Calling the Bull

[We received this communiqué from the intrepid Bear Bait following his less than wildly successful safari into the hinterlands in quest of ungulate demise.]

The Paradise Valley elk are now using the first bench behind private alfalfa fields for their rutting grounds. The amenity ranch owners, mostly absentee, are not bow hunters, and do not disturb the elk rut right in their front yards. The alfalfa fields and wet meadows are now graced with McMansions built back against the hills, and the sights out the front picture windows are filled with the entire social goings on of rutting elk.

Cozying up to harmless humans is a new wolf avoidance tactic employed by the elk, not unlike the black-tail bedded down next to the dryer vent that eats your roses each morning. It is all about security and groceries. Irrigated alfalfa works for an elk 7-11, and being next to the house and road with fences and no trespassing signs keeps the hunters and wolves at bay. I understand and accept these ecosystem shifts, but going into the back country to hear nothing, not one bugle in mid-September in the epicenter of North American elk, is interesting. And not like it was just a year ago.

The 2001 Fridley Fire recovery is slower than a legislature. The lodgepole is now maybe 4 inches high where it did come back. There are some areas with fireweed, but other than that the terrain is burnt rocks and white snags. There’s lots of blowdown, and the snags still standing are going to topple over by the millions in the next year or two. All the USFS trails are jammed with blowdown, and that will only get worse.

I sat on a point and glassed 5,000 acres for hours and saw only two deer. Another day we did see two raghorn bulls and a bear. The young bulls were camped on a deflation plain of post-fire erosion with some grass and a great, soft bedding area of silt. The other 99.9% of the area is still burnt rocks, white wood with black spots, and a few insectivorous birds flitting about sniping skeeters and flying termites.

Last year’s Dry Creek Fire burned some of the same area, as well as more green trees. What trees didn’t get killed in the fire are now dying a year later. It appears that it takes at least three years before all the post-fire dying slows down. A cowboy did report to me that a couple of springs from long ago are now running water, and it appears there are more seeps than before.

Of course, the big feed areas are the three spots of private land that got Oregon orchard grass seeding in 2003. That’s the destination of every hoof track you see. Fifty acres or so produces the feed on the 50,000 acres that attracts the few animals willing to venture away from the alfalfa fields and the noise of the highway that seem to provide them a modicum of wolf protection.

My fun is to tag along with a bow hunter and call the elk in (the cognoscenti refer to me the Pied Piper of elk). We went to the place where we have called bulls for three years, and yet this year none called back, nor sauntered over to be shot. The Great Booglie Wooglie of Bow ‘n Arra’ shootin’ seems to have taken sway over that spot.

There were a couple of incidents. I bugled like a crazed rhinoceros for hours, and finally this gentlemanly bull and two polite yearling cows climbed out of the canyon to see what the god-awful racket was all about. They came right up the trail towards Robin Hood, just like I’d promised him, and trundled right past the hidden shooter. He did let loose an arrow, but the tree he hit was already dead. The elk ran off, and we suggested to Robin that he cut some of the tree into strips and we could boil them for dinner.

We are now 0-4 on that spot when I have been there. And I persuaded another book bull in to about 30 yards, but no shot from Robin. So he had his chances, and now has to boogie to the music of Close But No Cigar.

Wooda, cooda, shooda…, but we did see a bear. No hump, but we all carry shootin’ arns and a half gallon pepper spray cans. I have used smaller fire extinguishers and been satisfied at their performance. When it gets real beary, someone carries a lever action 45-70.

On the Jellystone Nat’l Park border the Slough creek guides did not see an elk for one week of hunters. By Gardiner the bow hunters had Grizz activity and there were two maulings. Over in the Taylor Burn south of Big Sky, they closed down the area because Grizz was getting every elk quarter not packed out the day it was shot. It’s not that easy to pack an entire elk in one trip, unless you are Superman or bring native bearers and a mule train along on your shoot. When the hunters without entourage would come back for their next load of elk meat, Grizz had filed a claim on it and processed the deed.

Fortunately, the only people killed in the State while I was there were in auto accidents and a horse wreck. Yep. As usual, horses killed more people than the b’ars.

It looks like it will take only one more fire to burn everything north of I-90 from Missoula east to Drummond. The south slopes along I-90 are getting blacker and redder every year. Add to that a lot of dying lodgepole and whoofoos, and things will get even blacker in that country. The knapweed preserve from Missoula to Frenchtown burned this year. The fire went around houses and lawns, which is nice, but when it hit the forested land it burned a lot of timber litter and even more live trees. Made the Farce Circus look like the epitome of ineptitude. Those damned ex-urbanites living so close to the wilderness observe it all, which makes life hard, or at least embarrassing, for the piss fir willies.

The smoke from two million smoldering acres in ID and MT was bad enough that you got cotton mouth at night, and bloody noses. The morning hack ups had color. It was a real LA experience.

I did see a little pickup of Asian origin with fine set of very bovine-like chrome testicles hanging from the trailer hitch and swinging in the wind. I thought that was a nice touch. Montana is Freedomland for Bikers, and no, not the spandex billboard pedal bikers of Oreygone. I’m talking crotch rockets, choppers, motorized Harley bikers. They all cruise down the road without helmets, hair blowing in the wind. It’s all so Fonda-esque. Of course, those bikes cost more than the little Asian pickups, and you know the riders are not po’ boys.

Montana has become an REI, Patagonia-style place, though. Duped, deceived, and desperate to fit in, the youthful populace all looks alike now. Disheveled hair, greasy fleece coats, wind-burned faces tinged with dirt, sloppy pants, and a pair of all-purpose hiking boots. The Trust Puppy Look. All the common mall stores are there now in Bozeman, along with NYC financial “advisors”, banks, and real estate agents. Pop’s money is moving to Montana even though Pops himself is buried in Boston.

As much fun as it was, it’s good to be back in the Duck and Beaver State. Less smoke, from forest fires anyway. Sorry not to bring you some elk steaks, Mike. But come on over and we’ll barbecue some eggplant, Oregon-style. Yours as always — bear bait