One Nation, Under God
One Nation, Under God
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Every day, it seems, there’s another threat to public land. Real or imagined, changes are afoot. The Secretary of the Interior, who claimed to be cut from the same cloth as Teddy Roosevelt, has instead proven to be a pawn of the oil and gas industry. Conservation and preservation have taken a backseat to development. But this is a good thing. We needed a wakeup call. We’d become complacent, content with what we had, never expecting it to end. The only folks talking about selling our public lan...
Call the Hardy boys. It’s the case of the missing buffalo. Officials in Yellowstone National Park have opened a criminal investigation after someone cut a fence at the Stephens Creek quarantine facility releasing 52 bull bison back into the wild. According to the Cody Enterprise, the bison were being tested for brucellosis before being donated to Indian tribes in Montana. Some of the bulls had been in the facility for nearly two years. The park doesn’t have a clue. Whoever used bolt cutters to...
It’s always good to get back home to Montana. I can’t understand why anyone would want to live anywhere else. Sure, it was -22 the morning after we got back from Seattle, but it was a dry cold. The lush green Pacific Northwest offers a pleasant respite from winter in Montana, however it comes with a price: swarms of people everywhere, and bumper-to-bumper traffic. Let them keep their fresh oysters, Space Needle, and Seahawks. I’ll take Montana any day. I still honk when I return from a trip...
Let it snow. My thoughts on snow have changed over the years. As a kid growing up in Indiana, a decent snowfall typically meant a break from school. Half a foot was enough to shut down the buses. It would usually melt within a couple of days, but in the meantime, my friends and I would wear ourselves out on the hill behind the Episcopal church. We’d also make snow ice cream, a concoction of snow, cream, sugar, and vanilla that was never quite as good as anticipated. I longed for snow. O...
I started hunting the first day of September and quit just a few days ago. In between, I hunted more days than not. Now the wait begins, eight long months before it starts all over again. Eight months that I do other things – fish, garden, work on the house, and write. But while I do those other things, I think of hunting. When people ask what I do, I tell them I hunt, fish and garden, but mostly I hunt. A lot of folks smile and nod, some ask what I hunt, and others quickly move on to another t...
It’s been a while since I’ve fallen. I suppose I’m due. According to a recent story in the Billings Gazette, an adult falls every second. The last tumble I took was more than a year ago. Searching for the rooster a friend had shot, I slipped on the ice in the cattails and went down. Unhurt, except for my ego, I quickly scrambled to my feet. I always quickly scramble to my feet hoping no one saw me fall. After all, it’s embarrassing. We’d rather stay upright. I used to fall more than I do now. W...
I almost didn’t cut a tree this year. Busy with other things – primarily hunting – I was running out of time. Had there been a Christmas tree lot in the little town where I live, I might have bought one, but there isn’t so I didn’t have that option. I’d even begun to consider a hassle-free artificial tree. No muss, no fuss. Ready to go year after year. Just bring it up from the basement and plug it in. I realized, however, that if I didn’t go out and cut a tree this year, I never would again....
When I heard about the illegal introduction of walleye into Swan Lake, the first person I thought of was Tommy Garrison. A hermit who lived for years in the mountains near Cooke City, Tommy was rumored to have stocked all the lakes and streams in the area with his favorite fish --brook trout. No doubt the walleye dumped into Swan Lake were the perpetrator’s favorite species. I suspect, however, that the technique was a bit different. The walleye, which originated in Lake Helena, probably a...
info During my father’s final years, when asked “How are you doing?” he would respond “Well, I’m still here.” I’m beginning to feel that way about this column. I’m still here. And I’m very thankful for that. It’s going on 12 years now that I left Bozeman and I’ve written a column every week since then. All but a handful have seen print. There are times when I wonder if anyone is reading. Months will pass and I’ll get little or no feedback. Then I’ll write about a topic that touches a nerve (gun...
Editor's Note: The Montana Highway Patrol Trooper in Parker's column last week was not Malta's MHP Trooper Dan Ohl. I thought grizzly bear encounters were a thing of my past. Now I’m not so sure. A pheasant hunter killed one last weekend. Since giving up hunting elk in the mountains around Yellowstone Park and devoting my time instead to chasing dogs across the prairie in pursuit of flying targets, I figured there was little chance the bears would finally get me. Oh, they came close a few t...
I took special care this year to make sure I had dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s. I even stopped at Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks Region 6 headquarters to make sure I was properly licensed to hunt upland birds and waterfowl. The lady at the desk there said I was. But still I had my doubts. It seems every year I miss something minor. Not signing my duck stamp or failing to purchase some new add-on to my license come to mind. It seems it’s always something, and it’s...
The death of an Illinois man caught my attention last week. Chase Shott, 26, died in a fall near Mystic Lake in the Beartooth Mountains. It was one of those “There, but for the grace of God goes me,” moments. I took a fall there years ago. It was early October 1973 and I was working for Hiland Guide Service in Cooke City as a cook and wrangler. My friend Bill Butler was guiding a hunter who’d drawn a sheep tag, and the three of us backpacked in to a spike camp at the far end of Mystic Lake....
Can you say carpetbagger? Troy Downing, a part-time resident of the toney Yellowstone Club at Big Sky, wants to represent Montana in the U.S. Senate. The head of a California-based self-storage company told the Associated Press he wants “to be part of the solution preserving the Last Best Place.” Apparently, however, that solution involves little regard for the state’s fish and game laws. The 50-year-old storage unit mogul faces charges that he tried to buy resident hunting and fishing licen...
I hadn’t fished in three weeks and thought I hadn’t missed it. After all, it was hunting season now. But it remained very much summer. Every day hot and dry. Most were smoky. In order to avoid the heat and lessen the chance of encountering rattlesnakes, I’d leave the house before light and hunt a couple of hours in the cool of the morning. By 9 a.m. it was usually too hot to continue and I’d start looking for shade. I longed for the weather to change. Then, right on schedule, it did. Rain an... Full story
When natural disaster strikes, it’s nice to have someone to blame. Pity those poor folks in Florida and Texas who suffered through hurricanes and floods in recent weeks. Grasping at straws to assign blame, some of them are saying it’s the homosexuals’ fault. That seems to be a bit of a reach. Pointing fingers at the guilty party in Montana is far easier. Blame the feds for all the fire and smoke. It’s their mismanagement of our forests, after all, that caused this mess. Even the argumen...
I spent way too much time last week watching coverage of hurricane Irma on the Weather Channel. Eventually I found myself rooting for the storm. I’m not heartless. I felt compassion for the folks in Irma’s path. I got fed up with the weathermen. In order to show viewers how fierce the wind was, the Weather Channel’s meteorologists would stand, unsupported, in the worst of the gales. Bent over and fighting to maintain balance, they’d relate, breathlessly, what they were experiencing. Maybe i...
The bird season opened on an unsettling note. With my obituary. I’d gone to bed early and missed the text message my friend David sent later that evening. But when I woke at 5 a.m. and glanced at my phone to check the time, I saw it. Under the heading of obituaries was a picture of me. David, the gravedigger in town, regularly checks the online version of the local paper, for upcoming work. He’d spotted my mug on the obits page, sent condolences in a text to my wife, and called dibs on my sem...
They say that after a while people begin to look like their dogs. I don’t doubt it. I’m just not sure which one. I suppose it depends on the day. While I’d like to think there are some similarities between me and Baby Ruth, I’m just kidding myself. She’s bright-eyed and full of energy, pays close attention to everything going on around her, and quickly gobbles up every last morsel of her food. Her teeth are sparkling white, her coat is shiny and her future is bright. That’s not me. Even on my...
Anticipation nearly crippled me. A week before my annual trek into the Yellowstone River canyon my knees began to ache. I hadn’t been running or biking or engaging in any unusual physical activity so I figured it was all in my head. Probably it was because I knew what was ahead. I first fished the canyon in 1971 when I was working for an outfitter in Cooke City. An elderly couple from Ohio had rented saddle horses for the trip and I accompanied them as the wrangler. I don’t remember much abo...
I’ve done some stupid stuff. Most involved alcohol or testosterone, and I’d like to think that’s all in my past. I’m older and wiser now, no longer the guy who says “Hold my beer and watch this,” but instead the guy who holds the beer and watches. Sadly, most of what I watch now is on television. And it just seems to keep getting stupider. Naked and Afraid, apparently, wasn’t dumb enough. An hour a week of two buck naked strangers trying to survive for 21 days in the wilderness was so compel...
I checked again, just to be sure. The results were the same. There it was. Under “Special drawing Status” on the Fish, Wildlife and Parks web page: Not successful. I won’t be hunting antelope this fall. It’s happened before. An antelope tag is never a sure thing, but I’ve drawn enough of them over the years, that I was expecting this one. Last year’s hunt was too easy. And too quick. I spotted a herd grazing along a dry creekbottom as I was driving to the ranch to pick up my permission...
Like the Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore showing up when a hurricane is imminent, I worry that I’m becoming a harbinger of drought and wildfire. My wife and I bought a place on Fort Peck Lake in Garfield County less than two years ago. Our first summer there was idyllic. There was plenty of moisture and the land stayed green until August. Cattle grazed on the abundant grass. Fall rains filled the stock tanks and snow covered the ground for months last winter. Then spring arrived, the snow mel...
There may finally be a solution to the bison problem. Or not. Depends on what you view as a problem. During a recent meeting in Big Sky, the National Bison Association announced plans to boost the number of bison in North America to 1 million within 10 years. That’s great news if you think there are too few, and even sort of great news if you think there are already too many. There are certainly too many in Yellowstone Park and attempts to curtail their numbers are seldom well received. A lot o...
As wet as it’s been in some parts of Montana, it’s been dry as a bone in others. I haven’t seen rain in more than a month at my home in Malta or my cabin on Fort Peck. It rained in Malta last night but I missed it. I was headed home from the lake to water the garden when my wife called to tell me our dock – with pontoon boat attached – had blown off shore and was resting against a neighbors dock. I turned around at Saco and headed back to our cabin on the appropriately named Big Dry Arm. Clou...
These are exciting times in which we live. Instead of simply wishing for the good old days, we’re bringing them back -- doing away with onerous environmental safeguards and returning national monuments to just plain old land. Heck, soon we’ll be able to hunt grizzly bears again. Those folks clamoring for more logging and mineral extraction may even get their wish. And really, why look ahead when the past was so promising? Let’s disregard that foolish talk about climate change, accept the fact th...
