First Ever

 

I took a trip to the desert this week. With highs topping out in Helena in the single digits, it was time for this bird to head south. 

In the past, I've traveled down to Mesquite, NV for a break from the cold and snow but this year I had the opportunity to reconnect with some fellas in Lake Havasu City, AZ so a few more hours on the road would be worth it and would also save me a few bucks by staying at their Airbnb. The golfing is similar in that it's the dessert in winter. The greens are green, and the fairways are brownish with a green tint to most of it and shorts are the expected attire in mid-day but cooer in the mornings. My golf game is going to suck but every time I send one off into the mesquite, all I have to do is look at my short sleeves and be grateful for the sun. 

I arrived in Lake Havasu Friday evening after leaving at 5am from my garage in Helena. I stopped twice for gas along the 15 plus hour trip. Saturday morning, I woke up after drinking two bottles of wine with Pat Hunter, one of the fellas I came down to see. We solved all the world's problems as we rounded the corner on bottle two. I was still a little numb from the drive and the wine and decided to shake it off with a quick round at the local club. 

It's always a little intimidating, walking into a golf course pro-shop you're not familiar with the first time, trying to figure you way around the club house and restaurant and then there's the guy sitting at the till taking money. All these rich old people who probably golf 200 rounds a year staring at you...kind of like a client walking into a fly shop the first time looking for his/her guide. I always try to make those people feel welcome because I remember my first time at a shop looking for some intel when I started fly fishing. Let me just say, some fly-fishing dudes are dickholes. Just because you can throw a tight loop into a 20-mph wind and hit a target the size of a coffee can at forty feet doesn't make you special, any more than stroking a 110-yard wedge and backing it up to about five feet from the pin...actually, both are pretty cool so maybe you are special. However, your shit stinks just like everyone else's. 

The reality on the golf course is that most of us are hacks and the intimidation comes more from my own insecurities than from any outward display from anyone either at the clubhouse or on the course. I've learned over the years, that can hold my own on the course and generally, showing a little humility and a sense of humor after snap hooking a drive into someone's back yard goes a long way. That and a good understanding of golf etiquette. 

Having said that, I did opt to golf by myself that first round. I just wanted to get a good lay of the land by struggling through a round on my own before I was to put my silky-smooth swing on display. That was a decision I now regret. 

I tee'd off on the first hole and was pleased to pipe one right down the middle. I left my towel in the bucket on the tee-box, so I drove back to get it after hitting my second shot. Three guys were about to tee off. When I asked if they wanted to join me, they suggested I go on by myself as I would be a lot faster alone. 

On the third hole, I caught the group in front on me. Like good, conscientious golfers do, they let me play through. They already had their four-sum, so I cruised on through. I stroked another drive down the pipe, screwed up my second shot, and then chipped up and two-putted. I then walked on to hole number five. A 190-yard par three. 

The pin was left center of the green, water on the left. Anything short and left would be wet. Sand in the back and the wind was down. This would be an easy 5-iron. Don't even think about the water. 

I dug a broken tee out of a divot on the tee box and drove it into the ground and placed my ball on it so that there was sliver of daylight between the ball and the grass. I had been pulling my irons a bit on the range, so I lined up just a little right of the pin. I slid my Mizuno blade behind the ball and then pulled my club into my backswing, paused for less than a millisecond, and stepped on the gas, accelerating through the ball. The click of a solid strike on the ball, a full follow through and pose and I watched the ball sore to its apex and then drift slightly right to left. 

"That felt good," I thought as I fought the sun to trace the ball's path directly at the pin. 

The ball plopped down onto the green about 15 feet short of the pin with a splash of sand. With the sheen on the green and the sun in just the wrong spot, I lost my ball after the sand settle back onto the green. But it looked good, so I slid my club back into its place in my bag and jumped into the driver's side of the cart and stomped on the pedal. 

As I approached the green on the left down the cart path, I looked hard to see where I ended up. It looked good but I couldn't find my ball on the green. 

"Damn," I thought. "Did I sail it through the green?"

I walked around the cart, grabbed my sand wedge and putter and started to the back of the green where the sand trap laid. But something told me to check the hole, so I circled back and no shit, as I got close enough to see the bottom of the cup, there was my Callaway. Just sitting there in the bottom of the hole hiding from me. 

"Are you fucking kidding me?" I said out loud. "Did anyone see that?"

I spun around with my arms opened up wide as to give anyone within earshot a big hug, but nobody was there. I looked up into the decks that stretched out of the houses that lined the ridge above the hole and saw one dude sitting out on a lawn chair about 75 yards away. 

"Dude! Did you see that?" I yelled?

He didn't even look down at me. It was like I wasn't even there. 

"You've got to be kidding me!" I declared. I've been golfing 30 years and have never hit a hole-in-one and now I do and nobody witnessed it? I didn't even get to see it drop in the hole!

Whelp? I'm going golfing again tomorrow with some folks I met from Minnesota. Maybe the next one won't take another 30 years. Maybe it will be tomorrow. 

Keep 'em where they live...

My Guy

The phone rang the other day, and I saw it was a California number. As I answered, "Hello, this is Russ," thinking it might be a potential client, the response that came was one that warmed my heart. 

 "Hello, Russ. This is GG."

GG actually called me the first time last year as she was planning a trip with her grandson, Leo. He was fourteen at the time. They do a trip every summer to various places just to spend some time together and hopefully build some memories that Leo will have to cherish when she is gone. I think she's also trying to give him something he doesn't get at home and offer up some experiences that might get him off his devices for a while. Regardless, GG is an amazing grandmother and someone I can't even begin to express how much gratitude and respect I have for. 

The first time we talked, I was acutely aware that this was probably not going to be a normal trip with dudes that have gone on fly fishing trips in the past and have some assemblance of how it all works. As guides, and outfitters, we take calls and just by human nature, we try to get some sense of who our clients are going to be and what it's going to take to offer what we can to make the most of the trip for them. And to be totally honest, we're also trying to protect ourselves from getting into a contract with someone that is going to create way more work than it's worth. We all fantasize about booking that client that can actually fish and can pay for a dozen trips or so a year where all a guide has to do is tie flies on and say, "Put it there." The reality is those clients only make up about one percent of the population of potentials. 

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a buddy at the brewery one day. He was pretty fed up with his job, even though he is very successful, and was more venting than anything when I suggested he could start rowing for a living. His response was that the only way he would do that is if he could only take out good anglers and to his credit, he knew that wasn't the way things worked so he didn't really think guiding was in his future.

"You got it all wrong, dude," I explained. "Guys that think they can fish are so much harder to please. They think they should be catching 30 fish on dry flies every day and when they don't, it's always either your flies that don't work or we're not fishing the right spot or whatever it is outside of their own ability or lack of ability and/or willingness to listen. Beginners are easy. You teach 'em a few things, get them into a few fish and the rest is gravy. You just have fun with them."

To be fair, it can be a little painful watching someone flail all day long and not catch fish. Especially when you see other people hooked up all over the river. But every time I start getting frustrated, I place myself in their shoes and realize that they must be feeling it too. Then the focus shifts to small successes and sometimes even just getting a few opportunities can spark a change and can catapult an angler into something clicking. Hours of practice with some failure and some frustration morphs into a few hook-ups and then eventually a couple grip and grins that last a lifetime.

So, getting back to GG and Leo, it was obvious that success on this trip was probably going to be defined a little differently. And without even meeting them, who knows how motivated Leo would be to learn or even how important the fishing was going to be. I've had 20-year-olds that were only there for their parents and never picked their heads up from their phones while on the river. I had one guy, an ex-football player, who just wanted to chat all day and talk philosophy, which was actually one of my more memorable guide trips. Maybe all Leo will care about is catching a fish and calling it good. I might even throw a spinning rod in the boat just to bring a fish to the net. The thing is, GG booked four days with me...that's a lot of time in the boat with someone if they're not really into the fishing.

I picked GG and Leo up on the morning of the first day at their hotel. The ride to Craig gave me a chance to assess the situation and develop a plan. Leo was into fishing and talked about fishing with his buddy and his buddy's dad. They never fly fished but Leo's buddy's dad had taken fly trips in the past, which is why Leo wanted to come out to learn to fly fish in the first place. He had other options. GG would have pretty much taken him anywhere he wanted to go but he chose fly fishing so that right there is huge. 

I took them up to the dam below Holter on day one. I just wanted to get Leo to hook a few fish sooner than later and knew that would probably give us the quickest path to success. GG was happy just to hang out in the back of the boat and take photos. In fact, I don't believe she even picked up a rod on that first day. It was all about Leo and I will say, he was into it. When that first hot rainbow broke him off, Leo was determined. Actually, maybe a little too determined as his desire to land a fish superseded his patience for learning, which was a great opportunity to dial things back a bit and bring some perspective to the process. 

Fly fishing often mirrors life and within the lessons learned from catching a fish, we can almost always apply those lessons to other areas of life where we are challenged. When a 20-inch rainbow takes off like a bat out of hell across the river, it's easy to panic and want to gain control of that fish. When they run, we pull back. When they punch, we punch back instead of getting in control of the only things we can control. 

"When that fish takes off, Leo, you just gotta let 'em do their thing," I would reiterate. "The only thing you should be focused on is your line and the bend in your rod. If he runs, let 'em run. If he comes back to the boat, put some pressure on him. Eventually, you'll win that battle. Not always but as soon as you learn to control what you can control and not worry so much about controlling that fish, you'll start landing some. I promise." 

We fished our way around the bend and onto the grass flats. There's about a 50-yard run that holds a ton of fish. The guides all know there are fish there, it's just getting the right bugs in front of them with the right presentation. We were struggling on that front--not because Leo wasn't doing his part but because these fish had gotten a lot of attention over the summer, and they wanted nothing to do with what we were serving up. We pulled the boat to the side and started walking through the different variables that were at play. Water level, pressure, and bugs. 

"Dude," I got Leo's attention. "You see all those fish when we're going through the flats out there? How deep are they? Where are they hanging out?" 

We talked through the process and together decided they might be hanging out looking for damsel fly nymphs just off the edges of the grass in super shallow water. We needed to change things up and after making the adjustments, Leo started hooking fish after fish but still not landing them. 

Again, we pulled the boat over and as I dragged us back upstream for another run, talked about technique and what we were going to do to actually land a few of these pigs. Let me just say this, these fish are big and hot and even though our lead fly was a big damsel fly nymph, most of the fish were eating the tiny midge trailing the damsel fly, which puts all the advantage on the fish. Landing them is no joke but Leo was all in and instead of getting frustrated, we were going to figure this shit out. 

"Hey dude," Leo asked. "Instead of stripping line in, can I try to get them on the reel?" 

"Yeah, you can try that," I said. "Just remember, when that fish takes off, it's not a spinning reel so if you don't let go of the crank, they'll break off."

Just as we got to the top of the run to take another crack at it, two guys in kayaks pulled in front of us, parked their vessels, and jumped out into the run we were fishing. These two guys did the same thing to us about an hour before, upstream in the first run we were fishing. Trying not to lose my shit I told GG and Leo I was going to go talk to these guys before getting back to fishing. I knew this conversation was probably not going to go well, which is why I left Leo and GG at the top of the run so they couldn't hear the exchange that was about to ensue. 

As I approached the first guy, I greeted him with, "Hey, how's it going?"

"Oh, pretty good," he said. 

"Awesome. Here's the deal," I said, which I'm learning, probably sets a person up for bracing against what's about to come next. "You saw us fishing this run. You saw my guy hooked up a few times. I understand I don't have any more right to the river than you guys do but how about giving us a little space?"

"I don't understand why all you guides think you own the river," was his response, and as he started lecturing me more about river etiquette, waving his arms and pointing at me. I stopped him.

"Hold on a second. Before you start lumping all of us together, let me just tell you that I don't fish up here much because of this kind of bull shit. You saw us fishing here. You have the entire fucking river to fish, but you park right here where we were getting into them. You two guys block the entire run from anyone else fishing it. You did that to us upstream and we bailed just to give you guys some space but then you do it again and all I'm asking for is a little consideration." I continued, "I've got a 14-year-old kid who's never landed a fish on a fly rod. I'm just trying to get him to bring one to the net and you guys are fucking it up. So, who's being the asshole here?"

"So where are we supposed to fish?" He asked.

"I don't care," I said. "You have kayaks. You have the entire river to fish. You can go anywhere but to jump out right here while we're fishing this run? Come on dude." 

If you haven't been to the Missouri River, it is big. In that one stretch along the grass flats, the river is easily 120 yards wide. Fish do get stacked up in spots but there are literally 6 to 7 thousand fish per river mile on that stretch. I was only asking to fish this one 50-yard run where we knew there were fish, and we had figured some things out.

He pointed to a couple overhanging Russian olives a couple hundred yards downstream and asked, "So if we go down to those trees? Can we fish there?"

"Go for it," I said. "We're not laying claim on the entire river. But you saw us fishing here. I'm just asking for the same level of respect and consideration that we gave you guys earlier."

With that I turned to go back upstream to the boat and to GG and Leo. The two anglers walked down to the Russian olives. As I got into the boat, Leo gave me a look of like, "Awesome."

"Alright," as I picked up the anchor. "Go ahead get it back out there and get ready." 

On that next run along the grass flats, Leo landed his first fish and from there, he became a machine. He landed a couple more in that run and then I told him it was time to head downstream. His success was attributed to a few things. He definitely learned a ton in the first few hours and built on his successes. His confidence skyrocketed. And he developed his own style of landing fish that worked for him. 

As we passed by the two anglers, I thanked the guy and he started back in on me, "I still don't understand why you guys think you own..."

I stopped him again and said, "It's alright dude. You never will understand so let's just leave it at that."

The next day we fished downstream, GG hanging out in the back and Leo getting better and better at managing his line, casting, presenting a fly and landing fish--lots of fish. It got to the point where there was very little coaching going on from me and more just pointing out subtleties in the river, recognizing where fish would hang out and then I would watch as Leo put a cast in the right spot and would get bit. The hard part was over and now the benefits of meeting the challenges with newly developing skills was a joy to witness. Eventually, GG picked up the rod and got schooled by a couple monster rainbows, but then she put the attention back on Leo and let him have the day. 

On day three, Leo and I headed out to the Blackfoot for some wade-fishing. Knowing how difficult it would be for GG to keep up, she decided to take a break, so Leo and I headed out on our own. GG asked me to make sure Leo kept off his phone. I told her I would make sure he wasn't on it all day. 

We drove off. It was early and I didn't get much sleep the night before. My head was heavy, and I wasn't really feeling like being all that social. I definitely wasn't all that enthused about entertaining Leo for an hour while we drove over the Divide and into the Blackfoot drainage. 

"Hey, your grandma wants me to make sure you're not on your phone but honestly, I'm a little groggy and would like to just veg out on some sports radio while we drive, so you do you and we'll keep that to ourselves." 

Leo shrugged, picked up his phone and checked some messages and then put the phone down. We spent the next hour talking about music, video games and gaming all night and how that keeps you from doing other things like fishing, and dating. Yeah, we talked about girls too. I actually asked him what girl wants to be with a guy who stays up all night playing video games and then sleeps all day? 

"Fair enough," he said. 

At one point we were talking about bear spray and bears and why I don't carry a gun. I told him I would give him an idea of how potent bear spray is by spraying a millisecond blast of it on the ground and just being near the area, he'll understand. We both almost puked. Lesson learned. 

He then asked, "I wonder how different the day would be if my grandma was here?"

"Well," I said, "You wouldn't be throwing the f' bombs you are." 

He said, "You wouldn't be telling those stupid jokes."

"Fair enough."

We laughed quite a bit that day. Leo caught some good cutties on dries and then decide he wanted to go swimming. Perfect. 

(As a side note, that's Leo in the photo above. That's day three of ever holding a fly rod in his hand. Tell me he doesn't look like a pro.)

Day four, we went back downstream on the Missouri through the Canyon and out to Pelican Point. The goal was to catch a big 'ole brown. In fact, I asked Leo what he wanted, whether it was going back up to the dam where the most fish would be or targeting some monsters downstream, knowing the fishing might be tougher. It was his choice, and at that point, I knew I had got him. 

We did catch a few decent fish and a bunch of smaller ones when we got right to the end of the section and Leo hooked a toad of a brown. This thing was massive and as Leo put some pressure on him, it took off like a torpedo. I think there was just so much adrenaline pumping through Leo that he gripped the reel; the rod tip went straight down to the water and the brown broke off. 

Leo looked back at me with complete and utter disappointment in himself. 

"Dude!" I exclaimed and then chuckled and then groaned. "That..."

All I could do is give him the look that finished what I started to say. We sat there for a second or two just letting the thought of that fish suspend in the air. 

"Oh my god," he said. "That was huge!"

"Yep," I agreed. "That's the one we were looking for."

There was really nothing to say at that point. Leo knew what happened. That lesson was for him and only him to process and it was my job to talk him off the ledge. 

"It's ok, dude. Still got more river. There's another one out there." 

Leo hooked another and then another and finished strong. But every fish he caught from that point on, all he could say is, "Not as big as the brown."

Here's the thing; if Leo didn't have that reaction, I don't think it would say as much for just how into the fly fishing he found himself. Missing that fish was definitely disappointing and I'm not going to say this as some effort to squeeze a little bit of lemonade out of the river. But the fact that he cared so much and then was so eager to redeem himself is telling and impressive. He could have gotten angry or down on himself or taken some kind of victim stance and blamed the reel or the fish or something, but he didn't. All he cared about was getting another one and even though it didn't happen, he still thinks about that fish, not so much as a failure, but a challenge and hopefully an opportunity to eventually come out on top. Fuck that fish. There will be another one either today or tomorrow or next year and he damn-well is going to be ready for it.

That brings me back to the phone call from the other day. 

"You know, Russ," GG said. "Leo and I were planning our summer trip, and he said he wants to come fishing with you again. Do you still have some availability for next summer."

"You're god damn right I do," I thought to myself.

"And if you're not available, Leo said he'd rather go somewhere else," she filled me in.

So yeah, my guy is going to get another crack at that big-ass brown and this time, I'm betting on Leo. 

Keep 'em where they live...

P.S. I don't have kids. I always wanted them, but it never came to fruition. I know, people always say it's not too late, that men can have kids into their 70's if they want but what they fail to realize is that would take finding someone young enough that would want to be with an old bald fishing guide that doesn't have a ton of money or any sort of retirement plan that doesn't include driving a golf cart around telling people to get their asses moving. And I'm not going to have kids with someone I'm not crazy about, so giving the attributes I require along with the deficits I also enjoy, the pool is not all that deep. I know I'm being hard on myself but when people point out that Clint Eastwood and Robert De Niro had kids in their 60's and 70's and Al Pacino had his last at 83, I have to also point out that these are famous rich dudes. Because of that, maybe these guide days mean just a little more to me than they might for other guides. Maybe... I know this; this particular trip will stay with me for a long, long time and I'm so appreciative to GG and Leo for allowing me to be a part of their family and their memories that will last a lifetime. I'm definitely looking forward to this summer.

First Shoulder Season Elk

I've been hunting out here in Montana for the better part of 20 years. In fact, as I look back and tally up the seasons, I've actually elk hunted in in 20 seasons starting back in 2002. I took a couple years off while moving back and forth from Milwaukee and then hunted every year since 2007. In that time, I've killed eight elk during archery season, five during the general rifle season and now one elk taking advantage of the late part of the Montana shoulder season. Of those elk, six have been legal brow tine bulls, one spike and the rest antlerless elk. (I didn't say cows because of the legal description of elk in Montana and to be fair, I shot a bull calf one year thinking it was a 1 1/2-year-old cow. I felt a little guilty but then we started eating on it and it was the most tender elk I've had.) One of the bulls I shot with my bow was a 320-inch, 6 X 6, which is on my wall in the garage. That bull was the third elk I had shot and since then, I don't go after horns. Moving that mount around sucks. And the meat was so tough, I wound up grinding all the steaks into burger after shooting a younger cow the following year. 

Each elk has a story that I cherish. I know, one might be thinking, "big deal, it's a cow elk. Thousands get shot every year." That is true but much like catching that first trout of the day, it always feels like an accomplishment, and it always makes me feel incredibly grateful and humbled for the experience. And I always feel blessed and even a little surprised when it happens, remembering back to the first elk or the first brown I caught on a fly rod as if every elk is that first. 

If you read my last post, you already know how tough the general rifle season was for me this year. I worked my ass off and didn't see an elk I could shoot the entire season with the exception of spotting a few from the truck and not being able to get into them before the sun ran out. I kind of went on a rant and did a lot of finger pointing for what I believe caused many of us to come up empty these past couple years. Climate change, hunting pressure, and large plots of private land where the elk congregate have all felt like hurdles, I haven't been able to clear. The lack of snow during the hunting season seems to be the most consistent culprit, which seems to have been confirmed this weekend. 

Let me get a few logistical facts out of the way before telling the story. First of all, the Montana shoulder seasons are meant to thin out herds of elk that have been getting way over the number of elk FWP has determined is healthy and manageable in sense that landowners are not losing money and having to deal with unnecessary damage from elk. These shoulder seasons are only open to shooting antlerless elk on land outside of the National Forests in the management areas determined after the previous hunting year. That means private, state school trust, and BLM lands. Most of the elk hang out in the hay fields during the summer and get pushed up into the mountains from hunters and to some degree, from competing elk during the rut. Without snow, the elk stay high up in the mountains and are widespread until they move back to the hay fields as the weather turns. As mentioned before, they also find pockets of private lands that are not accessible.

Montana has roughly 17 million acres of National Forest most of which is in the mountains. As the elk come down to the private lands, they herd up. Some of the herds can reach numbers in the thousands. Private land in Montana amounts to about 64 million acres or about 62.5% of the land. Of that private land, around 7 to 8 million acres are entered into the Block Management program, which opens up private land for public hunting. State lands, BLM and Block Management land is checker boarded throughout Montana, most of which is in the lower elevations along rivers and in agriculturally rich areas where the elk go in the winter. So, the trick is, or the challenge becomes, finding where the elk are congregating and hopefully, finding them on accessible land. 

Shoulder seasons typically begin in mid-August and then run through February 15th. As with every attempt FWP makes to appease all the opposing groups that have an interest in elk, there are a lot of critics to elk management strategies, particularly these shoulder season hunts. Archery hunters complain that early shoulder seasons get the elk moving into the high country sooner and they become conditioned to hunters earlier, making them harder to locate and even harder to fool. Late season critics are typically elk sympathizers who believe hunters are taking advantage of desperate elk just trying to survive tough winters. I understand the arguments, but I've also seen these huge herds of elk and I feel like FWP is kind of running out of options for managing the numbers using the normal timeframe for the traditional hunting seasons. 

Game check stations across Montana have reported varying success rates for harvesting elk in 2024. Typically, about 10 to 15% of hunters are successful. That success rate is dropping, which could be explained by a number of factors. More hunters mean more people, especially less experienced hunters adding to the percentage of unsuccessful hunters. However, if you look at the raw numbers, many check stations are reporting fewer animals being harvested. More hunters may mean putting more pressure on elk during the regular season, which makes them harder to find and hunt.  

There are absolutely more hunters in the mountains these days as reported by the Butte Skyline Sportsman's Association. Viewpoint: Nonresidents secure more than 85,000 hunting licenses. In this article, they look into the number of Nonresident hunters, which has increased by nearly 30,000 hunters from 2019 to 2023. Not all of those hunters were hunting deer and elk, however, the majority, about two thirds were. That's just non-resident hunters. It's hard to find data on the number of licenses issued to Montana residents, which seems a little ridiculous, but I think it's fair to say, as our population explodes, more resident hunters are also being added to the mix. 

The point here is, as pressure increases and as snow levels get delayed until after the general hunting season, the elk hunting is getting tougher and the numbers support that. The shoulder seasons have increasingly become more attractive to me although it has been a little intimidating and I always hesitated to go that route. Again, finding access to elk on private land or state and BLM land is the challenge. Some ranches go with a roster option for damage hunts where you sign up and wait for your number to be called but you have to put your name in for the drawing well before hunting season even starts. I never even think about that before the archery season. 

OnX apps for your smart phone and computer have changed the game significantly, however. Now a hunter can sit at their computer and find those open lands in shoulder season areas in the comfort of their living room. The problem is, you don't know if the elk are going to be there unless you get some insider intel or you're just really intuitive and know the elk migration patterns. Or, you just get lucky. I tend to rely on luck way more than I should. 

I had a couple interactions last week that absolutely contributed to my late season success. I was talking skiing with a buddy, and he was reporting some really good snow conditions on one of the hills east of Helena. That hill is called Showdown and is located in the Big Belt Mountains. The Big Belts have a ton of elk in them and when the snow flies, those elk head for one of two valleys. One is to the east, which is White Sulphur Springs and the Smith River, and the other is to the west of the mountain range being Townsend/Toston and Canyon Ferry Lake, which is part of the Missouri River System. My interest was piqued.

The next evening, I was playing at an open mic and overheard a conversation an acquaintance of mine was having with one of his buddies. I tilted my head and dropped into the conversation. Apparently, he knew a rancher near the town of Townsend and was told the elk were in his hay fields and were hanging out there until late in the morning before heading up into the foothills. If you were patient enough, you could wait them out and eventually, they would cross through a piece of state land where you could shoot one. They had obviously come down because of the snow and were moving late because there wasn't the hunting pressure like there is in the general season. The gentleman went up there and in one day, voila, filled his freezer. 

I woke up the next morning and opened up my Onx app on my computer. I recognized the drainage the gentleman had mentioned and even found a sliver of state land he must have been hunting. I also remember him telling his buddy he was going to contact the rancher he knew and see if it would be ok to give his buddy his contact info for access. Given that, I really didn't want to step on anyone's toes, so I looked over other options for public access and picked out a few nearby Block Management Areas. I then called another one of my buddies to see if he wanted in. Given our last hunt where we spent the entire day driving around and barely even got out of the truck, he opted out for the weekend but told me to let him know what I found out after scouting he might come up. The plan was to drive down there on Saturday to get an idea of how many hunters were accessing the few areas I was looking at and if the elk were even traveling though. It was kind of a long shot given how much land there is in that area coming out of the mountains and how much of that land is actually accessible. I think 10 or 15% would be generous. 

I was at the brewery Friday evening talking with some other friends when the topic came up. One of the servers, who moved out from California, had never been elk hunting and wanted to experience it so she asked if she could come with. I told her the plan was just to drive around and scout it out so actual hunting probably wasn't in the plan, but she could hang out if she wanted. I figured an extra set of eyes, and some company wouldn't be horrible. 

We left Helena at around noon on Saturday and made it to the first BMA at around 1 o'clock. We drove around the back side of the BMA looking for the best access. As we came around to the North side of the BMA, we came to a sign-in box and the rancher's house. We started seeing a few rigs parked on the road. A few of the folks had on the orange vest every hunter out here wears as a requirement for rifle hunting. I stopped by a group of three rigs and asked the woman with the orange vest if they were seeing any elk. 

"Yeah, there's a couple out here," she revealed in a mix of rural Montana/southern drawl dialect. "But I'm from Shelby so you'll have to ask that guy over there. He's the one that's from round here." 

"Thanks," I replied and pulled the truck into the driveway next to the other rigs. 

"Hey," I greeted the gentleman who was not in orange but had his boots laced up and Gaters on. "You guys seeing elk out here? I'm just scouting it out right now, trying maybe make a plan for next week."

"Well," he says. "Yep, there are elk here. About 600 went up that ridge this morning, and the game warden said there were about 1600 head in here earlier." 

He then went on to let me know there were a group of hunters driving around on the back side of the ridge the 600 went to and eventually they would get pushed back and cross somewhere along the road.

"The block management starts at the fence-line though at the back edge of the grain field so you gotta let 'em cross before you shoot," he notified me. "But they should be here. I shot one the other day just up on the road." 

As pointed up the road he corrected himself, "I wasn't on the road, obviously. But you can hunt all the other side of the road and all the way up into the hills there once you get past the house."

"Cool," I said. "I should probably go sign in just in case. Thanks for the info."

I walked back to my truck noticing I hadn't even laced up my boots. I had slipped them on as I left the house, but they were just hanging there, splayed open like I was some urban backcountry Wanna-Be in a pair of un-scuffed Dr. Martens.

I opened the door and let Kenzie know, (my companion for the day,) "it's time to get laced up. Apparently, 1600 elk moved through this ranch this morning! Game on!"

We drove back to the sign-in box and filled out the permission slips, which is a requirement to access the BMA. I also tied up my boots and grabbed my orange vest and flung it over my shoulders and slipped my arms through the arm holes. This isn't my idea of hunting, but I hadn't shot an elk since 2022 and my freezer was void of good elk burger. I wasn't going to be a part of a massacre but if we spotted some elk we could get in on, I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity. 

After signing in, I decided to head downhill towards the hay fields just to get an idea of the layout of the property. As we approached the bottom end of the BMA, I noticed a group of elk coming off private property from one of the hay fields towards, the BMA. 

"Holy crap!" I pointed. "There's a group of elk right fricken there."

The elk were about three quarters of a mile to the west and downhill from the BMA but were working their way up quickly. They were also directly behind one of the ranch houses, which was also a safety zone. I quickly pulled into the driveway of the ranch house and assessed the situation. A sign on the fence post read, "No Motorized Vehicles Beyond This Point," which told me as long as you hiked in, you could get behind the house and up into the foothills and you would be golden. I also accessed the BMA boundaries on my OnX app to confirm. Just beyond the boundary, there was also a chunk of state land. A lot of moving parts would have to tumble into place but with a little luck, these elk would make their way off the fields and up into the BMA or state land and I would be there waiting. 

"You good hanging out if I go after these elk," I asked Kenzie. 

"Are you serious?" She asked. "Is this really going to happen? This is so cool." 

From the truck we could see the elk cresting a hill about a half mile out, heading up further into the foothills. Every once in a while, they would disappear behind a rise and then reappear. There were about 15 in that group, and they were on the move. 

"Shit. I gotta get moving."

I busted up the driveway, past the house and started across the open field into the first coulee heading up into the hills. I wasn't quite on a dead run but for 54, I felt like I was doing pretty good to cut the distance. Kenzie was watching through the binoculars from the truck. 

I crested the first hill and looked down into the next coulee. Nothing. 

I started up along the rim of the coulee and all the sudden, 15 elk popped up about 200 yards to the east, uphill from my position. They stopped and looked back at me. About half of them were spikes and rag-horns. I pulled out my phone and opened the app to make sure the elk were on the BMA. I then dropped to my belly, getting into the prone position and put the crosshairs on one of the cows. 

Before I could get my breath in check and steady the gun on the cow elk, they went back on the move, grouping up to a point that I couldn't safely shoot without potentially missing or hitting two of the elk with one shot. So, I clicked the safety back on and watched as they dropped out of sight over the rise. 

"Fuck," I thought and replayed the scene second guessing whether I should have taken the shot or not. 

It's just not worth it though, and with all the elk that were reported on this ranch, I can't imagine this will be my last chance and with that, I looked back down the coulees and to the edge of the hayfields. Low-and-behold, another group of a dozen or so elk were working their way up the fence line. 

These elk, however, must of have seen something they didn't like and stopped at the fence right before crossing onto the BMA. I kept still, kneeling in the snow. They were held up about 4 or 500 yards out, nervously circling around as if they were discussing which way they were going to head. One of the spikes started heading up the slope and the others followed. I circled to the back side of the ridge I was on, so I was out of site and started hoofing it towards the fence line they were traveling along.

As luck would have it, and I confirmed with the OnX app, these elk were traveling along the fence, not on the BMA but on the state land. As long as I could cut them off before the state land ran out, I was good to go. Unfortunately, there were two coulees between me and the fence line. I dropped down and then back up and noticed the just the ears of the elk behind the next rise on the move. I dropped down the next coulee and back up, now only about 50 yards from the fence. As I got closer and to a higher vantage point, I noticed the antlers of the spike that was leading the group. I move in and the other elk came into view. They were heading towards me and would be at the fence soon. 

I dropped to my knees and double checked the OnX app. I was good but right then I felt the cool sensation of wind on the back of my neck. 

"Crap," I thought. "They're going to bust me. I need to make a move."

Getting into a crouch, I headed straight for the group and when I thought I was close enough, I stood up and there they were. Grouped up about 100 yards past the fence. One of the cows broke formation and stopped broadside a few yards to the left of the rest of the group. 

I clicked off the safety on my .270, brought the butt of the gun to my shoulder and dropped the crosshairs right behind the front shoulder of the lone cow. She was about to move. I was trying to catch my breath and hold steady for an offhand shot at about 150 yards. The circular motion of the crosshairs around the shoulder of the elk became tighter and tighter until I decided it was good enough and I timed the motion with the pull of the trigger hoping it would coincide with the crosshairs of the scope settling on the front shoulder. 

"Boom!" The gun went off and I listened for the "Thwack," of a solid hit but it never came. I did however watch as the cow hunched and dropped a bit before turning back to disappear into the rest of the group. I ejected the spent shell and racked another round.

The group of elk headed out away from me and dropped down out of site. I sprinted towards the fence and noticed the cow dragging behind and stop. I brought the gun up again and pulled the trigger, this time without much confidence of my shot. She took off out of site. 

I crossed the fence onto the state piece of land. It was wide open, dropping off into a series of coulees. The group of elk appeared across the next coulee and stopped about 300 yards out. I couldn't spot any of the elk that would appear to be wounded. They were huddled up, seemingly waiting for the call to move but nothing happened. Not knowing if the elk I shot at was down or not, and not seeing an obviously wounded animal, there was no way I could take another shot. I started walking toward the coulee hoping beyond all hope that my elk didn't reach the break and as I got closer and gained some vantage point to look down the side of the coulee, there was my elk, piled up, luckily before making the drop-off into the coulee. 

Upon examining her, one shot entered just into the lower part of the shoulder, piercing both lungs and clipping the upper chamber of the heart. The second shot wasn't necessary as she was never going to make it far. But not knowing for certain, I took the second shot knowing that at worst, I had a wounded elk that needed to be put down. I was super fortunate, that first shot dropped her in just a hundred yards or so, before making it to the coulee. Dragging her back up the coulee would suck. I hiked back to the truck. All this happened so quickly, I didn't even grab my knife, and I had a sled in the truck just in case.

"Alright," I told Kenzie as I opened the truck door. "It's time to get to work..."

"Are you kidding me?" She responded with excitement. "You got one?"

Kenzie had been watching from the truck as I got up on the first group but also saw that I didn't shoot. She did hear my shots on the second group but there was no way of knowing it was me. In fact, after my shots, another group of hunters also shot at the elk I must have pushed to them. It wasn't like a firing squad but there was a half a dozen or so shots that rang out after I shot. Unfortunately, that is the reality of hunting these ranches when the elk get herded up. Hopefully, people aren't just lobbing shots into herds of elk on a prayer. But that does happen and it's not a good look for the hunting community as a hole. That's not what I witnessed on this day, however.

The cow elk dropped just inside of a mile from the truck as the crow flies. With a sled, just the right amount of snow, and the entire drag being downhill, it was a pretty quick pack-out. When we got to the truck Kinzie asked how we would lift the thing into the bed, which is a good question. Again, fortunately, the rancher had plowed the driveway into a bank we were able to drag the sled up, which was the right height to back the truck to and slide it in. Perfect.

Again, this isn't my favorite kind of hunting, but I will say this, it's not like what I heard of for these late season hunts where elk are just hanging out in the field, and you drive up to them in a truck and pick one out. A lot of things had to come together to harvest this elk, and I feel grateful. And I did learn something for the next time I'm in need of filling the freezer.

The last thing I really want to address is that yes, an elk is a lot of meat for one person. This year I've pretty much tagged out on elk, antelope, and deer. I am grateful of the meat and value the opportunity I have for sharing that with family and friends who either aren't as successful, or don't have the means to get out there and get their own game. I also love processing the game into sausages and other forms of protein that we might not think to use the meat for and share that experience with others as well. If you're thinking about taking a trip with Montana Dream Fishing Outfitters next season, let me know you're interested, and I'll even share some of this fortune with you. I promise it will be something you'll remember for a very long time.

Keep 'em where they live...

It's Just Nice to Be Out in Nature

This is what people say when they get skunked, "Well, it's just nice to be out in nature." That's crap. I mean yes, I definitely appreciate getting out in nature and hiking around and being present...blah, blah, blah. But I'm out here to hunt and at least feel like I've got a chance, and the last couple years; the elk hunting during rifle season, has been rough. I spent 18 days during this year's rifle season getting out in nature and would estimate I hiked about 75 miles, and trust me, those 75 miles weren't like walking on a track. Much of it was brutal up and down and side-hilling and crawling over dead-falls. I also put around 2,000 miles on my truck and I literally only saw one elk while I was hunting and that was a huge bull in an area where I could only shoot spikes or cows. I saw plenty of elk on private land, however, while driving to and from the public land. 

In the area I hunt, objectives for elk, meaning the number of elk FWP would like to have in that area, have been over the projections for a number of years now. However, the success rates for harvesting elk have been way down. The solution was to open up the final two weeks of the gun season to antlerless elk on a general license. FWP also issued a ton of B-tags for the area, which is only good for antlerless elk. The problem is, regardless of how many tags are issued, if you can't get to the elk, there's no point. 

I feel three major factors have contributed to the lack of elk in accessible areas. And listen, I'm not a road hunter. I get out and I hike and up until recently, I've been pretty damn successful. But I feel the deck is stacked against the public land hunter and it's just getting worse. Here's the problem the way I see it; it comes down to climate, pressure, and elk sanctuaries. And you'll notice, I didn't mention predators on purpose because it ain't the damn wolves. We have plenty of elk as I noted during the archery season and the FWP surveys also support this. Regardless of how skeptical you are, FWP numbers don't lie. We just either can't find them or can't access them.

If you look at the picture above, it was taken right after one of the few snow falls, we saw during the rifle season this year. It wasn't "good" snow, however. It was a sheet of ice. It rained first and then snowed on top of it, which is virtually impossible to hunt. Your best bet is to find a spot to sit and hopefully, someone pushes elk past you. You're not going to sneak up on anything though.

The last time we had good snow during the hunting season on my side of the Divide was two years ago. The snow drove the elk down from the high country and I wound up shooting a bull that was bedded down with about 30 other elk in a park (out here, a park is a big open meadow on the side of the mountain.) I still had to work for it. I hiked about 2 miles into the park before spotting them and then had to pack the bull out. But it was doable. All the other elk I've taken with a rifle were in similar circumstances where a cold front would bring snow, and the elk would move down. We're not getting the snow, and the elk are free to roam wherever they want. 

The traffic in the mountains has also changed. I wouldn't be surprised to see stop signs and lights popping up soon. Some days it feels like I'm back in the Twin Cities waiting for the light to change so that I can merge into traffic on I-94. At the trailhead I have been hunting for years, a Forest Service lease just opened up for the cabin at the access point to National Forest. Reservations for the cabin have been booked up for months. Every day I walked past the cabin, 2 or 3 trucks were parked there with at least 4 to 6 hunters staying at the cabin. A hunter I talked to later in the season, said there were 20 rigs at the parking area on opening day. That wasn't even including the trucks parked at the cabin. That's insane! There's no room for all those hunters and as soon as elk start seeing the traffic, they disappear. Where do they go? Well, anywhere hunters can't.

Elk aren't dumb. They have figured out where the safe places are and as soon as traffic ramps up, they head for the safe zones if they aren't there already. Some elk go up high, miles from any access until the snow flies, but even that is becoming less and less the issue. More people are moving out buying up more property from ranchers that used to allow access. What's happening is those ranches are becoming elk sanctuaries. Some of that is on purpose as the landowners feel like it's their duty to protect the animals. Some of it is landowners securing property for their own access, to which they only let friends and family hunt or paying customers. Either way, there isn't enough pressure to push the elk onto public lands where the pressure has gotten ridiculous. 

This is a big problem out here. Landowners bitch about too many elk busting down fences and eating up profits but then they don't let folks hunt. Or for the ones that do, elk just cross their fences and hang out 20 yards off on the neighbor's property where they are safe. Once the traffic goes down, the elk move back to where the better food and water is. And opening up more tags for more antlerless elk just means more pressure on public lands but doesn't do anything for pushing elk off the sanctuaries. 

A lot of competing groups are coming together to complicate the problem and to make solutions for FWP impossible. Objectives for elk numbers are tricky, which is where we start. Those objectives aren't created by scientific methods of determining healthy elk populations given the food resources alone. Elk compete with ranchers for food and space. Many ranchers I've talked to would rather we didn't have any elk because it costs them time and money. Hunters would love to have more elk and newcomers to the state love to see the wildlife and have no idea the damage they are doing by "saving" those animals. Then you add into the equation the millions of dollars of revenue the state makes off of giant bulls harvested be millionaires and now, billionaires and you can see how complicated it can get. FWP gets caught in the middle and the objectives are really just a sort of balance they try to achieve taking all the competing parties into account. 

But it's not the numbers of elk that's the problem. In fact, we have so many elk, we have to have damage hunts out here that often start in mid-August and go through February. But again, those damage hunts only knock down a small percentage of the elk herd because you still have to find access and again, the elk know where they are safe. And every year we still are over the objectives and landowner still bitch that there are too many elk, and I still see more and more rigs driving up and down the mountains. 

What will make the problem even worse is when our public lands get sold to the billionaires moving out here and everything goes to a model of private stewardship/management. I understand that might sound hyperbolic, but the reality is, that our elected officials have expressed the policy objectives to make this happen. Our governor, Greg Gianforte, and newly elected senator, Tim Sheehy, have both expressed the desire to sell off public lands, which easily could create huge ranches that only the rich can access. As long as there's money to be made, right? And you know they ain't going to share with us common folk.

 And I know, you might point out that I'm a fishing outfitter, who also makes money off of an increasingly scarcer resource. The difference is, is us fishing guides put the fish back and we do a lot to bring resources to help preserve our fisheries and we are more than happy to share. Hunting outfitters and landowners aren't usually so generous until it's January and they feel like they can sell off a few of the cows on their property via the damage hunt. (By the way, our State Constitution is in complete opposition to this idea of ownership over the animals. Landowners do not own the animals.) And that seems like an incredible abuse of the system in the form of double dipping by charging thousands to shoot a trophy during the general season, not letting resident hunters to access, and then making a few hundred dollars on every cow after the general season concludes. It's a mess and the next thing coming to Montana, given the fact that it seems everything is greed driven now, is high fences. Wouldn't that be fun? 

Sorry about the rant but I'm sure I'm not alone. Thanks for listening.

Keep 'em where they live...

Good Luck Charm

The 2024-gun season in Montana is about half over. We had a little bit of snow a week ago, which helped to bring a few elk down but then it got warm, the snow melted, and the elk disappeared. I've been spending my time chasing whitetails in the bottoms, which means driving a ton, checking out block management areas, and trying to figure out places to hunt that aren't crawling with other hunters. I did manage to fill a B-tag yesterday with a whitie doe, so I'll have some meat for sausage, which is really what I was after. I have the general deer tag left, which will be in my pocket just in case something big steps out in the high country. The focus for the rest of the season will be to fill my elk tag. Honestly, a cow elk would be just fine as I also have a B-tag for elk. (B-tags are generally, supplemental, antlerless only tags.)

The elk above is the last elk I shot with my bow. I want to share this story and dedicate it to a great friend, who I now refer to as my "Good Luck Charm." At the time, we were dating. She had moved to Montana from California to be closer to her family. While living in California, she decided to go quasi-Vegan for reasons I actually understand and fully support. She's not a big fan of the beef/swine/poultry processing industry and would rather not support the way in which the animals are treated. That sounds fair to me and actually, once she was introduced to wild game, she jumped all in. Now, she's never going to kill anything, but she respects the process and enjoys the consumption. She also enjoys the process and loves to get out and tag along on hunts. This particular hunt was pretty epic.

As I usually do, I took over a week off from the guide season to chase these critters around the mountains. I spent the first day solo and then made plans with Kim for a few days over the weekend. I have never shot an elk while with someone else on the hunt, but she was fired up and ready to go and I figured it would be good for both of us. If nothing else, we could get out and find some elk and have some fun together and I could go after them a little harder after she went back to work. 

The first morning, we hiked about 6 miles, making the loop I normally make, stopping every once in a while, to throw a bugle out and try to locate something. At some point around 9:30 in the morning, a bull answered from across the drainage. We hoofed it down the ridge and tried to get into position, but by the time we got close, they had bedded down in the bottom of the drainage and weren't going to move. Going after them was futile so we decided to back out and try to catch them the next morning before they headed for water and napping. 

We were on the road the next morning at least an hour and a half before shooting light. It was a half hour to the parking area, then a half hour hike to where these elk were feeding the morning before. We should be perfectly set up to cut these elk off as they fed off the parks and into their bedding area. Unfortunately, as we layered up after parking my rig, the gusting wind brought me back to when I was a kid, waiting for my dad to come home thinking we would get out on the lake in the 17-foot Grumman canoe. I would sit there waiting for him, looking to the trees and praying for silence, telling me there was no wind giving the "all clear" sign meaning it was safe to venture out on the lake. Too often, however, the disappointing sound of fluttering aspen leaves and waving limbs indicated too much wind for us to get out and another missed opportunity to spend time with him. 

"Damn wind," I murmured as we headed up the trail. 

What happens when the wind comes up early, is elk go to bed early. It's harder for them to hear predators coming so the wind makes them nervous. They would rather take cover and wait it out than to put themselves in a situation of vulnerability. They get down into the dark timber and hollows and the chance of pulling them out of those areas is nil. Not to mention, it's harder for them to hear a call and it's even harder for the hunter to hear them call back and pinpoint their location. And swirling wind makes putting a stalk on them tough as inevitably, a change in the wind's direction will bring scent to the elk and once they catch a whiff of you, they are gone. It really just all around, sucks. 

When we got to the ridgeline where we spotted the elk the day before, we still had a few minutes before shooting light. I didn't want to call until we were in the right position for fear of pushing them off the ridge before we got there. Once in place, in a spot where we could see for several hundred yards after the rising sun dusted off the greyness of the dawn, I ripped a bugle through the deafening 20 mile an hour wind. Immediately, a bull answered with a much more magnificent, bugle of his own. Along with it came the undeniable chirps of nervous cow elk. Unfortunately, they had already gotten below us and were headed towards their resting hollow. 

"Damnit," I whispered to Kim. "They're already in the bottom." 

I called again and again, they called back. The wind was blowing our sent directly down to them so there was no way we were going to call them back. 

"We're screwed," I told her. "There's no way we're going to get in on them with this wind and they aren't going to come back up." 

"Well," always finding the silver, Kim says, "At least we got to talk to them..." 

"We didn't come here to share pleasantries." 

I called again. They called back as if to say, "nice try." 

"Well, let's try to get a look at them anyway to see what's down there. Why don't you sit right here and look out over the ravine," I told her. "And I'll sneak over to the edge of the timber and call a few more times just to see if we can spot them. Just make sure you look out over the park on the other side. They might come out. I want to see if it's that big bull that's been in here." 

 We were set up in a clear-cut that had been harvested just a couple years prior. Old logging roads zig-zagged through the cut. Kim sat down on a slight berm cut into the side of the ridge from one of those old roads and I walked over to the edge of the uncut timber that drifted off down into the ravine. I called again from this new position hoping to see who I was chatting with and again, the bull talked back but eventually he got tired of playing and went silent. He obviously wasn't impressed with what I was offering. 

"Russ," I hear as Kim was half whispering from 30 yards away. "I think I hear something." And she points up the ridge behind us. 

Disgusted with the conditions and the failed plan I just shook my head, affirming it's hopeless. These elk aren't coming back and our chances of seeing anything the rest of the morning was about as good as drawing an ace sitting on 20 while the dealer is showing an ace of his own. 

We held our positions for about 10 minutes, waiting for these elk to show themselves, which they didn't. I was standing with my bow lying on the ground next to my feet. Kim was sitting on the ground along the road, facing down the ravine. I was in full camo. Kim had a camo shirt and a light blue Patagonia hat, which is why I chose to leave her on the road while I peered down the timberline. Not hearing the elk for a while now, I decided we had given it as much time as was needed and bent down to grab my bow and head back towards the logging road to where Kim was sitting. As I straightened up, I caught some movement from above us in the cut. 

"Kim!" I whisper-shouted. "Don't move!" 

"What?" she mouthed.

"Don't move and don't make a sound," I mouthed hoping her lip-reading skills were better than my mouthing of the words. 

At that, Kim pulled her arms into her lap, turned her head back down-hill and dropped her chin to her chest as an attempt to get as small and inconspicuous as a human sitting on a clump of dirt out in the middle of the open can get. I directed my focus back up the ridge to a bull trotting towards us. Apparently, he had heard all the calling from me and the bull with the cows and this straggler wanted to join the party. He was up-wind, lonely, not very smart, and was coming in hard. 

I knocked an arrow and ranged a tree that he was going to pass. It was 65 yards up the ridge from me and as the bull reached the tree, he must have caught my movement and slammed on the breaks, skidding to a stop, right behind the tree.

I looked back at Kim. She was still sitting perfectly still, head down but now I could see her nose dripping. It was pretty cold and again, quite windy. I could only imagine how annoying that must have felt wanting desperately to resolve the tickling sensation of the nose drip but not wanting to move and spook, what she still had yet to see, but must have known from my reaction, was a bull elk coming from behind us. 

The bull stretched his head out from behind the tree and we engaged in the most intense staring contest I've ever played. My heart raced. I couldn't move. For a good ten minutes, the bull and I tested each other's patience. Who would move first? Even crazier, though, was thinking about Kim sitting there, not moving, not even enough to wipe the snot off her nose and having no clue of what was going on. She didn't even move enough to look over at me to see what I was doing. You want to talk about being an absolute rock star? 

Eventually, the bull relaxed and looked back over his shoulder, which gave me enough time to give out a little cow call. I didn't want to necessarily bring his attention back to me, I just wanted him to relax a bit and give him a sign that he was safe to keep coming. 

The bull turned from the path he was initially taking that would have brought him directly to me, and walked out to the road that Kim was sitting on. Once he got to the road, he turned to follow it down the ridge. He was walking on a path that would eventually bring him to within a couple feet of Kim, who was still looking the opposite direction and as motionless as a sleeping opossum. 

Sporadic trees, too small to harvest, were left standing in the cut, that offered brief moments of cover for me as the bull slipped in and out from behind them. I picked an opening where the bull would pass that I guessed was roughly 35 yards out. At the point the bull would clear the trees and offer a shot, he was only going to be about 20 yards from Kim and still heading right to her. 

I had to make a choice. In hindsight, the safest thing would have probably been to step out and wave the bull off, sending it bolting away from us. There would always be more elk. If I waited to see what the bull would do, it might step right over Kim. If I shot when it was still 20 yards from her, it might take off on the same path it was on and run right over her. At twenty yards to travel however, what are chances? 

I drew my bow back and as the bull cleared the trees, I placed the 40-yard pin just behind his front shoulder and pulled the trigger. 

The arrow met the bull with a crack. I was a little low and in front of the shoulder as the bull was a little further than I thought. Because he was slightly quartering to me, the arrow entered at an angle that slid behind the shoulder into his chest cavity, piercing right through his heart. 

He dropped to the ground, stood back up and stumbled straight away from me and perpendicular from Kim cresting a small rise and then dropping out of site. With the commotion, Kim had enough and whipped her head around to see what the hell just happened. She turned just in time to see the bull disappear. The bull only went 25 yards before dropping for good and since he was out of site at that point, Kim only heard him kick a few times and then all was silent again with the exception of the wind whipping through the pines left standing in the cut. That damn wind...

I couldn't believe what just happened. Kim looked at me with eyes wide open, shaking her head. I sank to the ground and sat for a couple minutes, replaying the last 10 or 12 minutes in my head. Still questioning whether or not it was all real, I stood back up and walked over to where Kim was still sitting on the ground. She had wiped her nose at that point. 

"I can't believe that just happened." I told her while shaking my head.

"What the fuck happened?!" she asked. 

"Come here," I said as I helped her up. "I'll show you." 

We walked over the small rise to where the bull was piled up. As it came into view, we both just stood there looking at it in disbelief. Fortunately, it had long been dead before we walked up on it, which is partly why I took a few minutes before walking out to Kim. I didn't want her to watch it die. With the arrow passing right through its heart, that wasn't a problem. 

This is what elk hunting is to me; a roller coaster of emotions and when you least expect an opportunity to present itself, a bull decides to walk out in front of you and your day completely changes. I've read a few books describing what Native Americans suggest is the animal's spirit allowing you the opportunity only when you are ready, and I can't argue against that. There have been so many times I thought I did everything right and an elk I thought I would get a shot at either winds me or something happens, and I'm outflanked and then there are times that just dumb luck creates these moments If I had to choose, I think I'd take luck over skill any day. Or maybe I should start praying to the God's more, that a spirit shows itself. Or maybe it's just keeping your head in the game a little longer and good things happen. 

Every time I stand over an elk I shoot, I'm still a little dumbfounded with how big they are. This wasn't a very large bull but when you compare them to the deer I'm used to seeing in the Midwest, they are monstrous. With the temps forecasted to reach 80 degrees on this day, my focus quickly shifted from "how cool was that," to "we gotta get to work." 

The first thing I did was to start texting anyone I thought might be able to help with the pack-out. One buddy came up from Bozeman and another, although he was hunting a couple hundred miles away, got on the phone with the adject landowner to where I shot this bull, to find a faster way out through his property. Kim and I started boning and bagging. Getting the meat off the bones would help cool it down and since the sun had barely come up, it was still in the 40's and would definitely help. 

Once we boned it out and spread the meat out on rocks and logs, I grabbed one of the front shoulders and we hiked back to the truck at the trailhead. By the time we had gotten back to the truck, my buddy was on his way from Bozeman and the landowner not only let us back through his property but also offered up his Gator for hauling out the meat.

I dropped Kim off at the house and by that time my buddy was there. We went back up to the elk with the Gator while Kim cleared out my fridge. From the time we got back to the elk and loaded into the machine, it took us 14 minutes to get back to the truck. Another 45 minutes and the elk was in the fridge already cooled off from the morning temps and the wind passing through the bags of meat. All done by 1 O'clock. Kim even made breakfast burritos for us. 

 Kim and I have remained friends. She is an incredibly kind and compassionate person who shares an interest in helping cognitively and developmentally delayed children. She will always be a friend and hopefully, will continue to be a good luck charm for me. Still not much for snow in the forecast but with a couple days off from her job working with the school in Standford, she might just be the kind of luck I need.

Keep 'em where the live...

Malta 2024

 

As you can see from the picture, the Malta trip this year was a success. As with every trip to Malta, unforeseen circumstances and opportunities made for another epic experience. Hard work led to this nice goat. Hard drinking led to making new friends and coming home with a plethora of new art for the Fort. 

I had so much fun last year hunting deer and birds in Northeastern Montana, I decided to put in for antelope tags out there. With a 21% draw rate, I wasn't too hopeful but hey, the gods were shining down and bingo, I was drawn and was excited to make the drive. The goal was to overlap a little speed goat hunting with the opening weekend of deer and hopefully double up on big game and then shoot some birds. Ambitious, for sure, but doable. 

I arrived in the area my tag was good for late afternoon on the Wednesday before the opener of the deer and elk rifle season on the weekend. The gun season for antelope starts a couple weeks sooner because antelope lose their horns earlier than other antlered species of deer. Without horns, you can't tell a buck from a doe at the distances a hunter is often shooting at. Besides, most people hunting antelope bucks, want the horns. (As a side note, antelope have horns. Deer have antlers. Even though antelope lose their horns and regrow them every year, they are made from keratin that grows like a sheath around a core, much like a bison. Therefore, even though they shed every year, they are horns.)

As soon as I reached my hunting district, my radar went up and I started scanning the vastness of the area for white asses across the prairie. Even before getting to Malta and checking into a hotel, I was technically hunting. Just to give you an idea of the terrain, here's a photo to illustrate the expansiveness of this country. 

The unfortunate thing for antelope, is with their white asses, bellies, and chest, along with their black faces and horns, the contrast makes them easy to spot from a mile away. They stick out like a sore thumb in the burnt grasses, wheat, and sage. They are also incredibly curious, which makes them suspectable to decoys. However, they have amazing eyesight, and they figure shit out pretty damn quick. They know where they are safe after the first gunshots go off and they don't call them speed goats for nothing. A couple weeks into the season, even slowing the truck down will send them scampering across the prairie like a flock of sparrows, zigzagging in unison at speeds that would challenge a Ferrari. As you can imagine, getting close enough to get a shot is pretty tough.

So, here's the strategy; one drives around the miles and miles of prairie and sage flats with the hopes of finding a group of goats far enough from the road that they don't spook but not so far that you waste all day trying to sneak up on them only to have them bust out and your day is shot. Then you pull out your phone with your onX Hunt app and see if your targets are on accessible land, meaning land that is either public or block management. If they are on block management, you also need to make sure you've signed into that particular block management property before you hunt it. In places like Eastern Montana, there could be five or six ranches with adjacent boundaries. It does get confusing, so your best bet is to just go around to all the sign-in boxes before you even start your hunt.

I spent that first afternoon/evening driving around, looking for opportunities for the next day. I was seeing a lot of animals that were close to open areas and some in the public lands. Some were on block management but in weapons restriction zones so you can't shoot rifles there either. Like I said, they figure it out quickly. I did get acquainted with the area and took mental notes of where the sign-in boxes were so I could sign in early the next morning before the sun came up. You don't necessarily need to get out there right away as goats tend to graze most of the day. They do often bed down mid-day, but you can still pick them out and put sneaks on them, but you might as well maximize your time, so my plan was to head out and get signed in before shooting hours started. 

My brain won't let me sleep past 4:30am these days so even though I set my alarm, it wasn't needed. I made my packet of coffee provided by the hotel and got dressed. With all the animals I saw the evening before, I was cautiously optimistic. A group of goats were hanging out on a slice of private with state and block management surrounding it. I was thinking I would head down there and see if anything ventured onto accessible land. Turns out, a few does had, and the hunt was on.

I parked my truck along the gravel road in a position behind a hill to where the antelope couldn't see me. Using the relief of the hill to hide behind, I was able to cut the distance without being detected. I then belly crawled to about 300 yards of them. I was in the prone position on the top of the hill and put the scope on one of them. I contemplated pulling the trigger. The debate I was having with myself was even though my tag was good for either sex, would I shoot a doe this early in the game? Inaction is action and before too long, they spotted me, and the decision was imposed. The does took off across the prairie and eventually tuned into dots that were barely discernable, even with my binoculars. 

As I watched them, something caught my eye running along the fence line to the west coming from the south. I could see it from about a mile out. The fence was on a line that passed me only a couple hundred yards away, then terminate at the road where my truck was parked. The animal was big and was on a dead run and within just a few minutes, I was able to identify it with the aid of the binocs. 

The thing about this country is its vast and you normally only see antelope, deer and upland birds. There's not a lot of cover for big animals and even though they historically inhabited the prairie, the bigger animals like moose, bears, and elk have been pushed up into the mountains or, into the Missouri Breaks. The Missouri Breaks is a unique part of the country that has been carved out by the Missouri River after thousands of years of inland seas, and ice dams from glaciers and then the erosion of receding water after the ice dams broke free. Canyons run from the prairie into the bottom of the riverbed for miles. The relief from the flat prairie to these canyons is stunning. The number of nooks and crannies for animals to hunker down in is seemingly infinite. But the breaks are a good 50 miles from where I was, and the closest mountain range is ever further. 

Running along the fence, getting closer and closer, was a massive six-point elk. He had been running for miles. As he got closer, I could see the froth coming from his mouth, the foam building and running down his mane to his chest. His coat was dark with sweat, like a horse that had been pushed to the brink. He was obviously running from something but there was nothing on his heals and as he ran past me less than a couple hundred yards away, nothing followed. The elk reached the road and finally took a brief moment to decide how to proceed, then jumped the fence, ran across the road and jumped the next fence and turned to the east to pass just 10 feet from my truck. He then turned back to the north and headed out over the prairie. He kept running until he was sky-lined against a perfectly blue sky and stood there for a moment looking back at me like the Harford Stag. He was amazing. Then he turned back to the north and disappeared over the rise. 

Walking back to the truck, my brain went to where it does, asking a dozen questions like where was this elk coming from, where he was going and what was chasing him? Archery season ended the weekend before. Gun season opened in a couple days. No hunter should have been shooting at him. I guess I'll never know. Could have been wolves? It was bizarre and just really cool to see but also a bit troubling to see animal like that being so stressed for no good reason. 

I did also see a number of antelope off in the distance from where the elk came from and, according to my onX app, could be in a spot I could reach. I ejected the shell I had in the chamber, forced it back into the magazine and closed the bolt. I laid the gun in the front seat of the truck, spun the truck around and headed around to the group of goats I had spotted. 

This time I grabbed the Montana Made decoy I had with me. The idea is to use the decoy partly for attracting the antelope and partly to hide behind. The group of antelope, about eight of them, had a good buck leading them. They tend to be the most curious this time of the year as it's just getting to the end of their rut. They let me walk up to about 400 yards before busting out, but they didn't go far--just over a rise out of site, so I kept pursuing. When these antelope came back into site, they were about 300 yards out. 

By this time of the day, the wind was howling. I felt like I was close enough for a shot but knew the wind was going to make it tough. I set up on my shooting sticks and did my best to steady a shot. It wasn't good enough. Not on the first, second or third...

As these antelope disappeared, I walked about a mile back to the truck, which gave me a lot of time to think about how I was going to have to change up strategies. These goats in Eastern Montana seemed a lot harder to get close to and the wind wasn't getting any better. 

I put the sneak on another group and wasn't able to get within a quarter mile. Another group took off before the truck even stopped. At one point, I had two does, that I was going to definitely shoot this time, cross the road 100 yards in front of me. They were heading into public land, so I slammed on the breaks, grabbed my .270, and chambered a round. I got down into the ditch and leaned on the fence to be able to shoot as they crossed the fence onto the public land. They stopped two feet from the fence, turned tail, and crossed back across the road onto private. 

My last chance of the day, I was driving along a piece of block management on the left and coming up on a piece of state land on the right. A group of antelope with a good buck were in the state land, just about to cross the fence onto private. I slammed on the breaks, crawled out of the truck, grabbed the gun and snuck up the ditch. I was about 100 yards from corner post that sectioned off the state from private. I belly crawled the last 20 yards or so and although these antelope were looking nervous, they hadn't fled. I was about 250 yards from them and right on the corner post. 

I used the post to try to steady the gun, but the wind was just too much. I thought I took a good shot but apparently not and as these goats took off across the prairie, I did a mental inventory of bullets and was seriously thinking I might run out before the odds and conditions finally tipped in my favor. 

I woke up the next morning at the exact same time as the day before. I made my coffee and headed back to the same place I had missed the last antelope later in the previous day. The goats were there, and I failed again. Instead of waiting for them to cross the road from the state land to the block management, I tried to catch them before they crossed and it just confused them and me, and goats scattered all over the prairie. I was able to get a shot off, but it wasn't a great shot, and I kicked myself for even taking it. 

I continued further into the block management to the end of the road and parked at the gate. I was going to get to a vantage point to glass further out onto the property but before I started hiking, I notice a group of antelope off in the distance across a bean field. They were on block management and heading towards the fence line I was parked on, albeit two miles out. Looking at onX, there was a small portion of private between us, but they were definitely on block management and everything behind them was either state or BLM. I was going after these goats. 

The terrain here, was favorable and the wind had not picked up yet. What little wind there was, was in my face. I knew I could get within a few hundred yards at least and if the Gods were on my side, maybe I could wait them out and they would cross in front of me. It was a long shot, but they were heading in the right direction coming off the bean field. 

I hoofed it along the fence and got to a position they were heading towards. Unfortunately, they decided not to cross the bean field in front of me but to walk off the field going away. I waited for them to drop off behind a rise and I made a move, cutting the corner of the bean field, hot in pursuit. They couldn't see me, so I was able to half sprint across the field until I got to the cross fence and use the trapped tumbleweed along the fence as cover. 

As I worked up the fence line, I came to a saddle in the topography and spotted a group of about 60 antelope at the bottom of the draw, sum 7 or 800 yards from me. For me to move past the opening without them busting me was about a 1 in 100 chance. The goats I was going after were still in front of me, out of site. I had to take the chance, so I pushed. As I crossed the opening, I kept my head down and kept from looking in their direction as if as long as we didn't make eye contact, everything would be good even though my moving human frame couldn't possibly bring any alarm to them. But the eye contact, that would surely set them off...

When I got to the fence where these goats should have crossed, there was no visual sign of them but there was a spot where the fence was about 2 feet off the ground where they could easily cross under and there were tracks. Pronghorn antelope don't jump like the antelope on the Seirra. They crawl under fences and around obstacles. They go under fences so quickly; you'd swear they jumped but they don't. I pushed a little further along the fence and then looked back up the hill and there they were, just cresting the hill and going out of site again. 

I crossed the fence and was right on their heels. In fact, I just saw the tips of one of their ears as it fell off the side of the hill and out of site. They couldn't be more than a couple hundred yards, so I followed. 

As I came to the top of the hill and could look down the slope, the 60 antelope and the bottom of the draw were still there but then I noticed another couple dozen off to the right of them. That's not good. The one's I was chasing were going towards these antelope but still out of site behind rise and probably going to merge with them. I ducked down behind the hill to come around from the right side, hopefully catching them as they side-hilled towards the larger group. As I crested the hill and peered out, the bigger groups were still a few hundred yards away but the group I was chasing was only about 100 yards out and standing still just coming into site. I could only see two of them, one being the buck I wanted.

I didn't have time to range or to even get on the sticks. I brought the walnut stock of the .270 to my shoulder, settled the crosshairs just in front of the buck's haunches as it was quartering away, and squeezed. 

"Boom!" said the .270 and a 1/2 second later, "Thwap!" Which is what you should hear when you pull the trigger on a big game animal. The antelope reared back and fell to the ground. 

The bullet entered just above the hind quarter and just under the backstrap, into the vitals of the antelope, which would seem to be a bad choice of shot but actually, none of the backstraps were ruined and the bullet just barely clipped the top of the hind quarter. And with the angle, the bullet penetrated above the guts and entered the chest cavity, destroying the lungs and heart. I mention this because it's not the best angle and a couple inches either way could have destroyed a lot of meat and made for a disgustingly messy gut-job. I was a bit lucky, but it was a pretty darn good shot. What probably factored into the choice of shot was just how fleeting these opportunities are with antelope and I figured it was the best chance I was going to get. I did range the animal after the shot, at 110 yards. At that distance, there's no need for any compensation for drift or dropping of the bullet but shooting free arm standing without a rest is a little sketch. 

Once I shot and the antelope went down, I expected all the other antelope to disappear. Like I've said, those things are spooky, and it doesn't take much to send them running across the prairie like a flock of teal flying away from my decoys after dumping my shotgun on them. Instead, they all just stood there looking back at the buck that was now motionless on the ground as if nothing happened. I swear one of them even looked at the buck and shrugged its shoulders and then went back to eating. The large group at the bottom of the draw barely moved too. They all just kind of went back to doing their thing almost like they knew my tag was now punched so the rest of them were safe. Even when I went down to dress the goat out, the rest of the herd just moved on down the draw with the other group and hung out. Every once in a while, I would hear one of them snort at me, but they never really showed much concern at all. 

The antelope was about 2 miles from the truck when I shot it. They aren't all that big, maybe 120 pounds on the hoof so maybe 80 pounds dressed out. This one was a good one with horns 14 1/2 inches long and really nice cutters. The hair on the back of the neck was blown off at some point in this goat's life, which made it useless for a mount. It actually had a scar from either a bullet or another goat fight with it. I started dragging it back to the truck but after a few hundred yards, decided to cut the thing in half, taking the hind quarters off and dragging it out in two trips. Back in the day, I would have just dragged the whole thing in one trip, but I have learned over the years, smarter not harder. 

When I got back to the hotel, I skinned the antelope out and quartered it up so it would fit in my cooler. I did all of that in the parking lot and washed off the quarters in the bathtub in my room. I'm sure the hotel manager loved that. And as far as patrons of the hotel? It is Montana so I'm sure they're used to seeing stuff like that--a beer on the bed rail, and me slicing up an antelope on the tailgate. Perfect. A few even came over to take a look and congratulate me. 

I didn't put much effort into finding deer on this trip. I did run into a gentleman at the bar who owned a ranch about an hour away. He invited me up to his place and even showed me a couple good whitetails he had on his trail cam. I checked his place out the next day and didn't see much. That same night at the bar, I met a guy who was working for Ducks Unlimited. Apparently, they were having a banquet at the golf course in Malta on Saturday night so instead of staying out 'til dark to hunt, I came back early, took a shower and dropped $450 at the banquet. It's a good cause. 

I feel like I did pretty well, though. I mean, $450 got me my meal, two pretty cool prints, a two-handed crosscut saw that was die cut with a Ducks Unlimited scene and logo, and another circular sign to hang in my garage. 

After the banquet, the guys running the show invited me to the bar for some pool. I didn't get ripped like last year in Malta, but it was enough to where I didn't want to get up and hunt early on Sunday morning. Between the beer and the lactic acid that still hadn't dissipated from my muscles from all the hiking and dragging, I figured my body could use a break. I did take a few laps looking for birds with Cutter to no avail but wound up shooting a duck off a pond on the way back home. Cutter at least got retrieve that and I ate it tonight. So, all in all, a pretty darn successful trip to Malta. 

I really do like Eastern Montana. I'm not sure I could live there but it is a very cool part of the country. It has its own beauty, and the people have been wonderful. I'm not sure if I'll do it again next year, since I've been there twice now but who knows? I'm sure there are plenty of other places I should check out for hunting Montana in the years I have left. There's still a lot of hunting left for this year, however, so it's time to get back after it. I've got two deer tags, and two elk tags left. I don't really care to fill all those tags, but it gives me options. Two of the tags are strictly meat tags as one is an antlerless deer tag, and one is an antlerless elk tag. If I don't fill the general tags, which would be saved for something special, I'd be alright with that.

Keep 'em where they live...