My Office Today

[Ian]

That moment when you realize you are no longer at the top of the food chain. Been tracked by a small mountain lion (hiking at night, had a .38 revolver with me, somehow not very comforting), and had my campsite surrounded by an unknown but large number of hungry coyotes on another occasion (had a riot shotgun with me and a competent buddy who also had one), and the feeling of vulnerability is quite singular.

 

[Bill]

A friend and I arrived one day early at deer camp at almost dark, we unloaded and built a fire, then all evening we heard an awfull squalling all around camp, short choppy screeches, been in the woods my whole life and never heard such a racket.
We found out later that It might have been a fox, it was very unnerving and I slept with my ol 30 handy. Did have a dream about Bigfoot though.

Bill

 

[CZ93X62]

Ah, yes. When you step into the wildlands or swim in the ocean, you enter the food chain--and not always at the top, either.

 

[david s]

When the wolves were reintroduced in Montana you couldn't shoot them even if you caught them depredating your stock. One of the sheep herders had a ridiculous number of sheep killed by a pack. Like 80-100 ridiculous. The alpha animals would ham string a sheep and then let the pups finish the job. They kept this up till the pups had mastered there lesson, and sheep being sheep just stood there baaing. It wasn't about feeding. Out by Ovando Montana there's a drainage called Dunham/Lodge Pole. It's claim to fame is it has the highest concentration (please note I didn't say population just more per square mile) of Grizzly bears than anywhere in the lower 48 states. About 5 miles from this drainage is a ranch called Twin Creeks that offers early season cow elk hunts. When you hunt this ranch your told that after you shoot and the elk goes down your not to gut it but wait for the ranch manger to drive out with a tractor. Then you gut the elk, load it in the bucket and leave. Your also told that within 20 minutes of your shot there will be a Grizzly there. Oddly enough there are relatively few conflicts between people and bears here. We do call dragging deer and elk off the public walk in areas around here "Trolling for Grizzly's" though.

 

[RBHarter]

I made a hunt walk once sort of a big teardrop loop .
It was about a half mile in from truck to the fork and 1.5 miles to the back of the canyon from there and another 2ish around and back down to the fork . The ingress in the morning shade has about 300 yards over 2 places that is little more than a goat trail across flat broken shale slides that require more attention to where your feet are than where they're going , and forget about quiet it sounds like your wadding through jingle bells on bubble wrap . It also has humps , draws , and thickets . When I started up I crossed a cat track at least a day old on the trail not a particularly warm feeling with the sage being shoulder deep and taller but the ranchers hunt the cats and coyotes pretty hard so they generally give man a wide birth .
I got across the first slide and snuck up on the first hump just in time to see Mulie butts top the next one at full lunge . I had no clue how I got busted but I probably missed a head peeking because the game trail cut right through the beds . Weird thing they had broken down hill then made the cut straight up the draw and cut back to go over the hump . So I took a pretty straight line across and another 100 yd uphill to a little rock pile "nest" .
I can't say if it was me sucking wind at 8,000 ft , buck fever , or that little tingly caveman 6th sense going nuts but there was something amiss . I scanned everything hard looking for an ear , butt or antler glint for 20 minutes or so , drank a bottle of water , marked my territory , and started my sneak over the next hump . Ya know what ? Cat pee smells just like cat pee or damp juniper bushes , however it smells nothing like Utah Juniper fresh cut because that smells like a cedar closet . The deer didn't bust me , they got blown out of their beds by a tomcat that did his manicure work about from 4-6' off the ground . I never saw the cat but I was within probably as little as 50 yd of him .

I got well inside shooting distance of the deer several times but every time it was just as they made the next heavy cover . I don't know if any of you recall Bill Cosby's 9th Street bridge bit but it is a fair description of how I walked that last half mile back to the truck . Radar going 100 mph and my toes 20 feet in front of me looking for anything not like I left it ....... 2 tracks over mine about 100 yd from the truck . I thought I was going to puke by the time I got to the truck which seemed like about 2.5 hours but was only about 70-75 loooong paces .

I've hunted in pairs since then because that is just a sickening feeling knowing there's 200# of cat that can make a 30' lunge and it's trying to decide if you're slow and alone enough to eat or not but it might only be 50' away and you'd never know it was there .

 

[RicinYakima]

That feeling will be a lot more common when they introduce grizzlies 50 miles from Seattle.

 

[462]

Less than two years ago, Duke and I saw a pair of coyotes crossing our back trail, less than 100 yards away. When we finally got our CCW compliant sheriff, my reason for wanting one (and getting it!) included the tow and four-legged varmints. Found out a short while later that, in the same area, two coyotes attacked a guy's leashed dog. Same coyotes? Mountain lions are not uncommon, here, and another bear was hanging out for several day a few blocks away, less than a month ago.

David S,
From '95 to '02, we owned property in Seeley Lake, Montana, (not far from Ovando for those unfamiliar with the area) and used to get the weekly newspaper, the Pathfinder. During ol' Griz's migratory wanderings about the town, it would print local incidences of their antics. One involved two elk hunters who split up and went their separate ways. One hunter killed an elk and was in the process of dressing it when ol' Griz pounced on him. The other hunter found his bud's body next to that of the elk, his rifle leaning on an out-of-reach tree. He didn't have a sidearm. A local game warden said that ol' Griz has grown to know that a gun shot means food.
Another incident involved a mother who saw ol' Griz in her yard not far from her child. She got he 10/22, took a pot shot at ol' Griz's butt, and he/she ran off. Later its body was found, after it bled out from a severed femoral artery. The feds arrested the lady, for killing an endangered species, and after a lot of legal wrangling she was cleared.
The paper's editor printed another story about ol' Griz eating his snowmobile's seat covering.

 

[david s]

We have had a radio collared grizzly tracked right to the Missoula city limits. I didn't enter. We've had moose and mountain lions that needed to be relocated out of town. There are deer all over the city and with fall approaching and fruit trees ripening there will be more than a few black bear interactions. There were rumored wolf sightings around the fringe of the city a few years ago but they never decided weather it was a wolf or just a very large dog.

 

[462]

I'll go with wolf, only because game officials are generally not eager to say so.

Wolfs that were reintroduced into Idaho have made their way down to Northern California.

You live in Missoula?

 

[david s]

462, It's been 10-15 years ago but a bow hunter was killed on Boyd mountain just past the Clear Water turn off to Seeley. He had killed and dragged his elk to within 100 yards of his rig when a sow and two cubs attacked. I use to have a picture of a sow with a couple of cubs getting at a couple of deer on a meat pole by a cabin on Boy Scout road just outside of Seeley proper.

 

[david s]

Yes Missoula, as the bumper sticker say's "Missoula just 20 miles from Montana".

 

[Kevin Stenberg]

Not being brave or anything. But the local big cats are the only thing i worry about.

 

[david s]

fiver, I'm not sure what the wolf pack size is in Minnesota and Wisconsin are but I thought your estimate of 6-8 a pack seemed a little small for around here. I went looking and found this "Wyoming Wolf Recovery 2007 Annual Report". It list 11 packs in Yellowstone, the pack sizes are 4 wolves, 7,11, 14, 16 (4 different packs), 17 (2 different packs) and 22 wolves. That's a lot of deer but mostly moose (they went first) and elk. The buffalo not so much. It was elk and buffalo they were trying to control with the reintroduction.

 

[Creeker]

Yes Missoula, as the bumper sticker say's "Missoula just 20 miles from Montana".

Live there in 77. Went back last year & didn't know the place.

 

[RicinYakima]

Yep, the college girls were no longer go-go dancers and the price of a working girl doubled from 1966 to 1976. Luckily Wallace ID was not too far away.

 

[462]

Read a book about the Big Burn, recently. It didn't leave much of Wallace standing.

 

[fiver]

that was so bad they were shanghaiing trains and forcing the passengers to come fight the fire.

a Grizzly will live on moose calves so the wolves weren't really needed for them.
many of the Elk all mosey out to the ranches nearby for the winter so a couple of cull hunts along the way woulda handled their numbers just fine.

 

[Rally]

Kevin,
Wasn’t too many years ago the DNR said our cats all migrated from the Dakotas, to feed on yarded winter deer. About the time everybody started hanging trail cams that lie ended.

Fiver,
Wolves are eating machines. I’ve had them eat plenty of snared fox and even Fisher. A local trapper even posted trail cam footage of a wolf carrying a bear cub it killed on one of his baits.Their biggest downfall is they always come back. I’ve heard stories about wolves just killing for fun, but have yet to see that play out in the bush. If they kill it they will be back, unless a big cat camps on one of their kill sites, or a human stinks the area up.
The wolves in Mn. Are a smaller wolf than the Yellowstone wolves, which I believe were transplanted from AK. And BC. The AK wolves have larger territories and often migrate with their food source, especially Caribou. Our wolves here in Mn have smaller territories and eat whatever they can get. Pretty easy to get them coming to a steady beaver bait.Males usually break from the packs here at age 2-3 to acquire breeding rights .
Checked traps again today. Canoed into both ditches and set them up. The ditch pictured above isn’t going to be too bad to move the water there, just three dams to remove, two of which are pretty loose and not really holding water.
The second ditch is going to be a pain. I’m in about 1.5 miles and crossed three dams, which are only holding about two feet of water. I need to move about twice that much to give the roadbed some relief. Didn’t think it would be that bad in there, and ran out of traps at the third dam! Kinda surprised me because I cleaned this ditch out two years ago and took out something like 23 beaver out of there. There is some county politics involved here because it flows into another county but doesn’t affect any of their roads.
Ends up with five today. Note their tails are missing in pic. Dog treats to clean their teeth.

 

[trapper9260]

I see Rally you doing good on the beavers, I got my traps ready for the coming trapping season now just to let the season show up now ,I. Still have small game hunting and deer hunting that will show up next month and see about doing more fishing

 

[fiver]

I don't know about them killing a big pile of stuff for fun.
stuff like sheep I can see, dogs will run them out even if they don't intend to kill them.
we had a chessie that I would turn into the sheep come fall and at shearing time, he would chase one till it gave out and then try to hump it.
the poor sheep was tuckered enough we could then tip it over and drag it where we wanted it without any fight.
sheep somehow just ask to be chased by dogs.