Easter Egg Hunt for Big Kids: Shed Hunting on the Sun River Game Range

                I slowly and carefully opened the door, holding it open as the car slowed down.  Before it came to a full stop I pushed it open the rest of the way, took a step on the ground and I was off at a sprint.  I heard a loud horn and a louder voice yelling profanity at our driver as he veered back into traffic.  No, I was not in the streets of LA or New York; I am talking about the opening day of Shed Hunting on the Sun River Game Range in Montana.

                You may find it hard to believe but every year on the 15^th of May (regardless of the day of the week), thousands of people drive up to the Sun River Game Range, a little over an hour outside of Great Falls to be part of a strange, yet exciting event.  At high noon, the gates are opened and dozens of riders and runners rush in.  The rest, at least two hundred cars and pick-ups, roar along the road until the driver of each vehicle finds a lucrative spot to pull over.  At this point, everyone opens their doors and sprints over the hills as fast as they can.  Each person trying to spot and grab as many of the hundreds of antlers elk bulls have shed in the past few months. 

                The road leading to the game range is littered with the abandoned vehicles of those who have jumped in with a friend who was further ahead in line (there is literally a line of cars over a mile long).  The majority of the antlers will be found in the first few hours but many easy ones will be run by and found later by black bear hunters who come in later that week.  In order to insure peace, the Fish and Game recently moved the start time to noon instead of midnight to prevent fights over spots in line.  They have even been known to put radio chips on antlers in order to ensure no one sneaks in and “poaches” prior to the official opening date.  People get time off work; park their truck as early as two weeks in advance, yell at people for blocking the road, all for elk antlers.  And why all this craziness you might ask?

Antlers can sell for as much as $10 a pound.  Some antlers weigh nine or ten pounds, so finding two could easily equal more than most Montanans make in a day.   But I think there’s more to it than that.  Part of it must be that inner child inside most people.  The child that loved to compete in Easter egg hunts.  The other part, for True Montanans at least, is the “inner-claim-staking-gold-rush-miner” rushing to stake his claim on the land.  It is that inner-Montanan who has come to seek his fortune, to compete with everyone else, on a land anyone can set foot, for treasure only the land can offer.   Deep down inside, whether they build houses or sit at a desk all day, I think all True Montanans want to live off the land, even if it’s just for a day.  That’s True Montana!

Meet Me at the Beach....in Montana

Every year about this time Kerr Dam at the bottom of Flathead Lake is opened up to make room for the impending run-off.  Summer is coming and the snow is finally starting to melt!  But it also means that for a very short window in time the northern shore of Flathead Lake has the best beach in the state!  No kidding!  Its awesome!  It stretches from Somers all the way across to Bigfork.  It is also about 100 yards wide and even when it does reach the water, its relatively shallow for a long ways out.  The sand is perfect too!  No real rocks or glass or even dog poop, though I have seen dogs.

It is a perfect place for an ultimate Frisbee game, to run your dogs or children, to make sand castles, run on the beach and have a pick-nick.  

But before you go, please consider this:  the entrance at Somers involves going around a swamp on a path that goes around a gate which says "no trespassing".  My wife has been yelled at by the alleged owner of this access.  I have heard from multiple locals, however, that he doesn't own the access.  I looked it up on my GPS and from what it looks like, there is no private ownership of the access.  Private property is a big deal to Montanans but I'm unsure why someone would get all worked up over property that they're pretending to own. I have recently been to the beach in Bigfork.  The public access section is extremely narrow and between sections of private land that have cameras monitoring your movement.  Creepy.  

Anyways, if you have an afternoon off, and its a nice sunny day, go to the beach and catch some rays!

A Montanan's Take on Patagonia

“Patagonia is a lot like what Montana was one hundred years ago, wild, rugged and still untamed,” is what I remember someone telling me when I was in my late teens.  Because I am fascinated by Montana and its past this description intrigued me.  And ever since I heard that statement, I have been fascinated by this mystical country and wanted to venture down and explore it.  Additionally, I don’t want readers of this blog to think I love Montana only because I have never been anywhere else, so without further ado, here is my somewhat unbiased analysis:

There are many comparisons to be made between Montana and Patagonia, but overall it is not 1914 Montana (at least from my observations while there).  There aren’t range wars and copper kings battling it out although there are a lot of sheep ranchers.  When it comes to socio-economic comparison, the area seems more like Montana in the early 1980s.  Infrastructure is expanding at a robust rate to showcase the immense natural beauty found across the region, with several of the bus stations and airports being nearly new.  Most of this new growth is targeted toward backpackers and internationals, with cheaper lodging more readily available, multilingual guides and more public transportation.  The world seems to have just discovered it (or rather decided it is safe).  Chilean and Argentine business owners are incredibly welcoming and hospitable and seem excited to have people from all over the world coming to their corner, much the same way I imagine many Montanan business owners welcoming the influx of tourism in the 1980s.

I love hiking in Glacier National Park(GNP) Montana, but El Parque Nacional de Los Glacieres (directly translated: Glacier National Park) has unfathomably large advancing glaciers that make me think we should rename our GNP  “Formerly Glaciated National Park” or “Glacial Valleys National Park”  to be more accurate by comparison.  The granite slabs of mountain that forcefully stand out of the ground at Los Torres (Torres Del Paine National Park) and Monte Fitz Roy (El Parque Nacional de los Glacieres) are the most impressive mountains I’ve ever seen.  Beyond these two points I’d say the scenery is fairly similar. 

Two major issues I would say Montana has an advantage on when it comes to the outdoors are the abundance of wildlife and trail access.   Unless you find Guanacos (wild and skinnier Alpacas) or ostriches majestic and fascinating, there’s not much in the way of wildlife to get excited about.  There are stags further north and pumas, but it’s not the same as seeing a Grizzly in GNP Montana or a herd of elk in Yellowstone.  Trail wise our GNP has 734 miles of fairly accessible trail, while both Patagonian National Parks we were in had far fewer.  Additionally, even though we went in late season, most trails were fairly crowded. 

I can’t say Patagonia is better than Montana, although certain aspects are, but both offer a tantalizing flavor to the adventurous Montanan.  Kind of like a Cold Smoke and a Baerns Dopple Bock, both great beers, but I’d rather have the Dopple Bock in the winter and the Cold Smoke in the summer.  I feel so blessed that I can vacation in a place that is world renowned in natural beauty and come back to normal life in a place that is just as good with a different flavor, Montana!

Sporadic Recent Posting

My sincere apologize to those (three or so) of you who read my blog, as I have been less than diligent in posting for the last couple months.  I bit off more than I could chew with the once-a-week posting model.  In the future, I will try to consistently post once a month, with more frequency when I have time.  Part of the lack of frequency was due to the fact that I was in Patagonia (Southern Chile and Argentina) for most of the last three weeks.  And although this blog is usually just about Montana, I would like to discuss this trip and how it relates to Montana on this blog, since Patagonia is sometimes compared to Montana. 

More than a Statue- Who the Heck is Charlie Russell?!

If you walk down National Statutory Hall in Washington DC you will probably see a variety of statues you may or may not recognize.  Each state gets two statues and there are many you might recognize from your eight grade history class.  There are founding fathers and former presidents.  But as you wonder down the hall, the mid-west and western states' representatives become harder and harder to recognize.  You might catch yourself wondering out-loud "who is William Edgar Borah?" or even, "who the heck is Charles Marion Russell?"
I can't say much about the latter, but let me tell you, if you live in or travel through Montana, Charles Marion Russell should be part of your experience.  As a tourist, you might notice how often the name Russell appears on streets, buildings and organizations.  Montana has great pride in him and for good reason! Russell is arguably the greatest painter of the American West....Ever!  His style is accurate and informative but in a very artistic way.

He portrayed the West and specifically Montana as it was, because he saw and experienced it as it was.  In an era that portrayed Native Americans with a specific and often inaccurate slant,  Russell displayed a very intimate knowledge of real native culture.  Why?  Because he actually lived with the Bloods (a tribe of natives in North Central Montana) for a time!  He showed the rise and fall of the cattle boom as it was too, because he was there working as a cowboy when it happened.  In fact, his famous painting Waiting for a Chinook portrayed the fall of the cattle boom in a way few were willing to admit at the time.  Even today, many Westerns show an abundance of pasture, seemingly endless cattle and a great life for anyone who can ride a horse and swing a rope.  But the reality was that the 1886 -87 winter put an end to the romanticized cowboy because more than half the cows in Montana died that winter.   After that it was less cows and more sheep.

Even down to the specific details of cowboy gear and native regalia, Russell understood and accurately depicted Montana.  Each painting and sculpture he finished told a story or recalled a cultural nuance.  A quick sampling of his paintings will give you a more accurate feel for the True Montana of the 19th Century than most history books will.  If you've never heard of him, check him out and allow yourself to be drawn into a very different, but very real Montana from the past!

Bull Fight Training and Escaping From Buffalo

I glanced back, hoping I was imagining things, but no, that thousand pound buffalo cow really was chasing me and I was a long ways from my four-wheeler in an open field.  My heart seemed to throb like a drum circle at a pow-wow.  But somewhere in the back of my mind I knew what I had to do.

You see, I had trained my whole life for this moment.  I guess you could say Montana ranch kids are trained to be bull-fighters.  Not the quintessential Spanish Matador, with his sombrero and red cape (or whatever you call it) though I'm sure they are amazing.  No, I mean the guy on the ground during the bull riding at a rodeo.  Not the funny one who jumps in the barrel when the bull riding starts, but the one who actually distracts the bull while the rider gets to the fence.  These "clowns" are real athletes.  There is a high degree of danger, a high degree of athleticism and a high degree of necessary knowledge on how bulls act.

I never thought about it til recently but lots of ranch kids have great training for this profession.  I remember at a farily young age (9 or 10), my Dad telling me how to escape from an angry first calve heifer who is "trying to eat your lunch".  He said that four legged animals can't turn as fast as humans (two legs) can.  So as a human you must run toward a fence and when your four legged foe is pretty close, you must sharply turn or cut one direction. Then with your pursuer off your immediate tail, you must beat it for the fence.  We had one heifer during that time who was especially viscous: "number 71" (so named because of her ear tag).  She chased pretty much everyone but me during that time and was probably made into hamburger after her calf was weened.  I was chased by another heifer and had just enough speed to get to the fence before she caught up with me without using the "quick cut" trick.

But I did use, or try to use that wisdom a few years later.  I was in college and back at the ranch for Christmas break.  We needed to doctor a large cow and so we had roped her and tipped her over so we could give her a shot of penicillin.  It had been quite an ordeal and she was not happy but seemed subdued and reluctant to get up.  I had pulled the ropes off her and thought I might try to motivate her by rubbing the flat part of her forehead with my hand.  It worked I guess, because she sprang to her feet and began to chase me.  I remembered my Dad's words of wisdom and prepared for my sharp cut.  At the precise moment when I made the cut, I tripped over a frozen cow pie and sprawled in the direction I had turned.  Fortunately I was just enough off the path of the cow that she didn't try to hit me on the ground and simply jumped over my feet.

It was this exact memory that was running through my mind as a ran for my life from a very defensive buffalo cow a couple years later.  The only difference was I was out in the middle of an open field a good hundred yards from the four-wheeler and I was all alone on a ranch on the remote Montana high-line.  The adrenaline coursed through my veins as she gained on me (buffalo can out-run a horse for the first hundred yards).  But somehow in the back of my head I knew that all I had to do was make that cut right before she got to me.  This would not end the chase though, as I was not close enough to the four-wheeler to sprint after just one escape.  To my great relief it was a bluff charge and after she closed within ten feet she stopped and snorted, almost as if to let me know what she was capable if she so desired.  Later that same buffalo cow chased someone on a four-wheeler with her horns locked on the rear bumper and vehicle floored for over a hundred yards.  She also rammed a truck with passengers in the bed, so I am glad my incident occurred before she matured into a full fledged man-eater.

Montana really is a wild place in a lot of respects.  More people are killed in national parks by moose than any other animals and we have an abundance of them.  Buffalo chase people and beef cows, especially during calving season see humans as a major threat. So weather you've lived in Montana your whole life or you're simply visiting, remember: if you're being chased by a four-legged creature, let them get close, make a sharp cut and try not to trip over anything while you do it.

Montana's Diversity and Radicals: Janette Rankin to the Freeman

While the geographical diversity might be obvious from the moment you enter Montana (the flat prairie of Eastern Montana contrasting with the stunning Mountains in the West), the diversity within Montanans might not be so obvious.  For one thing most Montanans are white.  You can’t really say a place is ethnically diverse because there are Norwegians, Irish and Italians all living on the same block.  Obviously there are some non-white people groups within Montana but the percentage compared to other states is pretty low.  No, what I am talking about is political diversity. 

Montana has always been and still is a place of radical political views.  Janette Rankin may have started the tradition when she voted against World War I along with seven others in the US House of Representatives (and this was before women had the right to vote nationally).  Then she solidified her place in history, by becoming the only member of US Congress to vote against World War II.  You must admit that took true conviction!

On the other side of the political spectrum, somewhere to the right of constitutionalism and the left of pure anarchism, many Montanans prefer not to interact with the government at all.  There are a growing number of “off-the-gridders” who, correctly or incorrectly, are often associated with the nationally famous Freemen Militia.  These folks try to live as far away from the US Government’s reach as possible and apparently the rural areas of Montana are a great place to do that. 

Montanans are also prone to making outrageous political statements.  Whether it’s a county commissioner telling a group of Native Americans to plant their sacred tree somewhere else because he doesn't want a bunch of “drunk Indians” in his county, or the governor using a hot branding iron to veto (by fire) the opposing party’s bill on the steps of the capital, Montanans have no problem expressing their opinions in extreme and socially unacceptable ways. 

Ideas have consequences and I don’t want to make light of the consequences of some of the above ideas.  Extreme ideas lead to destruction and genocides, but they also lead to declarations of independence and successful overthrows (violent and non-violent) of tyrannical rulers.  I, for one, am very glad I live in a state where people say what they think and don’t pussy-foot-around when it comes to standing up for their beliefs!