One Nation, Under God
One Nation, Under God
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Folks in Malta took the opportunity to vent about the hunting season last week during a visit from the right wing Montana Talks radio show. Apparently, out-of-state hunters — particularly those from Washington — killed what deer were left in Phillips County. This, after they trespassed, littered, and packed the parking lot at the local grocery store. All the evidence was anecdotal which fits the show’s format. Actual facts and figures simply get in the way. While host Aaron Flint and his guest...
Halfway through the fourth and final month of the hunting season, I’m overwhelmed with a feeling of dread. In a couple of weeks, I’ll no longer be able to answer “Yep” when Barb asks me if I’m hunting that day. Instead, I’ll have to go into detail about the projects around the house that require my attention: the ceiling that’s falling in; the floors that need refinishing; the light fixtures that need replaced. It’s an endless list that keeps growing. But since the first of September, my w...
Every time I visit Bozeman I’m reminded of why I left. At the time I blamed the opening of a store specializing in nothing but batteries as the final straw. That was nearly 20 years ago. Bozeman has grown by leaps and bounds since then. There are probably a couple of battery stores in town now. Malta, on the other hand, where Barb and I moved, has seen a decline in population, as has much of rural Montana. Newcomers, it seems, may talk about moving to the rugged West, but most of them actually w...
I learned today of the death of my friend and longtime colleague Joan Haines. A reporter at the Bozeman Chronicle for many years Joan followed her own path even if it strayed from that suggested by her editors. As the Chronicle’s features editor, I butted heads with her on more than one occasion. I well remember meeting with Joan and our managing editor in the Chronicle conference room concerning a story she didn’t want to cover. Joan sat down, placed a tape recorder on the table, looked at the...
With swarms of feral hogs massing on our northern border, it’s time to take stock of our options. Montana wildlife officials warn against shooting them. Hunting, we’re told, only makes hogs harder to control. Trapping is the preferred alternative. A column I wrote a couple of years ago to that effect prompted a flood of responses. The mere suggestion that feral hogs be trapped instead of shot outraged an entire community of folks who are rabid about shooting pigs. Perhaps Montana should loo...
I have a picture on my phone of Ace and a sharptail grouse I shot early this season. It was, I feared, the old dog’s last hunt. A couple of months shy of his 13th birthday, Ace is about done. Or so I thought. But I just took another photo of him with a bird last week, and I suspect it won’t be the last either. Like Joe Biden, Ace doesn’t know when to quit. He can’t hear. He stumbles. It’s often hard to tell if he’s dead or simply asleep. Barb and I have even been talking about getting a p...
What a difference a year makes. By this time last November the ground was covered with snow. It didn’t bare off for more than five months. Today it’s sunny and 50 degrees with more of the same in the extended forecast. Sunny and warm is hard to complain about, but sunny and warm in Montana this time of year never bodes well. We live with the ever-looming specter of drought. Last year’s bountiful snowpack and spring rains hardly got us through July before it all dried up once again. The stock...
No longer gainfully employed, I nonetheless try to accomplish something every day. It’s usually a task assigned to me by my wife, added to a list she continuously updates. Typically it’s a chore on the home front, such as laundry, dishes or making the beds in the guest room. Occasionally it involves fixing something, a never-ending task that comes with living in a 108-year-old house. I like checking things off the list. More precisely I like checking one thing at a time off the list. For yea...
Bird hunting at its most basic level is a relatively simple endeavor. Dog flushes bird. Hunter shoots bird. Dog retrieves bird. When it all comes together it’s a beautiful thing to experience, a well-orchestrated bit of teamwork between man and animal. Seldom, however, does it all come off so simply. More often it’s a different scenario ending with dog flushes bird out of range. Or hunter misses easy shot. Or dog can’t believe hunter actually hit something and has no interest in finding dead...
Montana’s general big game hunting season opened last weekend and I didn’t go. I rarely hunt deer and elk anymore, preferring to chase the dogs all fall in pursuit of grouse, pheasants and ducks. They’re easier to pack out. I certainly filled my share of tags. While I can’t recall how many deer or antelope I killed over the years, I kept track of the elk – 10 bulls and 10 cows. Where and when I killed each cow is a bit foggy, but the bulls, because of their headgear, are easier to remember....
Almost lost my dog. Happened just the other day. As I was crawling under a fence she took the opportunity to run away. I don’t know why. She didn‘t say. Worried me something awful, enough to make me pray. Was she hurt? Was she dead? Was it something I said? I hit the button on her electronic leash, hoping she would hear the beep, but if she did there was no response, all was quiet, still no Dot. I headed uphill for a better look where the trees played out and the grass was short. I called her...
Folks up here in Phillips County are complaining about a lack of places to hunt. Rich people are buying up all the land. Locals have no place to go. I heard the same refrain when I first moved here nearly 20 years ago. All the good places had sold to out-of-staters or at least out-of-county folk. There were few places left to hunt. I could only shake my head at my new neighbors’ plight, and offer my sympathy. Then I went hunting. I’ve been hunting ever since. Poor-mouthing Phillips County as...
My mother, a former high school English teacher, said cussing indicated a limited vocabulary. I never heard her swear. Dad, on the other hand, did swear on occasion, although not in mixed company, and there were certain words and phrases he never used or tolerated from me. I remember being knocked on my butt once after using the Lord’s name in vain. Profanity, however, has prospered since their passing. To a lot of folks, there’s rarely any polite company these days around which it’s impro...
The first month of the season has nearly run its course. What little green was left on the prairie vanished weeks ago, hiding out of sight over the creek banks. The rest of the country is the color of straw. The recent rains won’t make much difference except to turn dust to mud. Stock ponds that were brim-full in mid-summer shrunk to half their size by the first of September as hot winds blew and the ground cracked. Where there was good soil the grass grew waist high, but on the hard pan, o...
Like me, my house has fallen into disrepair. My eyesight is failing. My teeth are falling out of my head. I can’t hear a thing. I have to plead with my knees every morning simply to get them working. My 108-year-old stone house has similar problems. It still looks good from a distance, but upon closer inspection, there’s a bit of rot to be found, a couple of doors need to be replaced, and the oven in the kitchen is kaput. That’s a big deal. Barb is no longer able to bake, her favorite escap...
I awoke Sept. 1 way too early. It was the first day of hunting season and I didn’t want to be late. After a quick breakfast I loaded the dogs into the truck, double-checked my gear, and grabbed a mug of coffee. On the drive down I worried that someone would be in my spot, but when I got there of course no one was. Opening day of upland bird season never draws a crowd despite my fears. It was dark yet, and I sat in the truck listening to Ace whine in his box. When it was light enough I f...
When filling up your car at the pump costs more than it used to, and the price of a gallon of milk soars, it’s nice to have someone to blame. Whoever is in office at the time typically catches the heat. But it’s not just D.C. politicians who bear the brunt of the criticism. It trickles down. Way down. John Demarais is the mayor of Malta, a town of about 1,800 people on Montana’s Hi-line. A genuinely good guy who sincerely cares about his neighbors, Demarais catches a lot of flack for thing...
Shortly after arriving in Montana as a homeless 18-year-old I remedied that situation by getting a job that provided room and board. After all, I had a skill. I could cook. I spent much of that first summer in the backcountry working for an outfitter who took clients on pack trips into the Beartooth Mountains and Yellowstone Park. The wages were minimal, but enough that I could pay my own way. That’s how I had been raised. Handouts and charity were for the less fortunate, not for me. But that w...
Nearly seven months after the end of last year’s hunting season -- cut short by an old-man ailment -- I’m ready to go again. At least I think I am. Almost every morning for the last couple of months the dogs and I have walked a brisk mile. At least Ace and I cover a mile while Dot does at least three times that racing through the sagebrush. Fortunately, I don’t have to keep up with her. An electronic collar keeps Dot in check. Ace, on the other hand, is kept in check by his advancing age. Stone...
I saw the two sides of Montana last week, one still green and lush, bustling with commerce and traffic, the other already dry, the landscape turning to khaki, with sparse traffic and few people. The influx of folks moving to Montana is hardly noticeable where I live in Malta, a small town with a declining population. But what Malta has to offer isn’t what newcomers to the state are looking for. There are no trout streams up here, and no snow-capped peaks. The muddy, slow-moving Milk River skirts...
While running the boat down the lake last week I spotted what looked like a bird of some sort on the water. Expecting it to fly as we passed, I was surprised when it didn’t. I slowed the boat, and turned around to investigate. As we got closer I could see it was a young gull. Grabbing the landing net I scooped up what turned out to be two birds hooked together on a fishing lure. Each gull was impaled on a treble hook through the beak. They were barely moving, but when I twisted the hook out o...
I always seem to be a step behind. Call me Johnny-come-lately. When everyone else was wearing Gore-Tex, I was still in leather and wool. When all my friends were listening to cassettes, I was rockin’ out to eight-tracks. While planning a trip last week to North Dakota to get a boat repaired, I sought directions online to the location of Swenson Marine in Bismarck. As I was reaching for a pen and notebook to copy the information from my laptop, a brilliant thought struck me; take a picture w...
I saw a picture online last week of a friend posing with a handsome brown trout he’d caught. “It’s hopper season!” read the caption. I hadn’t thought about “that” hopper season in years. Instead, the hopper season I’ve become familiar with has biblical plague connotations. The grasshoppers were so thick in north central Montana last summer that swarms of them in flight were picked up on radar. While that’s yet to happen this summer, there’s certainly no shortage. Hoppers at our cabin on Fort P...
I recently read a story about two young men who paddled their canoe from Butte to the Pacific Ocean, completing the 1,300-mile journey in 52 days. I read the initial story when they began the trip on Silver Bow Creek. I never expected to read a story about the conclusion. During my time working for both the Livingston Enterprise and the Bozeman Chronicle I wrote and edited a number of stories about such trips. Plenty of would-be adventurers have grand visions of starting a float trip near the...
The railroad bridge collapse last month that spilled tanker cars full of liquid asphalt and molten sulfur into the Yellowstone River was hardly the first indignity the river has suffered. A broken oil pipeline under the river near Billings a few years ago comes to mind. So does a broken sewer line over the river at Gardiner, to name a few. The longest free-flowing river in the lower 48 has taken some abuse. Before the rail line between Livingston and Gardiner was discontinued, trains used to del...