I want to wear out my own pants

I’ll wear out my own pants, thank you very much.
On a recent trip to Bozeman I picked up a new pair of Carhartts at a ranch supply store.
Mine are getting a bit ragged and since I wear little else anymore, it was time to get a pair that weren’t frayed, bloodstained or holey.
I’m no clothes horse, but I do know a bit about fashion. Among the many hats I wore during nearly two decades spent sitting at a newspaper features desk was that of fashion editor. I put together back-to-school fashion pages, explored the mystery behind the little black dress and held a light meter for the photographer during swimsuit issue shoots.
I know what tap pants are thanks to the fine folks at Fredericks of Hollywood who once sent me a pair.
All that, however, was back in the day.
Back when I wore khakis and button-down collar shirts.
Now I dress in Carhartts and wool and don’t worry about mix and matching camouflage patterns.
Picking up a new pair of pants requires little thought. Too little apparently.
The new pants turned out to be not what I had been looking for. While they were Carhartt brown, I didn’t realize until I got home that they were actually Carhartt light.
Soft to the touch instead of rough like all the new Carhartts that had preceded them, it turned out the pants didn’t even have double knees.
A card that fell out of one of the pockets explained that these Carhartts had “undergone a special process which results in variations of shading and color.”
I shrieked and dropped them to the floor like they were a pair of acid-washed jeans.
These were the pants all the wannabes wear.
Wannabe construction workers.
Wannabe hunters.
Wannabe Montanans.
Carhartts aren’t supposed to be soft or faded until they’re nearly done. What’s the point of buying a new pair that are already worn out.
Unless of course they’re half price.
But these certainly weren’t.
They were simply halfway to already needing to be replaced when I bought them.
Few of us still change our own oil, butcher our own meat or even mow our own lawns. Many of us, however, still like to look like we do.
We like that worn look of an old pair of Carhartts.
And while it may take me a bit longer than it used to, I can still wear out a pair all by myself.
Even the old-fashioned dark brown kind, stiff as a board with double knees.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

I turn to tree trophy hunting in December

I turn to trophy hunting in December.
Trading rifle and shotgun for an ax, I stalk the timber for a Christmas tree.
It’s a hunt I’ve taken part in since I was old enough to drive.
When I was a kid, my family always bought a tree, but by the time I was 16 I’d decided I could do better cutting my own. It was one of the few instances of my newfound independence that pleased Mom and Dad. My parents were happy to save a few bucks.
Conifers were relatively rare in the Southern Indiana countryside of my youth. Hardwoods filled the river bottoms, and everywhere else, it seemed, the land had been cleared for corn and soybeans.
Thank goodness for Mr. Peabody, made famous in a song about Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, after his Peabody Coal Co. “hauled it all away.”
The much-maligned practice of strip-mining provided my early Christmas trees. After the land had been turned upside down to reach veins of coal, the resulting spoil banks were planted with pines. Acres and acres of rolling land covered with conifers.
I’d walk the ridges, spot a likely trophy, and move in for closer inspection, eventually selecting a tree worthy of harvest.
The process used to take longer than it does now. I’d spot a tree, hike over to it, then realize it was 14-feet tall. I’d see another and think it was the perfect tree before closer inspection revealed it was actually two trees growing next to each other.
And as I grow older I’ve learned how to adjust the less-than-perfect tree. A shortage of branches on one side simply means the tree will stand closer to the wall. No branches on the bottom allows presents to be stacked higher.
But after nearly 40 years of cutting down my own Christmas trees maybe I just know what I want. Then again, my wife and I may have so many ornaments to hang that any imperfection is well hidden.
This year’s hunt took less than an hour. On an island in an ice-covered river flowing out of the Beartooth Mountains, I found a nice fir growing closely among a stand of dozens of its ilk.
A few strokes of the ax and I had the tree on the ground, tagged it with a Forest Service permit and dragged it back to the truck less than a mile away.
The tree is too tall as they often are, but a little off the top, a foot off the bottom and it will fit nicely in the living room.
For a couple of weeks the house will smell of evergreen, just like the mountains, and the backwoods of my youth.
May you all have a tree to enjoy this holiday season.
Merry Christmas.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

First snowflakes send me packing

It may have been the weather.
Following two months of sunny days and balmy temperatures, fall abruptly turned the corner toward winter last week.
Then the general hunting season closed and it was time to put away the rifle.
Whatever the reason, I was at the computer Monday making reservations for a campsite on Tampa Bay.
Salt in the air.
Palm trees on the horizon.
Fish on the line.
Have I become such a wimp that the first snowflakes of the season send me packing?
Not quite.
There’s a month left to hunt pheasants, follow wild-flushing sharptails into the next county and shoot a ruffed grouse or two in the foothills of the Beartooths.
I may even pull out those plastic grocery bags in the pocket of my hunting coat and use them to try to lure a white goose into range.
But when the mercury drops out of the thermometer and my hands are too stiff to feel the safety on the Browning my thoughts will head south, to sea trout and redfish, bars accessible only by boat, and sunburned feet.
Although I never considered myself a snowbird I find I’ve become one. For years now, my wife and I have hitched our boat to the truck and driven to Florida for the month of March.
Maybe it’s because we live out of a tent when we’re there, avoid retirement communities and don’t play shuffleboard that I consider what we do different.
However, it’s really not. While we endure most of winter‘s wrath, we don’t stick it out until spring. We flee Montana unashamedly on March 1, driving as fast as the law allows to reach a warmer clime.
And even though our departure is months away, I’ve already refolded the tent and readied the boat for the road.
It’s hard to embrace winter in northcentral Montana. Unlike the mountainous regions of the state where folks enjoy months of skiing and snowmobiling, winter recreation up here is limited to ice fishing on windswept lakes and trying to stay on your feet as you cross the frozen Albertson’s parking lot.
Fortunately it’s not winter yet. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.
There are still roosters to roust out of the cattails and Hungarian partridge huddled together on the edge of the stubble.
There may even be a late elk hunt in the mix.
It’s been a spectacular fall and a change in weather was long overdue.
So what do I have to complain about?
After all, there are palm trees on the far horizon.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

So that's what four-wheelers are for

I’m a slow learner.
Maybe that’s why it took me so long to appreciate the value of 4-wheelers during hunting season.
After all, it remains illegal to drive them off-road on nearly all public land in Montana, and they’re about as welcome as brucellosis-infected buffalo on private land.
But open just about any hunting magazine on the rack and there’s a picture of a camo-clad hunter riding one. Turn on the Outdoor Channel and it’s apparent 4-wheelers have even become a necessity for duck hunters.
So what was I missing?
For years now -- decades actually -- I’ve been hunting without one and enjoyed a relatively high rate of success. At the least I’ve enjoyed the quiet.
Then it dawned on me that I rarely see one on the ground. ATVs are almost always perched in the bed of a pickup truck.
Last weekend it finally became clear, 4-wheelers are simply ballast, sandbags for the 21st century.
I was hunting breaks country an hour from my home where the common, albeit illegal, method of hunting is to drive the flats above the broken country and glass for game.
My son-in-law and I had just picked up his muley buck from a two-track where he had dragged it when we saw a truck speeding along a high ridge above us. At a distance it appeared there were hunters riding in the back, but a look through the binoculars showed a 4-wheeler, not hunters, in the bed of the truck.
Two muley does and a small buck ran across the bench a half mile in front of us and we stopped to watch the action. The pickup, bearing Montana plates and four orange-clad yahoos, went racing after the deer.
And then it all became clear.
The truck, high-tailing it off-road after the deer, wasn’t bouncing at all, despite the rough terrain. The ATV in the back was apparently providing enough weight to keep the truck on the ground at 50 mph across the short-grass prairie.
We watched as the pickup skidded to a halt and a hunter jumped out, resting his rifle on the hood. But the deer kept going and the hunter leapt back into the truck and off it roared.
Although we never did hear a shot, it was a pleasure to watch such a quality hunt unfold, especially now that I understood the meaning of it all.
One question, however, remains.
Aren’t sandbags a lot cheaper?
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

Curtain drops on another antelope season

The curtain has closed on this year’s antelope season.
The Rodney Dangerfield of Montana big game animals, pronghorn just can’t get any respect.
Most hunters pursue them as an afterthought, or, at best as something to hunt until the general big game season opens.
Chased by hunters in pickups and four-wheelers, shot en masse when they pile up at fence corners, and derogatorily referred to as “speed goats,” antelope deserve better.
Creatures of open country with eyesight far better than ours, they’re tough to stalk within range.
As dramatically marked as any big game animal in North America and related to no other critter on the continent, antelope also offer a unique hunting opportunity. Work hard, stay low, take your time. You’ll get a shot.
Miss and they’ll give you another chance because antelope don’t hide. They may run a mile or two, but won’t disappear like deer and elk. They’ll gather in the distance and watch for your approach.
Impatience does in the majority of antelope hunters. Too many hunters shoot before closing the distance. After all, through that nine-power scope they look sooo close and you just crawled through a prickly pear patch. Squeeze off a shot at 300 yards, forgetting your intended target is not much bigger than a German shepherd, and watch them all run away.
Antelope like to run.
But they’re also curious.
Walk toward them in plain sight and they’ll sometimes let you get within range. Drop into the sagebrush and they’ll sometimes come closer to see where you went.
Sometimes.
Most of the time, they’ll run.
Get one down though, and you’ll find they are far easier to pack out than deer or elk, and despite the rumors, make excellent table fare.
Someone’s always asking “How can you eat those stinky old things?”
Grilled with garlic and butter works for me.
While antelope have a unique odor, it’s in the hair and disappears once you jerk off the hide. The meat has a dense texture and mild flavor. There’s just not enough of it.
Better than whitetail or muley, antelope eats as well as the best elk.
But it doesn’t make any difference.
The bull elk that rises out of its bed in the timber and stands broadside to the hunter who kills it at 50 feet is a far more revered big game trophy.
And the loins of a swollen-necked whitetail buck draw considerably more praise around the dinner table.
Pronghorn antelope. They just can’t get any respect.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

The big buck dream always ends the same

The dream always ends the same.
Someone else shoots the buck.
He wasn’t one of those deer I had to think twice about. With tall heavy antlers spreading wider than his ears, the muley was bigger than any I’d seen in years. Maybe as big as I’d ever seen and I’ve looked at a lot of deer.
But he was out of range when I spotted him and he’d already seen me so I just sat down and watched him through the binoculars.
Although it was early in the season, he appeared to be rutting. There were half a dozen does with him and he acted more interested in them than in me. Eventually the deer moved to the top of an open ridge and one by one disappeared over the other side, the big buck at the end of the line, silhouetted for a few seconds against a pewter sky.
Instead of heading directly after them, I hiked farther up the drainage before crossing the ridge and dropped into a deep coulee on the other side to stay out of sight.
I hadn’t taken more than a couple of steps when four sharptail grouse flushed noisily and rode the current of a rising wind, cackling as they flew.
For three hours I followed the deer, or at least tried to. There were a lot of muleys feeding and moving through the snow-covered breaks that day and every time I spotted movement I stopped and glassed, but didn’t see the big buck again until I crossed two more ridges.
Below me, at the bottom of a steep slope, were a couple of bedded does. I raised the rifle and looked at them through the scope. Then I saw the antlers.
A few yards beyond the does, the big buck was bedded, only his massive rack and the top of his head visible. But he was looking directly at me and before I could punch the safety, he got to his feet and trotted off.
I slipped back over the ridge and ran parallel to the direction I guessed the deer were headed. When the ridge between us broke off at a sandstone cliff, I saw the deer moving casually down the drainage on the other side and I sat in the snow until they were out of sight.
After working around the cliff to the bottom of the drainage, I belly-crawled to the top of a low rise and saw the big buck standing like a sentinel on a bare knob, 250 yards away.
Cold, wet and uncomfortable, I leveled the rifle, found the muley in the crosshairs and squeezed off a shot. The deer took a step and I fired again, this time hearing the impact of the bullet.
By the time I got to my feet the deer had vanished and upon reaching where the buck had been standing I found only the faintest sign of blood.
But it was blood nonetheless and I started following the tracks.
Two hours later, head down, trying to find the trail on a bare, south-facing slope, I heard a snort and looked up to see the big buck racing through a cut in a steep ridge.
From behind, antlered game animals always appear bigger than they actually are and this deer looked enormous.
It was also the last look I had at him. I got to the cut as quickly as I could, but it was too late. He was nowhere in sight. Light was fading and I was miles from the truck. It was time to give up the chase.
I haven’t been back. The weather warmed the next day and melting snow made the country inaccessible.
It was only the third time in nearly 40 years of big game hunting I can remember losing a wounded animal and it haunts me, especially in my dreams.
That’s where I keep seeing the big buck.
The one I didn’t get.
The one someone else shoots.
Every time I close my eyes.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

Hunting in 21st century takes 4-wheels

What was I thinking?
For some archaic reason I’ve been under the impression that hunting is supposed to be done on foot.
Like this is still the 20th century.
Then I saw the light. Or maybe it was the sun reflecting off the 4-wheeler that caught my eye.
But there it was, deep in the Breaks, a mile from the nearest road – an ATV traversing the same country through which I was walking.
Sure, the rider was there illegally. Off-road motorized travel is outlawed on lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management. But with 8.3 million acres of BLM land in Montana and just 10 enforcement officers to track down violators, who’s to know?
“It’s really hard to catch people,” says Mary Apple, a BLM spokeswoman in Billings.
Besides, what good is a 4-wheeler if you can’t take it places your 4-wheel drive pickup can’t already go? Isn’t that the point?
And since they don’t require a road, ATVs have redefined road-hunting.
This is, after all, the 21st century, an age in which hunters no longer have to worry about getting lost, thanks to GPS, losing touch, thanks to cell phones, or breaking a sweat, thanks to the 4-wheeler.
You can hardly pick up an outdoor magazine that isn’t filled with full-page ads for ATVs, showing them splashing through clear mountain streams or climbing rocky trails above timberline. And what cable television hunting show doesn’t feature 4-wheelers, if only to show them parked in the background?
“We’d like to thank our fine sponsors,” drawl every camo-clad host on the tube, who wouldn’t have a show were it not for Polaris, Yamaha or Honda.
Even duck hunters, it appears, need 4-wheelers to pursue their sport.
So what was I thinking, trudging up and down hill and dale on foot when I could have been seated in relative comfort, fingers warm and toasty wrapped around heated hand grips, rifle held securely in a scabbard, onboard GPS keeping track of where I’d been so I didn’t have to?
Maybe it’s time to embrace this new technology. With the money I could save on aspirin for my aching knees, an ATV might just be within my budget.
Whether it’s stubbornness of simply a case of bad vision, I seem to take longer than most to see the light. It was years before I gave up wool for fleece, I remain a bit uncomfortable with email and still think blackberries are best cooked in a pie.
Here’s hoping the sun reflecting off that 4-wheeler in the Breaks opens my eyes to hunting in the 21st century.

I don't want to press my luck

It’s beginning to look like I got out just in time.
Before moving to Malta last year I did most of my hunting in Park County. Each fall since the late 1970s found me roaming the mountains around Yellowstone National Park in search of elk. It’s hardly unusual to see bears in that part of the world, but still, in all the years I hunted there, I only saw two grizzlies.
Apparently things changed this fall. Five hunters have been mauled by bears in places I used to hunt.
Two bowhunters were attacked by grizzlies in Beattie Gulch, another hunter was attacked by a grizzly while black bear hunting in the Little Trail Creek area north of Gardiner in September and a bowhunter was attacked in Tom Miner Basin early last month.
Then a California man was badly mauled Tuesday in the same general area by a bear that took a swipe at him, knocking his eyeball from its socket and severely damaging his face.
Suddenly I don’t miss Park County elk hunting so much.
The last bull I shot was up Beattie Gulch, a drainage bordering the park in sight of Gardiner, not the kind of place you’d expect to be attacked by a grizzly. It’s surrounded by national park and private land and can be hunted in a couple of hours.
Most hunters head up the open hillside before first light and then check the timber halfway up the slope for tracks of any elk that may have wandered out of the park during the night.
Traffic on U.S. 89 can be seen and heard from most anywhere up Beattie Gulch. But Beattie, like Little Trail Creek and Tom Miner Basin, while easily accessible, borders huge tracts of wild land that harbor grizzly bears.
For that reason I may have been a better hunter down there. Knowing it was bear country kept me on my toes and made me pay attention.
Antelope hunting last week on the prairie south of town, I stepped into a covey of sage grouse that exploded around me as they rose. Had I not been daydreaming as I picked my way through the sagebrush I would have seen them.
But while close-flushing birds may scare the pants off me, they won’t maul me or eat me. And now that it’s started to cool off, there aren’t any rattlesnakes to worry about.
A friend from Gardiner who had come up to visit last week asked if I was going to make it down for an elk hunt before the season ends.
“I’d like to,” I told him. “But I think I’ll wait until the bears hibernate.”
I don’t want to press my luck.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

Archers battling each other in Breaks

While bow hunters in the southern mountains of Montana were fighting grizzly bears this fall, archers in the Missouri Breaks were battling each other.
Apparently an increase of 66 permits was just too much for the twangers to bear.
According to a recent news release from the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, both hunters and law enforcement officers reported more conflicts this year than ever before.
“Several hunters reported verbal threats made against them and assault charges are pending against one individual,” the FWP said.
Wildlife managers blame an increase in hunters and a greater concentration of elk in the river bottom this year.
As the elk population ballooned on the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, the waters of Fort Peck Reservoir receded, creating more habitat along the Missouri River bottom.
“Elk sought out those places,” said Matt DeRosier of the CMR.
So did hunters.
But while there’s habitat now where there used to be none, it simply concentrated elk and hunters on the river instead of dispersing them in the Breaks.
A total of 1,715 archery permits were issued for Hunting District 620 in southern Phillips County this year compared to 1,649 in 2006.
Most of those hunters were concentrated along a narrow strip of river bottom running east from the Fred Robinson Bridge to Fourchette Bay.
It’s little wonder there’s no harmony among bowhunters, more than 1,500 nimrods all hoping to stick an arrow in an elk. And until they start walking and talking the camo-clad crowd is invisible to each other.
While rifle hunters are required to wear blaze orange, it’s perfectly legal to dress like a special forces sniper while bow hunting. Unfortunately they’re also starting to act like Rambo.
Hunters tend to shy away from other hunters who wear orange because they spot them at a distance. Archers on the other hand have no such way to avoid confrontation with other archers. They can’t see each other until it’s too late. Somebody is in somebody else’s space. Or face.
Conflict is inevitable.
And we’re going to see it. In this day of camera phones and Youtube someone is sure to capture a couple of bow hunters going at it in an outdoors version of World Extreme Cagefighting.
In the southern mountain ranges bordering Yellowstone National Park this fall four bow hunters tangled with grizzlies.
Along the Missouri river in north-central Montana, a handful of bow hunters exchanged threats and punches.
Too bad they didn’t have grizzly bears to worry about instead of each other.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

Age of two-sport athlete is over

The age of the two-sport athlete is over.
What didn’t work for Michael Jordan shouldn’t work for Montana sportsmen either.
So says Victor Workman, a member of the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission who wants big game hunters in the state to choose their weapons –- rifle or bow – and no longer be allowed to hunt with both as they can now.
“It’s an effort to curb the amount of wounding that happens by archery hunters who one might describe as part-time hunters,” Workman recently told the Billings Gazette.
The commissioner from District 1 in the northwest part of the state reasons that archers who commit to using only a bow and not switching to a rifle when the general big game season opens will become better shots with a bow. Full-time archers, if you will.
It could be the start of a trend.
In an effort to improve efficiency among outdoor folk of all stripes, perhaps limiting them to one discipline is the ticket.
Fly fishermen, tired of never catching any fish, would no longer be allowed to make the switch to bait.
And vice versa.
Catfish anglers, unable to wash the smell of rancid chicken livers off their hands, couldn’t change into color-coordinated outfits and flail the waters with 9-foot split bamboo rods.
Whitetail hunters who use shotguns and slugs in areas where rifles aren’t allowed would no longer be allowed to hunt elk with their 7–mags. Making the mental switch from short range to long is simply too difficult. Just ask Workman, who claims to have a lot of support for his proposal.
And if weapons-specific laws work, why not species-specific regulations, too?
Turkey hunters would be just that. The law would prevent them from ever taking off their camouflage head nets or face paint – a perfectly acceptable situation for most of them.
Upland bird hunters would have to choose a single species – snipe, for example, or sage grouse. Never firing a shot at anything in the air other than your chosen bird would undoubtedly make you a more efficient hunter.
On the other hand, there’s also the chance Workman’s idea would ruin hunting for a lot of guys who shoot both a rifle and a bow. Fewer opportunities and more rules in a sport some folks say is already dying may not be the direction the FWP Commission wants to go. Especially when even Workman admitted he had no figures on game wounded by either archers or riflemen.
But he’d like you to consider his proposal anyway.
It turned out Michael Jordan couldn’t hit a minor league curve ball. Think what a basketball player he could have been had he never picked up a baseball bat.

Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

A story about a guy from Butte, America

It probably matters more where you’re from this time of year than any other.
Permission to hunt private property is usually granted more readily if the plates on your pickup sport the number of one of Montana’s lesser populated counties.
It may take a bit more time to convince the landowner you’ll shut the gates and not shoot his cows if you’re from out of state or happen to reside in Yellowstone, Gallatin or Flathead counties.
Worse yet, is getting permission to hunt when your rig bears plates with the number 1. Folks who live in Montana’s hinterland remain a bit leery of residents of Butte.
A rough and tumble mining town in its long past prime, Butte isn’t so different from most other Montana cities anymore, unless of course you happen to be from there and think referring to it as “Butte, America,” makes perfect sense.
Luckily, for residents of the Big Sky state’s larger cities, a plethora of new license plates celebrating everything from pets to unborn babies are available to disguise the fact they hail from Billings or Kalispell.
My friend Dallas has special license plates on his pickup. But like any good Butte native, although he has lived in the Gallatin Valley for years, the plates trumpet his heritage. “Butte, the Mining City,” they read.
Folks from Butte, America tend to be proud of it no matter what anyone else thinks.
So here’s a story about a guy from Butte.
Dallas and his 15-year-old son came up to stay with me last weekend for the opener of antelope season.
Fans of the Colorado Rockies, they stayed up until nearly midnight Saturday to watch the Rox beat the Phillies and win the National League Division Series, then woke at 4:30 a.m. to get ready for their hunt.
Dallas had to be back at work the next morning and his kid couldn’t miss school so this was their only day to chase speed goats.
They walked deep into a block management hunting area before first light only to discover every other yahoo with an antelope tag for the area was also hunting there.
But like Buttians do, they persevered. Dallas’s son shot a nice buck and by early afternoon they were back at the house. An hour later they had showered and packed their gear. We said our goodbyes and they climbed into the truck for the five-hour trip back to Manhattan.
A short while later there was a knock on the door. It was Dallas.
Twenty miles south of town, near the area they had been hunting, Dallas and his son spotted two rifles lying by the side of the road.
He said he had been tempted to keep on driving. Let someone else stop. It was already going to be a long trip home.
But the guy from Butte did stop, pick up the rifles and turn the truck around. He’d sure hate to lose his rifle that way, he told me. And the next guy that stopped might just keep them.
Dallas was still at the Phillips County Sheriff’s Office when a young couple walked through the door and announced they’d lost their rifles.
They tried to give Dallas a reward, but he wouldn’t take one, so they stuffed 50 bucks in his kid’s shirt pocket.
His son is going to use the money to take his dad out for a steak dinner.
He’s proud of his old man.
And he should be.
After all, he’s from Butte.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

Hitchock started it with The Birds

Don’t blame Alfred Hitchcock.
I was 11 years old when I first saw “The Birds.”
It remains one of my favorite movies.
But it’s not simply the idea of crows, seagulls and sparrows attacking humans that intrigues me, it’s the shots they offer -- left to right and right to left passing shots, straight-aways and incomings, lot of incomings.
I fantasize about rescuing Tippi Hedren with my Model 12, racking a shell into the chamber and dusting the gull that attacks her early in the film.
And Suzanne Pleshette never would have died had I been there to fend off the crows.
But most of all I dream about birds flying closer instead of farther away. Therein lies the advantage of hunting birds on the fight.
The birds I hunt are seldom closer on the second shot. Rarely does the Hungarian partridge that flushes in front of my dogs come toward me.
Oh, sure, every once in a while a bird does fly in my direction, but rarely does that bird live to pass on his flawed genes.
Unfortunately, the birds that flush out of range and fly over the horizon seem to do most of the breeding.
What fun it would be to hunt ducks that didn’t flare when they spotted my poorly camoflauged carcass, but flew at me instead.
I’m sure I’d become a better shot. Give those sharptail grouse flushing out of range a few seconds to spot me and here they’d come, closer and closer until even I couldn’t miss.
And if I did.
No big deal.
It’s not like missing a shot at a charging Cape buffalo.
Even though the birds in Hitchcock’s film killed a number of folks, I think I could easily handle the average grouse in hand-to-wing combat.
At least I hope so.
I hate to think I’d turn and run, screaming like a little girl while that sage grouse I missed cleanly pecks me on the back of the head.
But who knows? The humiliation of losing a fight to a three-pound bird might send me into a comatose state like the one that befell Hedren after she was pecked and wing-slapped into unconsciousness by a swarm of gulls.
Had she been packing a Winchester pump, I like to think she’d have been able to control her emotions and pile up those birds like a dove hunter in Mexico.
But that’s just fantasy.
My reality is quite different.
It involves a lot of misses at the south end of too many fast-flying northbound birds.
I can’t blame Hitchcock for that.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

Hunting season has returned at last

Only in Montana could I have such an opening day.
First light on Sept. 1, found my son-in-law Aaron and I hunting ruffed grouse in the Beartooth Mountains south of Livingston.
The dogs put up a few singles, but I missed the only shot I took. By 10 a.m. it had gotten hot and we called it quits.
On the way back to town we slowed to watch mule deer and whitetails still in their summer coats, and surprised a young black bear feeding on chokecherries at the edge of the road.
In the distance we could see three mountain ranges, the Crazies, the Bridgers and the Gallatins. The longest undammed river in the lower 48 -- the Yellowstone -- wound through the valley below us.
Back in Livingston I hitched my drift boat to the truck, said my goodbyes and headed home to Malta. Once hunting season arrives, I pretty much give up fishing, but with a little camouflage, the boat will make a great duck blind.
The skies were clear of smoke across the middle of Montana and I watched the state’s lesser-known mountain ranges rise on the horizon likes ships at sea. First the Snowies and the Little Belts, then north of Lewistown, the Judiths and the Moccasins.
Every stock tank I passed, it seemed, held ducks and geese and a stiff wind blowing out of the west hinted at more to come.
I ate chile rellenos in Lewistown and let the dogs swim there in Big Spring Creek where it passes through town before getting back on the road.
Smoke from wildfires still burning in the Bob Marshall Wilderness drifted across the Missouri Breaks and hid the last mountain range of the trip, the Little Rockies, until I topped the hill on Highway 191 above the Fred Robinson Bridge and they appeared out of the haze.
Sage grouse and sharptails fed along the edge of the pavement, nearly invisible against the dry grass, and a pheasant flushed as the truck blew past, filling the mirror with a blur of wings.
Scattered bunches of antelope grazed across the prairie in the fading light and I slowed to watch a badger scramble off the road at my approach.
Finally I topped the last hill and the green line of the Milk River bottom bisected the arid landscape below me. I was nearly home.
I’d been skunked on opening day, but it was a day to remember nonetheless.
And it was only the beginning.
Hunting season has returned at last.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

Transforming Montana for the rich

It’s beginning to sound like a broken record -- another developer claiming his transformation of a working ranch into an exclusive second-home enclave for the very rich is a good thing.
Now a developer in Park County is asking the state to sell him two square-mile sections of public land. The acquisition will allow him to finish the “environmentally friendly” subdivision he plans there.
Wade Dokken touts his proposed Ameya Preserve in “the vast wilderness of Montana’s Paradise Valley” as “a bold new vision where nature meets culture.”
State wildlife officials disagree.
Tom Lemke, a biologist with the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks wrote that the project “would result in loss of important wildlife habitat, reduced wildlife use of the area, and new and complicated wildlife-human conflicts associated with subdivision.”
Lemke says selling the public land to Dokken will only make the problems worse.
But Dokken, who quit his day job on Wall Street as CEO of American Skandia, is offering $3.8 million for the two state-owned sections.
Guess who’s going to win? The wildlife biologist whose priority is the land and the animals or the developer who hopes to sell home sites there for up to $1.7 million.
I’ll put my money on Dokken.
If you believe everything on his Web page, Dokken is simply doing this for the good of us all.
Like an executive for the logging industry, he writes: “Our human presence can measurably add to the health of the wilderness and the majestic fauna that depend on the land.”
Make that “wealthy human presence.”
This will be another gated community.
Kind of like it used to be.
But the gate was always open when the place was the Bullis Creek Ranch. The three generations of ranchers who lived there gave anyone permission to hunt the place as long as they walked or rode horseback.
Then the land became more valuable than the cows and the ranch sold.
First to a wealthy Texan who built a mansion high on a windswept ridge where everyone could see it and then to Dokken.
His plans include a general store, spa, art center, 39 custom-designed homes along with their accompanying roads, driveways and parking lots. All for the good of the environment, of course.
And it will be built entirely up the remote drainage instead of on the valley floor on the already-established county road where the ranch families lived.
There’s certainly no better way to preserve the land than to build smack-dab in the middle of it.
Just ask Dokken.
After all, his is a bold, new vision.
Even if it does sound like we’ve heard it before.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

An ode to Uncle Bob

My Uncle Bob spent the last three weeks of his life fishing.

In failing health he had been admitted to a nursing home by his daughters, who despite their love for their father, could no longer care for him.

He didn’t know a soul in the place, my cousin Mary Ann told me over the phone, so he would lie on his back with his eyes closed and go through the motions of casting his line.

“Did you see that one,” he would ask.

“Dad was still fishing,” Mary Ann told me.

Eventually he just stopped breathing and slipped quietly away during the night. That was Uncle Bob, never wanting a fuss made over him.

I can see him sitting in the bow of his 14-foot boat, a sculling paddle in one hand and a long bamboo pole in the other, dropping minnows into submerged brush piles in the shallow bays, hoisting out crappie and bass.

Uncle Bob had been a grocer in Indiana and Kentucky until a heart attack prompted his retirement from the A&P Tea Co. He and Aunt Betty bought a house in the woods near a TVA reservoir where they kept a bird dog, raised tomatoes, and fished the big lake just down the hill.

They had invited me for a visit shortly before I first got married and I was taken with the country. Western Kentucky was rolling and tree covered and we caught lots of fish.

My wife and I eventually moved to an apartment less than a mile from Uncle Bob and Aunt Betty’s place and I got a job at a marina on the lake.

For two years I lived in Kentucky and my mother’s brother became my best friend. We hunted and fished together, I helped him get in his firewood and we explored the wilder country in the area on foot.

We even picked mistletoe one winter intending to sell it, but instead traded our harvest for a case of beer at the A&P in Paducah where Uncle Bob knew the manager.

I moved to Montana for good the next summer and over the years my uncle and I lost touch. I knew he’d moved in with my cousin in Louisville a few years after Aunt Betty died and I saw him one last time in South Carolina at Mary Ann’s two years ago.

She had warned me Uncle Bob suffered from occasional bouts of dementia, but I wouldn’t have known. Although his hearing was about gone and his eyesight failing, he was the same old Uncle Bob to me.

“We sure had some good times together, didn’t we?” he asked. “I don’t hunt or fish any more, you know. I hope you still do.”

I told him yes, I hunt and fish more than I should and he said that was OK, nothing wrong with huntin’ and fishin.’

So I’m taking my uncle’s advice.

It served him well to the end of his days.

And he knew from where his blessing came. Uncle Bob paid an organist to play Sundays at the tiny country church he attended a few miles from the lake because otherwise the church would have no music.

No wonder he got to fish until the very end.

Opportunistic bears climbing in windows

The Big Sky area is suffering a rash of break-ins this summer.
Blame the recent hot weather.
Most residents of the tony development near Yellowstone National Park don’t have air conditioners and have been leaving doors and windows open during the record heat wave that’s baked Montana since late June.
In an effort to stop the break-ins, three repeat offenders were even put to death.
But the criminal activity continues, says game warden Joe Knarr with Montana’s Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
“They go house to house until they find an open window,” says Knarr, who’s investigated dozens of break-ins at Big Sky since the beginning of July.
It’s not thieves rifling through the silverware drawer, however, that have Big Sky residents on edge. Instead, it’s opportunistic black bears climbing through windows looking for food.
So far, no one’s gotten hurt, but nine bears have been trapped and three euthanized.
Like the saying goes: “a fed bear is a dead bear.”
And while the problem in Big Sky hasn’t been tied to improperly stored dog food and bird seed or a lack of bear-proof garbage containers, the solution is even simpler: lock the windows and doors.
If it’s too hot, buy an air-conditioner. This is, after all, a community of second homes. Residents should be able to handle the extra expense.
Regulations concerning garbage storage and collection are already in effect at Big Sky, but Knarr says with so many rental units there, guaranteeing a constant influx of newcomers, a lot of folks don’t understand the do’s and don’ts of living in bear country.
A similar problem in the Rattlesnake area near Missoula a few years ago resulted in the euthanization of 15 bears and the relocation of 30 others.
Efforts to educate residents there reversed the situation.
But as more and more people move into bear country and the number of bruins increases, problems are sure to persist.
Newcomers need keep their urban edge when they arrive in the last, best place. Just like at home, lock the doors and windows, don’t leave anything out in the yard untended and participate in neighborhood watches.
However, unlike at home, report any bear sightings and get to know your neighbors.
These aren’t your typical thieves and the solution to the problem lies in getting rid of the temptation, not in locking up the offenders.
Montana’s abundant wildlife, clean air and safe environment continue to attract new residents. Unless they’re careful, the Big Sky state will become a lot more like where they came from and less and less like where they thought they were headed.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

One step at a time

My father died in a fall last winter.

His demise was frequently on my mind as I picked my way across 90 miles of trail through the Bob Marshall Wilderness earlier this month with two friends.

I didn’t want to suffer a similar fate and end up at the top of the page.

Not that there was much chance of slipping in the bathroom and hitting my head on the sink like Dad did.

But there was certainly the risk of a fall.

I’m of that age group now where falls are a leading cause of death. So I watched my step and stayed on my feet. Especially when the trail crossed a particularly steep slope and the whole world, it seemed, dropped into the abyss below me.

Outdoors columnist stumbles on wilderness trail, plunges to his death

I only needed rescuing once. Foolishly crossing the White River without a wading staff near the end of a long day, I was having trouble maintaining my balance in the stiff current.

Grandfather swept away in raging torrent, feared dead

Luckily, Ben, who had crossed ahead of me, looked back and saw my plight. He dropped his pack, returned to the river and gave me a hand.

If given a choice, always hike with younger, stronger companions.

Just make sure you keep up.

After losing our way along the base of the spectacular Chinese Wall, I lost sight of Ben and Erik as we searched for the trail. Bushwacking through the sub-alpine terrain, I nearly stumbled into the excavation a grizzly had made digging up ground squirrels.

Montana man falls in hole, eaten by bear

Whistling loudly, I caught up with my companions and kept them close the rest of the trip.

Erik fell once when he stepped on the outside edge of the trail across a sidehill and it gave way. He dropped to the ground with one leg bent beneath him, gathered himself and regained his feet.

Had I taken that fall, I doubt my recovery would have been as smooth as Erik’s.

Former newspaperman crippled after trail accident

Eight days of putting one foot in front of the other, up and down switchbacks, across rivers and over deadfall, through mud and brush, hopping from one rock to another without a single fall.

I tried to pay attention even when I was exhausted, take care when I wanted to hurry and rest when I’d reached the end of my rope.

The pounding took a toll on my joints and I used half a roll of first aid tape on my blisters, but I didn’t become another statistic.

Aging hiker falls off face of the Earth

I survived the wilderness relatively unscathed. Now If I can just remember to watch my step in the bathroom.

Hike left me craving more than basics

I lack for little.
Happily married, well-fed and clothed, I sleep in a comfortable bed, turn up the thermostat when I’m cold and step into the shower when I’m dirty.
If I crave ice cream, beer or fried pork rinds, the grocery’s just down the street. An all-night convenience store a few blocks away conveniently satisfies my hunger for pizza and doughnuts at any hour of the night.
For the past week, however, I’ve been unable to satisfy those cravings. On an extended backpacking trip through the Bob Marshall Wilderness, I’m carrying everything I need on my back.
And everything I need certainly doesn’t include everything I want.
An ice cold bottle of beer would sure taste good about now. So would a bowl of Cherry Garcia ice cream.
Wilderness travel reduces life to the bare essentials. Food becomes little more than fuel, a tiny tent offers shelter from the elements and comfort comes on a long stretch of downhill trail.
A dog-eared paperback takes the place of cable television and instant oatmeal replaces bacon and eggs.
Cold? Throw another log on the fire.
Wet? Get used to it.
Come the end of the trip, there will be cravings to satisfy for sure. Fresh fruit, potato chips, milk shakes, meat.
Years ago I worked for an outfitter in Cooke City. Following weeks living in a tent high in the Beartooth Mountains I would head to the general store to indulge myself as soon as I got back to town.
However, it’s been years now that I’ve spent much time in the wilderness, years that I’ve been able to satisfy even the simplest craving, peppermint patties and bottled water seemingly always at my fingertips.
This time I want to do things differently. After a week of living simply, I hope to be able to show a bit of restraint, continue doing without some of those things I’ve found I don’t actually need.
Like an Indian mystic returning from a vision quest, I would like to come back wiser, kinder, more patient.
But who am I kidding. About now, I’d die for a cheeseburger, sell my soul for a popsicle and trade this backpack and everything in it for one night in a comfortable bed.
For sure, instant oatmeal, jerky and powdered drink mix won’t be on my menu anytime soon. Certainly not once I return to the land of indulgence, where cheese nachos and a Dove bar are seldom more than a few blocks away.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

Dreading that second can of bear spray

I recently purchased my first can of bear spray.
Hopefully, it’s my last.
Buying another would mean I had occasion to use it, and although that’s not something I relish, it would offer proof the first can worked.
Upon hearing I was planning a week-long backpacking trip through the Bob Marshall Wilderness, a friend suggested I bring along a sawed-off shotgun.
“Lots of grizzlies up there,” he told me. “Lots of grizzlies.”
“I’m packing bear spray,” I said.
My friend laughed.
So did I.
“Good luck,” he said, shaking his head.
A lot of outdoor folk, hunters and horse packers foremost among them, have little confidence in bear spray. Given a choice, they’d prefer a shotgun or hand cannon.
I’d prefer to run. Not that I can outrun a grizzly, but like the old joke goes, I just have to run faster than you.
Unfortunately I don’t have the wheels I used to and I’m the slowest guy on this trip.
Still, I didn’t actually buy the bear spray. My wife did after telling me I couldn’t go on the trip without it.
Had it been left up to me, I would have skipped the spray and packed more food. That can must weigh as much as four bags of jerky.
And I never considered carrying a firearm on the trip. Unless the weapon was in my hands or on my belt ready for a quick-draw it probably wouldn’t do me much good anyway.
I’ve experienced a number of close encounters of the grizzly kind both armed and unarmed. I ran into a pair of young grizzlies a few years ago while elk hunting. They answered my cow call at close range and the big game rifle in my hands offered little comfort as we all stared at each other from 50 feet.
The tree I climbed to avoid a big boar in Yellowstone Park was considerably more comforting than any rifle.
I spotted the grizzly on a game trail through the snow and he charged as soon as I reached for my camera. I climbed like a monkey 20 feet up the closest tree.
Another bear I surprised on an elk carcass in the sagebrush raced off at my approach, then stopped and watched me slowly back downhill away from him.
Had I been packing bear spray in any of those instances, I doubt my behavior would have been much different. But I’m sure the can would have been in my hand.
I’ve read enough stories about charging bears being turned away by pepper spray to believe the stuff works. I just hope I never have to buy that second can.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

Time to dig out that old backpack

There’s a map on the wall in my house of Isle Royale National Park. A friend and I hiked 60-some miles carrying backpacks from one end of the island to the other 35 years ago.
The map is just another souvenir from back in the day.
And now that I’m 55, I worry a bit that I spend too much time reminiscing about back in the day and not enough time living this one.
But when I was recently invited on a 10-day backpacking trip through the Bob Marshall Wilderness this summer with a couple of younger buddies, I still hesitated.
“Let me check the calendar,” I told Ben when he called.
As if I had something else to do.
To be honest, I found the trip a little daunting.
I gave up backpacking for horse packing shortly after that trip to Isle Royale and except for a couple of extended hikes to sheep-hunting camps in the Beartooths in the mid ‘70s, I hadn’t toted much on my back since.
It didn’t take long, though, before I decided to accept the invitation.
I’d never seen the Bob and this invite sure beat the ones I’ve been getting lately from AARP.
Anyway, I figure I have at least one kick-ass trip left in me. If not, this will be a good opportunity to find out I don’t.
I called Ben back and said count me in.
Then I jumped on my bike and started pedaling. There’s a hill south of town that I’m becoming very familiar with in an effort to avoid being embarrassed on the trip by Ben and Erik, who are both younger than my backpack.
I still have the old school external-frame model I ordered out of an Eddie Bauer catalogue back when Eddie Bauer billed itself as an expedition outfitter and not a trendy fashion outlet.
More difficult than getting in shape, however, is wrapping my head around a trip of this length.
I considered doing it as a vision quest, wearing nothing but a loin cloth and packing no food or sleeping bag, but that idea was quickly vetoed.
Erik seemed to think it was simply a ploy to get him and Ben to carry all the gear, and he was more than a little uncomfortable at the idea of following me up the trail while I was wearing a loin cloth.
This younger generation has no imagination.
So in order to keep on truckin,’ I’ll just have to put one foot in front of the other and carry my own load. It’s been a while, but I’ve done it before.
Maybe in another 35 years I’ll tire of looking at a map of the Bob Marshall Wilderness on my wall.
I can only hope.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

On-line hunting tags not so easy

I was feeling so tech savvy flying around the globe on Google Earth.
Visiting South America.
Looking in on my childhood home in Indiana.
Checking out the breaks on Frenchman Creek where I hunt in the fall.
Then I logged on to the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks Web site to apply for my antelope and elk tags and was quickly brought back to Earth.
Or reality.
Whatever. My computer ineptness returned in an instant to bite me on the … application.
“Did you confirm your ALS number with the computer?” the woman who answered the phone at the FWP help line asked me.
“Huh?” I thought. “How do you confirm something with a computer?”
“And how would I do that?” I replied in as nice a voice as possible.
There was a long pause on the other end of the line and I thought I heard muffled laughter.
It used to be so easy. I would wait until the very last minute, fill out an application for the special tags I wanted, sign my name at the bottom and get it in the mail by June 1.
Sometime in August the results would be mailed to me.
A number of years ago the online option became available. I resisted at first preferring old-school snail mail, but decided to give it a try after an incorrectly filled out application was returned to me and I wasn’t able to hunt antelope that fall.
One big advantage of applying online is that if there are any errors on the application the process will be stopped and you won’t be able to proceed until the problems are remedied.
And there will be errors.
Every step of the way it seems.
At least on my part.
Like the wrong Automated Licensing Service number, a missing digit in my home phone number or the omission of my country of residence.
All of those errors were pointed out to me in red type at the top of the screen, an uncomfortable flashback to my school days.
But I was able to correct every error on my own except one – the ALS number. The longer I looked at it, the more I was convinced I had the right number and FWP didn’t.
Of course I was wrong.
After the nice lady at the FWP help line pointed that out I finished my application with no more trouble.
Until, of course, I tried to print the receipt for the tags I had purchased, including $2.31 for a “convenience fee.” My computer locked up and I got a “not responding” message.
Oh well, it’s done and now all I can do is wait.
Come August I may even try to “confirm” my success in the drawing.
It’s so convenient I could scream.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

No mistaking odor of bat guano

MALTA -- Ahhh, the smell of spring.
I was in the garage last week gathering my fishing gear for a trip to the reservoir east of town, visions of a walleye dinner coursing through my mind, when I got the first whiff.
Whew.
There’s no mistaking the unique odor of bat guano.
I put the spinning rod back on the rack and picked up a hammer. The walleye would have to wait. In a few weeks the bats will be back and I still had holes to plug.
After awakening from a long slumber inside caves in the Little Rocky Mountains south of here, the northernmost colony of migrating little brown bats will return to town.
And more than a few of them will be headed directly to my place where odor of their past inhabitance is unmistakable.
I suspect my wife, Barb, and I got such a good deal on the house we bought here a couple of years ago because of the number of dead bats that littered the inside.
Vacant for a number of years before we moved in, our two-story stone house built in 1915 had enough holes in it to make it a very popular summer destination for members of the colony.
Following months of renovation, the house is now relatively bat-proof, but the garage is not. Sitting on the deck at night last summer, I watched as bats, squeaking eerily, came and went through a hole under the eaves.
Not wanting to trap them to die inside the attic, I decided to wait until they left town before covering all the cracks and holes in the garage with trim.
Then came hunting season when all work is put on hold.
Then came winter when it was too cold to work outside.
And then I forgot about them until spring when I was greeted by the odor of guano and forced to cancel my fishing trip.
Fortunately this isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve lived with wild animal issues before. In Kentucky a family of skunks took residence in the crawl space under my house. In Cooke City black bears raided the beer fridge on the porch of my cabin.
I’m hoping a lack of access to the dark recesses of my garage will persuade the bats to roost elsewhere.
If not, well, I may just have to adjust.
An elderly couple, who used to live down the street, wielded tennis racquets at night while watching television to fend off any bats that dared disrupt their favorite shows.
Come to think of it, my backhand could use some work.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

FOR PUBLICATION ON OR AFTER MAY 13

By Parker Heinlein
Outdoors columnist
MALTA -- Ahhh, the smell of spring.
I was in the garage last week gathering my fishing gear for a trip to the reservoir east of town, visions of a walleye dinner coursing through my mind, when I got the first whiff.
Whew.
There’s no mistaking the unique odor of bat guano.
I put the spinning rod back on the rack and picked up a hammer. The walleye would have to wait. In a few weeks the bats will be back and I still had holes to plug.
After awakening from a long slumber inside caves in the Little Rocky Mountains south of here, the northernmost colony of migrating little brown bats will return to town.
And more than a few of them will be headed directly to my place where odor of their past inhabitance is unmistakable.
I suspect my wife, Barb, and I got such a good deal on the house we bought here a couple of years ago because of the number of dead bats that littered the inside.
Vacant for a number of years before we moved in, our two-story stone house built in 1915 had enough holes in it to make it a very popular summer destination for members of the colony.
Following months of renovation, the house is now relatively bat-proof, but the garage is not. Sitting on the deck at night last summer, I watched as bats, squeaking eerily, came and went through a hole under the eaves.
Not wanting to trap them to die inside the attic, I decided to wait until they left town before covering all the cracks and holes in the garage with trim.
Then came hunting season when all work is put on hold.
Then came winter when it was too cold to work outside.
And then I forgot about them until spring when I was greeted by the odor of guano and forced to cancel my fishing trip.
Fortunately this isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve lived with wild animal issues before. In Kentucky a family of skunks took residence in the crawl space under my house. In Cooke City black bears raided the beer fridge on the porch of my cabin.
I’m hoping a lack of access to the dark recesses of my garage will persuade the bats to roost elsewhere.
If not, well, I may just have to adjust.
An elderly couple, who used to live down the street, wielded tennis racquets at night while watching television to fend off any bats that dared disrupt their favorite shows.
Come to think of it, my backhand could use some work.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

Socorro, por favor

My cousin, who lives on Florida’s Atlantic Coast, fears one day he’ll answer a knock on the door and find Jim Cantore standing there.

Although he’s already weathered more than a couple of hurricanes in his beach house, my cousin knows the presence of Cantore, the Weather Channel’s harbinger of really bad weather, would mean he’s in for the big one.

I, on the other hand, fear the day Cesar Millan, knocks on my door. The “Dog Whisperer” from the National Geographic Channel is apparently summoned only in times of dire canine distress. And having lived with dogs my whole life, I’m a bit too proud to make the call myself. So the summons for help would have come from elsewhere.

Perhaps, I fear, from my dogs.

Because, after all, according to Millan, a native of Culiacan, Mexico, the majority of dog problems are actually people problems.

“That’s what I’ve always said,” my springer bitch Spot recently told me.
“It’s you, not us.”

“Exactly,” her studly little brother Jem agreed. “It’s your boyfriend, girlfriend.”

“Get a clue,” Spot growled at me. “You praise us when we’re bad and discipline us when we’re good.”

“And when are you good?” I snapped.

“I’m calling the Dog Whisperer,” Jem told her as he lifted his leg on the couch.

“Oh, yeah?” I said as I reached for the phone. “I’m going to call that woman in Bozeman who makes jewelry out of baculums.”

“Huh,” he asked as he sniffed himself. “What’s that?”

“It’s a bone found in the sex organ of most male animals,” I told him. “You’ve got one. For now anyway.”

Babs Noelle makes necklaces and earrings out of gold, silver and platinum casts of the bones. She won’t say where she gets them, but she keeps the bones in tiny white boxes in the back of her shop.

Noelle’s creations sell for up to $3,000.

“I think it’s about time I started wearing some bling,” I told the dogs.

Jem stared at the floor. Spot closed her eyes and went to sleep.

Then the telephone rang.

“Maybe it’s Jim Cantore,” I told the dogs as they followed me into the other room. “I read where the Weather Channel is offering a service where Cantore will call you when a storm is coming.”

“There’s not a cloud in the sky,” Spot said. “Maybe it’s Cesar Millan. He must have heard about your necklace.”

Jem raced to the phone.

“Socorro! (HELP!),” he whispered as he picked it up. “Socorro, por favor. (PLEEEZE)”

Caddis, a window of angling opportunity

There’s a window of angling opportunity on the Yellowstone River I hope to slip through this spring, a time of exceptional fishing that’s here and gone so quickly it often goes unnoticed.
Catch it right and you’ll mark it on your calendar as the very best time to fish the river. Miss it by a day and you’ll wonder what all the fuss was about. The window can slam shut overnight.
The Mother’s Day caddisfly hatch on the Yellowstone doesn’t always occur on Mother’s Day. Some years it’s already over by then. Not that the bugs are gone, but the opportunity to take advantage of the trout feeding on them has disappeared in the rising brown torrent of spring runoff.
The river won’t be fishable again until summer.
But catch it right …
After launching your boat in the morning somewhere above Livingston, you begin to notice a few bugs in the willows along the bank. Then the day warms and clouds of caddis begin to fill the air. Rafts of dead bugs swirl in the eddies and pepper the scum lines. Trout feast eagerly on the first big bug hatch of the year.
You can actually hear them feeding.
Drift an elk-hair imitation along a current seam and watch it vanish in a splash, rod bowing to a fighting fish, line cutting through the glassy surface of the river.
Rainbows, browns and cutthroats, along with mountain whitefish, all feed with equal abandon.
Sink a caddis emerger next to a cut bank, see the line go taught, raise the tip of the rod and a rainbow comes flying out of the river. Or maybe it’s a brown or a cutt that goes racing downstream. Again and again.
Caddis flies get down the collar of your shirt, on your glasses, in your mouth. But you don’t care. You’re too busy catching fish.
The hardest part of it all is keeping track of your fly among the swarms of real bugs on the water.
You go to sleep that night with visions of rising fish in your head and dream of doing it all over again tomorrow.
But when you get back to the river the next morning the window has shut. The off-color water of yesterday has turned an opaque brown and while caddisflies still fill the air, there are no fish rising to feed on them.
At least you had yesterday.
That’s why I keep my options open the last week of April and the first week of May, hoping for a chance to slip through that window of angling opportunity.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

Report card blues

Among the indignities I no longer suffer now that I’ve left the city for the hinterland are performance evaluations.

Unfortunately, however, after years of being summoned to the boss’s office for an annual sit-down Without a one-to-10 scoring system how am I to know how I’m doing. Have I met my goals for the year? Have I shown initiative?

Do I get along with my co-workers?

Oh, yeah. I no longer have any co-workers.

Unless you count my wife, and let’s not go there.

I’d rather be judged by my dogs, who, if given the chance, would jump at an opportunity to evaluate me.

Or so I thought.

But after broaching the subject with Spot, my 3-year-old springer bitch, I was told the process was flawed.

I should evaluate her, not the other way around, she said. Even under the cover of anonymity, an underling’s written opinion of her boss is seldom honest, Spot told me. The paper trail, you know?

I agreed, but after tossing her a biscuit and hinting that there might be more where that one came from, she said she’d give it a shot anyway.

Her brother Jem quit licking himself and agreed to participate too, if biscuits were involved.

Did I meet or exceed my goals for the year, I asked them.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Spot said. “You didn’t even come close. You shot more birds when you had a fulltime job.”

“That’s certainly an area in which we’d like to see some improvement,” Jem told me as I squirmed uncomfortably in my chair.

How about my willingness to take on new tasks, I asked?

“Like what?” Spot queried.

“Like retrieving that goose you and Jem wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole,” I shot back.

“That’s another thing we’d like to talk to you about,” Jem said. “Your quick temper. Maybe you should consider counseling.”

Maybe you should consider neutering, I thought, but only smiled wanly at the pup and nodded my head in agreement.

Let’s move on to initiative in learning to operate new equipment, I said.

“You sure you want to go there? Spot asked.

“Why? Is there a problem? I said, making a point of controlling my voice.

Both dogs looked away in disgust and I could feel my face turning red.

“One word,” Spot said. “GPS.”

“That’s three words,” I told her.

She ignored the sarcasm.

“It’s still in the box,” Jem chirped. “You don’t have a clue how to use it.”

“Just like the iPod,” Spot said. “And you just recently learned how to use your cell phone.”

A bead of sweat trickled down my ribs as I offered the dogs my thanks for their honest evaluation and promised to try harder next year.

Spot closed her eyes and went back to sleep on the couch and I could tell without looking that Jem was licking himself again.

I rose and left the room. Suddenly I wasn’t missing those performance evaluations so much after all.

A new year and our first grandson

You don’t always get what you want, but like the old Rolling Stones song, sometimes you get what you need.
The phone rang shortly after I got back to the house on the final day of pheasant season.
Audrey’s water had broken and she was on the way to the hospital.
Barb and I gave it little thought before loading the dogs back in the truck and starting the 300-mile trip to Bozeman.
The birth of our third grandchild, following so closely on the death of my father, wasn’t an event we were going to miss.
I had expected to spend the rest of the afternoon watching bowl games on TV. It was New Year’s Day, and I’d spent the morning on the refuge with the dogs. The birds were few and scattered, but after a couple of hours Spot finally flushed a rooster and I dropped it in the cattails.
One was enough on this last day of what had been a very long -- and at times trying -- season.
My dog Scout was killed by a rattlesnake in September. A few weeks later Spot ripped her belly open on a barbed-wire gate. Our house in Bozeman hadn’t sold nearly as quickly as we had expected, putting a crimp in our move to Malta and then a week before Christmas, Dad died.
But Jem, the puppy we bought in Belgrade last fall, was fast turning into a real bird dog. Spot, no longer in Scout’s shadow, had matured and become a pleasure to hunt with.
And best of all, my daughter Audrey was expecting again.
We finally sold the house in early December, trucked the last of our belongings north, and settled in to begin a new chapter of our lives.
Then the phone rang and we were on the road again.
We watched the sun set behind the Little Rockies to end the first day of 2007 as we headed to the hospital in Bozeman, the rest of our trip across the middle of Montana lit by brilliant moon.
While I was glad to see the passing of 2006, it was a year I’ll always remember. After all, it was the year I quit my job, moved north, lost a very good dog and became an orphan.
This year, however, is already one to remember. Our first grandson, Isaac William Winfrey, arrived in the wee hours of January 2, bringing with him – just like a new year or a new season -- hope and promise.
I thank him for that.
It was just what I needed.
Happy New Year.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net