One Nation, Under God
One Nation, Under God
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The Bowdoin National Wildlife Refuge used to be one of my favorite places to hunt. It isn’t any longer. A campaign to rid the refuge of Russian olive trees has essentially ruined the pheasant hunting there. Oh, there are still some birds, but they’re leaving with the olives. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, removal of the trees is necessary “to facilitate native prairie management ...” I realize this is a Herculean task considering that the refuge is crisscrossed with ditches...
I plan to build a bunkhouse at our place on the lake next summer. We’re up to 13 grandchildren and the cabin isn’t big enough to sleep everybody. While I’ve taken measurements and have decided on dimensions, the bunkhouse remains more of a concept than a working drawing. Bunkhouses were a staple of the Westerns I watched as a kid. We didn’t have bunkhouses where I grew up in southern Indiana. They were synonymous with the West, plain wooden structures filled with bunk beds where the hired h...
I hunted the first 15 days of the season before I took a break, but couldn’t relax on my first day off because I felt like I was missing something. Now, at the end of November, I still feel the same way, like I’m missing something if I take a day off. It all goes by so quickly. Big game season ends this weekend. Antelope is already over. Same with sage grouse. Upland bird runs through the first of the year, and I’ll go out at every opportunity, but it, too, will be over before you know it. I...
In my travels around the county this fall it’s been hard to miss the new signs: “Save the cowboy, stop American Prairie Reserve.” Apparently there’s some concern that the non-profit group hoping to create an American Serengeti in north central Montana is threatening a revered, low-paying lifestyle. The new signs were put up by United Property Owners of Montana, a group that says it supports private property rights, yet disapproves of what APR does on its own property. It’s an issue of bison vs....
It’s a clear case of the inmates running the asylum. I simply need to accept that. My dogs tell me I’m too controlling. Sit. Stay. Come. Fetch. I’m always directing them. Or trying to. Not that they pay a lot of attention. They do their thing. I do mine. My friends smile and shake their heads. They all use electronic collars on their dogs. Almost every bird hunter I see in the field follows suit, their Labs, pointers and spaniels performing beautifully on high-tech cue, I’m still old school, rel...
My wife tells me I’m a very social person. I nod and smile, all the while thinking, “What are you talking about?” The truth is I spend most of my time in the company of dogs. There are many days when the only human being I interact with is my wife. My old hunting partner – both literally and figuratively -- has been a bit under the weather this fall and has yet to come up and chase birds with me. Since the first of September it’s just been me and the dogs, nearly every day, out on the prairie, l...
Well, there’s always next year. Maybe. Sage grouse season has come and gone and I saw nary a bird. It certainly wasn’t for a lack of trying. I hunted upland birds 23 days last month, much of the time in areas where I had seen sage grouse in the past. I hunted in Phillips, McCone and Garfield counties. I even hunted along barbed wire fences bedecked with those white metal tabs on the top strand indicating there are sage grouse in the area. While I didn’t specifically target sage grouse until...
My wife doesn’t like fall. She calls it the saddest time of year. I think it’s actually the end of summer that makes Barb blue. Years ago, I felt the same way, but that probably had more to do with returning to school than with a change in seasons. Now I eagerly look forward to the end of summer. The temperature reached 111 degrees here a little more than a month ago. That was the peak of a hot, dry August. But you know what they always say about Montana, if you don’t like the weather, wait...
I almost hit a deer this morning. It’s a regular thing. Like me, they’re usually on the move at first light. They seldom catch me by surprise because I expect them to be on the road, but occasionally it takes a bit of fancy driving to miss them. I’m apparently in the minority on that. Instead of swerving or hitting the brakes, a lot of folks in Montana, just plow ahead, their trucks protected by armored bumpers that wouldn’t be out of place on the front of a freight train. Cow catchers, they us...
Among the many hats I wore during my years at the Chronicle was that of fashion editor. Other than being in charge of the annual swimsuit issue, all it really meant was that any fashion-related mail sent to the paper was directed my way. That’s still somewhat the case. Probably a third of the e-mails I receive tout some new fabric or item of clothing. I usually pay them little attention, but a recent promotion for camouflage gear caught my eye. Apparently camo’s not just for hunters and red...
Bird season opened last weekend and I was hesitant to take Jem hunting. Now 12 years old and limping like Chester on Gunsmoke, the old springer looked like a dog that should be retired from the field. I doubted he’d be able to keep up with me, let alone the other dogs, but it was his birthday and there was no leaving him at home. I should have known better. He’s always had a big motor, and a hitch in his git-along was little hindrance. I still couldn’t keep up. While Ace and Ruth worked back and...
I’m often misunderstood. It’s no one’s fault but my own. Many of my columns are written with tongue firmly embedded in cheek. I can be a bit cynical and have even been known to exhibit a sarcastic bent. Occasionally readers take me too seriously. Last week’s column on my failure to draw an antelope tag is the most recent example. A reader responded that he, too, had failed to draw a tag, the result, perhaps, of being on the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks black list. He went on to...
I’m going to upgrade my printer. Get me one of them newfangled ones that prints guns. But I’m not much interested in printing out one of those ugly little single shot pistols that have been pictured all over the news. No, I want a fine double gun like the white hunters in Africa carry on safari or at least a WWII-era, Belgium-made Browning. I always thought those were cool, but never figured I could afford one. Although judges have blocked efforts to post blueprints for firearms online, mor...
It often happens that when you solve one problem you create another. Cities and towns all across Montana are struggling to deal with a growing urban deer population. The issue was brought up last week at a city council meeting in Malta when a resident complained deer had moved into her mother’s carport, and were eating the flowers in her yard. “Something needs to be done,” mayor John Demarais said. “I just don’t know what.” People in town have even begun shooting the deer with paintball g...
I woke up this morning scratching a mosquito bite on my ankle. The last thing I remember before falling asleep was the sound of the fogger on the city truck driving by the house. I usually get up and shut the windows when I hear the truck approaching, but last night I was just too tired. And a little Malathion never hurt anybody did it? When I was a kid in Indiana we used to chase the spray truck through the neighborhood on our bicycles, disappearing into the dense white cloud when we neared...
When I cased the shotgun on New Year’s Day the opening of hunting season was eight months away. It seemed like a very long time to wait. It always does. But this year especially, the wait seemed interminable. Winter lasted longer than usual, delaying the start of fishing season by a good month. I love to fish. It helps kill time until I can hunt again. This year, however, the winter was so bad, that the fish winter-killed in many of my favorite ponds. For a while, I turned to yard work and g...
I started catching bass on a fly rod when I was a kid. Dad taught me how to cast. Growing up in southern Indiana I didn’t know too many other fly fishermen, but it was just how we fished. Eventually I moved out West where everybody, it seemed, used a fly rod, and I traded bass for trout. For years, I didn’t fish for anything else. I caught cutthroats in Yellowstone Park, brookies in the Beartooths, and pulled rainbows and browns from the Yellowstone River. Moving from the mountains to the pra...
I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for small animals. Especially rabbits. So it was with conflicted emotions that I dispatched six young bunnies last week. I didn’t want to be that guy, but couldn’t see any other option. Ruthie, my year-old springer spaniel, had shown up at the back door with a tiny cottontail in her mouth. I said “drop,” and she deposited the little rabbit at my feet. It appeared unharmed, but was covered with dirt. Ruth has a soft mouth, the result, not of training,...
Yellowstone National Park has always been a scary place. Grizzly bears, boiling hot springs, and raging rivers have taken their toll over the years, but this spring its bison and elk that are sending folks to the hospital. In two separate incidents recently, cow elk roughed up a couple of women at Mammoth, and a bison gored a woman at the Lower Geyser Basin. Another woman was injured in early May when she was butted by a bison. It’s nothing new. Run-ins with bison have become so common that visi...
While out walking the dogs last week at the lake I encountered a trio of young folks shore fishing and asked if they were having any luck. “We only caught a couple of hammer handles,” one of the women told me, “but we killed a big bull snake.” “Why?” I asked. “Because they eat goose eggs,” she replied. I’ve heard a lot of excuses for killing bull snakes, but that was a new one. It always bothers me to hear of people killing nonvenomous snakes, especially those that prey on rodents, and have...
The deadline to apply for an antelope tag is only a couple of days away. I always wait until the very last minute. It brings me luck. Or at least I tell myself it does. My wife says I simply put things off because I’m a procrastinator. She may be right. I didn’t draw a tag last year. I also put off buying a new bilge pump for the boat this spring and nearly paid dearly for it. The weather forecast called for strong thunderstorms and damaging hail last weekend, but instead of pulling the boa...
I saw on the news this morning that folks in Helena are upset with how the city responded to the recent flooding there. People are fed up with the high water and want someone to remedy the problem. I don’t ask so much of my elected officials and government agencies. I usually prefer they simply leave me alone. Only in the direst of straits do I seek help. Unfortunately, that’s where I now find myself. So I turned to my favorite government entity -- The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife, and...
My mother didn’t hunt or fish, but she encouraged me in my outdoor pursuits nonetheless. When I bought a canoe with money from my paper route she helped me put a roof rack on our Chevy Nova so we could get it home. She also helped me buy my first pistol, a Ruger .22-caliber semiautomatic, when I was still too young to make the transaction on my own. Before I was old enough to drive, she would shuttle me and my friends out to a little lake in the country, drop us off, and we’d camp and car...
A few nights ago I fell asleep to the sound of rain on the roof. At least I think I did. It’s become such a rare occurrence that I can’t be sure. Maybe it was a dream. I remember rain hammering on the roof a few years back, but it didn’t happen last summer. Once the snow disappeared in April, the country simply dried out. There was no green-up, no wet season, no rain. I worry this spring is shaping up in similar fashion. So maybe I was hearing things. But the sound of rain, like the sound of a...
I thought I was immune, but apparently, I still need help. I no longer paid much attention to those lists of The Prettiest Mountain Towns in America, or The Safest Places to find your Post-apocalypse Dream Home or even The Most Dog-friendly Towns in America. It was all just click bait and I bit because there was usually a Montana town on the list, and I’m a sucker for Montana towns. Eventually, however, the lists became so generic that nearly every town in the state was included somewhere. Bozem...
