By Parker Heinlein
Outdoors columnist
As soon as the sun topped the breaks to the east I saw them – three mule deer bucks across the creek, their antlers flashing in the bright light.
I dropped to the frozen ground, set up my shooting sticks and rested the rifle on them. Through the crosshairs I watched the bucks go about their business, which on this late November morning was chasing does.
There must have been two dozen mulies scattered across a football field size of prairie real estate. Deer kept disappearing and reappearing as they dropped into the dry creek beds that cut through the sage.
The country looked flat and featureless until you got into it and discovered it was veined with cuts and draws and low ridges.
For a couple of years I had driven past it on my way to hunt other places, dismissing it as just another expanse of hardpan prairie lacking enough vegetation to hide a grouse let alone a buck deer. But one evening in October I climbed the breaks above the valley floor to glass for antelope and saw that the hardpan stopped at the creek bank 200 yards from where I had parked the truck on the two-track. The country beyond was broken and covered thickly with sage, and sat just enough lower than the surrounding landscape that it was hidden.
Back at the truck on flat ground the country lost its allure. Dry, spare and dotted with prickly pear, it held little appeal, but now I knew better. Like a plain girl who attracts no attention until she smiles, the forgotten piece of creekbottom had flashed a million-dollar grin at me in the fading light. I was hooked.
Two days later I was back with the dogs and found sharptails in the thicker cover on the creek bends.
But it was the deer that caught my attention. They were thick as flies, emerging out of nowhere and racing across the flats only to disappear in an instant into a hidden draw.
And now I was set up in the sage, watching antlers flash in the sun. I caught movement off to the side and saw a doe trotting my direction, a young buck, head down, following closely behind. She stopped 20 feet away and stared hard at me until the buck bumped her and she ran off.
The glinting antlers began moving and I watched through the scope as one, two, three bucks walked out of the sage and onto the flat. They were young and fat and not yet in their prime. One by one they dropped out of sight.
I stood, shouldered the rifle and turned toward the truck. It had been a good first date but I didn’t want to press my luck. I walked into the landscape and likewise disappeared.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Wilderness in name only
By Parker Heinlein
Outdoors columnist
I’m a big fan of wilderness.
I like huge expanses of wild, undeveloped land into which I can disappear or just imagine doing so.
Until recently I didn’t think you could have enough wilderness. After all, it’s not something that can be manufactured, it can only be preserved.
Then I heard a rancher ask officials from the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge not to designate any more land on the refuge as wilderness.
He said doing so would increase elk depredation on his land and make managing the problem even more difficult than it is now.
He was angry. You could hear it in his voice and see it on his face.
During hunting season, he said, the elk seek refuge on those portions of the CMR already designated wilderness. There they remain out of reach to all but the most hardcore of hunters. Game retrieval is extremely difficult in wilderness areas where even wheeled carts are off-limits.
Hunters looking to fill a cow tag are seldom up to the challenge of packing the meat out on their backs and few have ready access to pack horses. Consequently, the elk hiding in the CMR’s wilderness and wilderness study areas are relatively safe during the hunting season.
And once the season ends they move back to the agricultural lands to feed.
In other parts of Montana, landowners suffer similar problems. Elk seek refuge on private land where no hunting is allowed and ravage farmland once the hunting season ends.
Elk become more difficult to manage as more folks move into their habitat.
In southern Phillips County, however, the problem isn’t development, but rather the lack thereof. It’s wild, rugged, beautiful country, but it’s been grazed and cut with roads for more than a century.
It’s also very small in scope compared to the more traditional wilderness areas in Montana. About the time you realize you’ve entered it, you’re already out the other side.
I suspect whoever suggested designating wilderness areas on the CMR has never disappeared into the Beartooths, hiked the Bob Marshall or gotten lost in the Scapegoat.
Perhaps wilderness designation on the CMR is the result of some federal bureaucrat’s feelings of guilt over running the refuge more for livestock than for wildlife.
Whatever the reason, designating more wilderness on the CMR will only create further hardship for those folks who eke out a living in this spare land.
I’m all for wilderness and all that it implies. Just don’t try to tell me what’s wilderness when it’s not. I know the difference.
Outdoors columnist
I’m a big fan of wilderness.
I like huge expanses of wild, undeveloped land into which I can disappear or just imagine doing so.
Until recently I didn’t think you could have enough wilderness. After all, it’s not something that can be manufactured, it can only be preserved.
Then I heard a rancher ask officials from the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge not to designate any more land on the refuge as wilderness.
He said doing so would increase elk depredation on his land and make managing the problem even more difficult than it is now.
He was angry. You could hear it in his voice and see it on his face.
During hunting season, he said, the elk seek refuge on those portions of the CMR already designated wilderness. There they remain out of reach to all but the most hardcore of hunters. Game retrieval is extremely difficult in wilderness areas where even wheeled carts are off-limits.
Hunters looking to fill a cow tag are seldom up to the challenge of packing the meat out on their backs and few have ready access to pack horses. Consequently, the elk hiding in the CMR’s wilderness and wilderness study areas are relatively safe during the hunting season.
And once the season ends they move back to the agricultural lands to feed.
In other parts of Montana, landowners suffer similar problems. Elk seek refuge on private land where no hunting is allowed and ravage farmland once the hunting season ends.
Elk become more difficult to manage as more folks move into their habitat.
In southern Phillips County, however, the problem isn’t development, but rather the lack thereof. It’s wild, rugged, beautiful country, but it’s been grazed and cut with roads for more than a century.
It’s also very small in scope compared to the more traditional wilderness areas in Montana. About the time you realize you’ve entered it, you’re already out the other side.
I suspect whoever suggested designating wilderness areas on the CMR has never disappeared into the Beartooths, hiked the Bob Marshall or gotten lost in the Scapegoat.
Perhaps wilderness designation on the CMR is the result of some federal bureaucrat’s feelings of guilt over running the refuge more for livestock than for wildlife.
Whatever the reason, designating more wilderness on the CMR will only create further hardship for those folks who eke out a living in this spare land.
I’m all for wilderness and all that it implies. Just don’t try to tell me what’s wilderness when it’s not. I know the difference.
A winter to remember
By Parker Heinlein
Outdoors columnist
I’m beginning to suspect that the Yahoo who said, “If you don’t like the weather wait 15 minutes,” froze to death a couple of weeks ago and is buried in a snowdrift.
The weather up here has changed little in the last month. Snow still covers most everything and while the temperatures have moderated a bit, the mercury continues to have a hard time getting out of the single digits.
Apparently I now live either too far north or east to benefit from the Chinook winds that clear the snow from the ground across much of Montana.
This has the look of one of those winters that children will hear about for the rest of their lives, just like the ones I heard about growing up.
“We had to walk 14 miles through knee-deep snow just to get to school,” my father used to tell me. “It was so cold when we milked the cows we got ice cream.”
A couple of 30-below spells combined with more snow than usual has given the landscape a decidedly Siberian flavor.
At least the roads have begun to clear. A couple of weeks ago there was so much ice on the highway north to Canada I cut short a trip to visit friends and turned around after just a few miles.
A large gathering of antelope – hundreds, maybe more – grazed in the snow on each side of the highway and I stopped the truck as a group of about 40 began to cross the icy pavement ahead of me. At least half of them lost their footing before they reached the other side of the road, and the last goat in line – a fawn – flipped upside down and landed on its back on the ice.
I eventually reached the relative safety of the snow-covered streets in town, parked the truck and took refuge in the warm house where I could forget about winter for awhile.
But the howling wind is hard to ignore, even with the volume cranked up while I watch “Spring Breakers Gone Wild.” Cabin Fever, I fear, may become harder to deal with this winter than the weather.
And even if I spend most of my time inside until spring, I’m sure I’ll forget that detail when regaling my great-grandchildren with stories of how I survived the winter of ’09.
But instead of waiting 15 minutes and expecting the weather to change, which apparently isn’t working this winter, I’m doing the next best thing: writing about it.
I have hopes that this column will have lost all relevancy by the time it’s published.
Perhaps the snowbanks will even have melted and that Yahoo will once again be spouting his refrain.
I just don’t know what else to do.
Outdoors columnist
I’m beginning to suspect that the Yahoo who said, “If you don’t like the weather wait 15 minutes,” froze to death a couple of weeks ago and is buried in a snowdrift.
The weather up here has changed little in the last month. Snow still covers most everything and while the temperatures have moderated a bit, the mercury continues to have a hard time getting out of the single digits.
Apparently I now live either too far north or east to benefit from the Chinook winds that clear the snow from the ground across much of Montana.
This has the look of one of those winters that children will hear about for the rest of their lives, just like the ones I heard about growing up.
“We had to walk 14 miles through knee-deep snow just to get to school,” my father used to tell me. “It was so cold when we milked the cows we got ice cream.”
A couple of 30-below spells combined with more snow than usual has given the landscape a decidedly Siberian flavor.
At least the roads have begun to clear. A couple of weeks ago there was so much ice on the highway north to Canada I cut short a trip to visit friends and turned around after just a few miles.
A large gathering of antelope – hundreds, maybe more – grazed in the snow on each side of the highway and I stopped the truck as a group of about 40 began to cross the icy pavement ahead of me. At least half of them lost their footing before they reached the other side of the road, and the last goat in line – a fawn – flipped upside down and landed on its back on the ice.
I eventually reached the relative safety of the snow-covered streets in town, parked the truck and took refuge in the warm house where I could forget about winter for awhile.
But the howling wind is hard to ignore, even with the volume cranked up while I watch “Spring Breakers Gone Wild.” Cabin Fever, I fear, may become harder to deal with this winter than the weather.
And even if I spend most of my time inside until spring, I’m sure I’ll forget that detail when regaling my great-grandchildren with stories of how I survived the winter of ’09.
But instead of waiting 15 minutes and expecting the weather to change, which apparently isn’t working this winter, I’m doing the next best thing: writing about it.
I have hopes that this column will have lost all relevancy by the time it’s published.
Perhaps the snowbanks will even have melted and that Yahoo will once again be spouting his refrain.
I just don’t know what else to do.
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