to feel like summer. But the arrival of warm weather also heralds the return of one of Montana’s more annoying species: loud, outdoor drunks. Apparently some folks just can’t get together in the great out-of-doors without acting up. Something about all that fresh air and open space brings out the worst in too many. We’re forced to tolerate them at campgrounds, boat ramps, and on all the lakes and rivers. They’re hard to miss, alw...
After a lifetime of crying over the ones that got away, I’m finally at peace with all those lost fish. They were simply meant to be. Fishing last week with my friend Mike on the Big Dry Arm of Fort Peck Lake, I hooked something heavy that stayed deep. Within seconds Mike said: “That’s a big ‘eye.” He would know. A Minnesota native, Mike is the best walleye angler I’ve ever shared a boat with. He’s adept at every technique from bottom bouncing to vertical jigging to trolling crank baits. There...
My how time flies. In a couple of weeks, it will be 50 years since I first arrived in Montana. Shortly after high school graduation, I headed west from my home in southern Indiana after deciding to forego college, and instead, get a job on the Alaska pipeline. I didn’t have enough money to get all the way to Alaska and figured I’d find work along the way. Passing through Billings, four days into the trip, I picked up a newspaper and saw an ad for jobs in Yellowstone Park. Heading south from Bil...
There was a time that it wasn’t spring until I spotted my first grizzly bear. While I’ve stumbled upon few grizzlies in the fall, it was April when I expected to see them. They were following the elk herds and so was I, although for different purposes. I’d seen grizzlies at night foraging through the Cooke City dump. We used to take girls there, drink beer and park. Running into bears on foot in the backcountry in the middle of the day, however, was an entirely different experience. I was only...
The more things change, the more they stay the same. I’ve seen countless before and after photos recently of clean skies over cities -- like Los Angeles -- that used to be noted for their smog. Folks have been driving a lot less following more than a month of stay at home orders and the air is undoubtedly cleaner. Unfortunately, that’s not the case with water, specifically the West Gallatin River, into which drain the toilets of Big Sky. The water and sewer district there faces a potential law...
I get by with a little help from my dog. Calling it “help” however, might be a bit of a reach. My wife calls it “controlling.” Jem’s always been an affectionate, loving dog. When our pup Ruth died of cancer last fall, Jem seemed to sense my grief. Or at least that’s what I thought when he insisted on climbing onto my lap at every opportunity. A lapdog since we got him nearly 14 years ago, it’s one of the few things he can still do. He walks with a painful gait, can’t jump into the truck, and...
I thought I’d have little trouble with this new normal. After all, I’ve been social distancing for decades. I don’t like crowds. I quit going to bars years ago. I hate standing in lines. I hunt a lot, but most days it’s just me and the dogs. I’d fish by myself more often too, if only my wife didn’t insist on going along. Lately, however, I find myself getting lonely in my own skin. Fortunately, I’m quarantined with my favorite person, and we both miss the same things: human contact, hand...
I’ve been staying close to the house for a few weeks. Too close. Yesterday I found myself out in the garage casting a crankbait at a five-gallon bucket. I’m ready to go fishing. Friends of mine -- fortunate to live where there’s open water -- have been fishing since this all began. They call me from the lake and the river, send me pictures, tell me where they’re headed next. It’s painful. The last fish I caught was through the ice, which until recently was still there. Now it’s finally gon...
Oh, how the world has changed. Here’s a story that has nothing to do with coronavirus. It was nearly 30 years ago, and I was camped at an old homestead on Frenchman Creek in mid-October. I’d gotten permission from the landowner to hunt, and I had an antelope tag in my pocket. I’d spotted some pronghorn when I arrived the night before and awoke anxious to go after them. But the crowing of rooster pheasants at first light prompted me to pick up the shotgun instead of the .270. New to pheas...
OK Boomer, let’s see what you got. I quit elk hunting some years ago. I haven’t shot a deer or an antelope in a couple of years. That’s all about to change. In this time of quarantine, I’m reevaluating my priorities. The dogs might not like this return to big game hunting, but they’ll get over it. And it’s not like I’m going to quit bird hunting. I’m just going to spend a bit more time hunting critters that fill the freezer. I backed off gardening in recent years, too. It was much more fun to sp...
We left Montana the last day of February driving south in search of sun and surf. We returned two weeks later to a world much different than the one we’d left. I hadn’t seen a palm tree in a couple of years, and had never been to the San Diego Zoo. Barb told me I was due. On the way down we stayed in Las Vegas, at a hotel now closed, walked the strip, and ate at a breakfast buffet. We avoided the crowds at Hoover Dam, however, after a security officer saw our Montana license plates, took one...
Times certainly have changed. More than three dozen bison were killed by hunters recently just outside Yellowstone National Park. And it was no big deal. The national media wasn’t in attendance. Neither were members of the Buffalo Field Campaign. Protestors didn’t poke hunters with ski poles, as they had in the past, nor did they chain themselves to gates in an attempt to disrupt the hunt. There were no arrests. There were no cries of outrage. Maybe it was because the hunters were all Nat...
Times certainly have changed. More than three dozen bison were killed by hunters recently just outside Yellowstone National Park. And it was no big deal. The national media wasn’t in attendance. Neither were members of the Buffalo Field Campaign. Protestors didn’t poke hunters with ski poles, as they had in the past, nor did they chain themselves to gates in an attempt to disrupt the hunt. There were no arrests. There were no cries of outrage. Maybe it was because the hunters were all Nat...
When I was a kid my dad gave me an autographed copy of a book by Sasha Siemel. He was a professional hunter in Brazil, famous for killing more than 300 jaguars with a spear. As I sat shivering in a fish house on Fort Peck Lake last weekend, staring down a hole in the ice waiting for a pike to appear, I tried to channel Siemel. It didn’t work. Eventually a pike did appear and I hurled the spear with undisciplined haste, missing my target by a wide margin. Had that fish been a jaguar I would h...
Oh, how I long for summer. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t like winter. I just hate getting dressed for it. It’s so much work. While covering the offending parts is all that’s necessary from June through August, getting dressed in February requires much more thought. Is it cold enough today for long johns? Can I get by with gloves or do I need mittens? Is this a face-mask day? And the big question: do I really need to go outside? When I was younger and lived in Cooke City where win...
Last week’s column on the impending invasion of feral swine from Canada attracted an unusual amount of attention. Apparently the squeal of the pig resonates with more hunters than I would have guessed. Pig hunters from across the nation and even the globe weighed in with expert advice on how to thwart the invaders. Almost all of them advocated a shoot-on-sight approach – exactly the opposite of what professional game managers in Montana recommend. In this age of denying sound science, that sho...
Last week’s column on the impending invasion of feral swine from Canada attracted an unusual amount of attention. Apparently the squeal of the pig resonates with more hunters than I would have guessed. Pig hunters from across the nation and even the globe weighed in with expert advice on how to thwart the invaders. Almost all of them advocated a shoot-on-sight approach – exactly the opposite of what professional game managers in Montana recommend. In this age of denying sound science, that sho...
Invaders are massing at our border and a bombastic reality TV star promises to save our bacon. Sound familiar? No, it’s not him. It’s Pigman. Brian Quaca, the host of “Pigman: The Series,” on the Sportsman Channel claims he’s the answer to the nation’s feral pig problem. “Want Pigman to come in and save your state?” the Texan bellows. “I’m here to save your state from pigs.” Quaca pulls out all the stops in his efforts to eradicate feral swine. One notable episode has him running down a swarm...
I’m a little torn. It’s so cold I have no interest in going outside. On the other hand, it’s cold, so it’s making ice and that means I should be outside -- fishing. I’ve never been much of an ice fisherman. It seems to require a lot of patience, of which I have little. But I own a cabin on a lake, and I have a friend of good Minnesota stock who revels in fishing through the ice. Mike has all the gear and all the knowledge so I have no excuse. He even sets me up so I can watch the tip-ups w...
It’s only a day’s drive from here, but it’s a world away. At least I fit in. With longish gray hair and a beard, I looked like a hundred other guys on the street, although they were dressed more like I do at home than on vacation. There was more camo and Carhart khaki in downtown Spokane last week than on the opening day of elk season in the Breaks. But while one younger fellow there was even packing a hatchet, and most everyone was carrying sleeping bags, there didn’t appear to be any hunters...
I never put much stock in the old saying that a man is lucky to own one good bird dog in his life. If that’s the case then that man just didn’t have enough dogs. I’ve had a bunch, some better than others. And I’ve been very lucky. Baby Ruth wasn’t just good. She brought a joie de vivre to the hunt that only a young dog can. She died last week, young and fit, only two and a half years old. Something awful, growing rapidly inside her, cut her life short. The Monday before Thanksgiving we were h...
Wow. That went fast. It always does. The five-week general big game season in Montana closed Sunday. Unless you plan to hunt the shoulder season for elk, you’re done for the year. There’s often a feeling of relief when the season ends whether you used all your tags or not. No more getting up at zero dark thirty, trudging up and down mountains and coulees in search of something you may want to shoot. Many hunters only get out for the opener, and then spend a lot of time driving around on the fin...
My 12-year-old grandson Isaac shot a good muley buck earlier this month. I hope it doesn’t spoil him. In an effort to get young people interested in hunting, the state, along with a number of hunting organizations, offer special deals for kids. Youth hunts are scheduled before the opening of pheasant, waterfowl and the general big game seasons so that young hunters can experience the sport for the first time without the competition of others in the field. The weather is also typically a bit m...
