Montana Untamed

Last week the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission debated what’s become a hot-button issue – restrictions on nonresident upland game bird hunters. The debate arose after Fish, Wildlife & Parks Director Dustin Temple asked Commissioner Lesley Robinson to carry two amendments to the group. One would push back the nonresident bird dog training season by two weeks, the other would del...

The Great Burn is referred to as “one of the last best places” by wilderness and wildlife advocates, snowmobilers and mountain bikers. All of them revere the quarter million-acre jumble of peaks along the Montana-Idaho border.  But wilderness and wildlife advocates  — who have long pushed for bikes and snowmobiles to be banned from the area — now worry that new U....

It’s been twenty years since Mac Minard took the reins of the Montana Outfitters and Guides association. And today he hangs up that hat as he officially retires from the organization. Before his tenure at MOGA, which it is commonly referred to, Minard spent over twenty years as a biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. MOGA represents over 250 of Montana’s professionally...

In the bird world eagles are majestic, swans are elegant and ravens are … amazing. At least, that might be your conclusion after talking to scientist John Marzluff, who has studied the king of corvids in Yellowstone National Park for decades. His recent research where Yellowstone National Park ravens were fitted with tiny GPS backpacks is revealing astonishing facts about the birds.  W...

It’s hard to imagine a better classroom on conservation than in the shadow of Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front. The Boone and Crockett Conservation Education Program does just that from its headquarters on the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Ranch along Dupuyer Creek.  In the classroom students learn about ecosystems, wildlife conservation and land ethics. In the field students try thei...

AI has come for the animals.  When the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks unveiled its 43rd annual photo issue of Montana Outdoors on Jan. 1, the magazine carried an explanation on page 1: Magazine staff, editor Tom Dickson wrote the magazine had gone to great lengths to verify that photos submitted for the issue were, in fact, photos.  Dickson's concern was that images produced by g...

According to Dr. Matt Rinella, The grass-roots traditions that have defined hunting in America are being displaced by a hyper-commercialized pay-to-play model.  In response, he has created an organization called Hunt Quietly, and what he calls a movement to combat this tainting of the principles of hunting.  Through his writing and podcast he has stirred controversy and prompted plenty of debate i...

As the year comes to a close I thought it would be a good time to gather our team of outdoors writers and put a bow on it. I asked the reporters to send me some of their most important stories from 2023 so we could re-hash them for folks as the last episode of the year. So with me today is Rob Chaney and Joshua Murdock, from the Missoulian, Brett French from the Billings Gazette, and Duncan Adams...

As the federally-protected grizzly bear continues to make its life outside of the wilderness enclaves of its recovery zones it is met with human civilization and the problems that arise as a result. The folks whose lives and livelihood are on the line in these situations are the farmers and ranchers who work the land where civilization and wilderness meet. In 2017, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks...

The Endangered Species Act turns 50 this December. Often called “the pit-bull of environmental statutes,” the ESA has given federal protection to more than 2,000 animals and plants. It has also drawn critics who claim it takes away property rights and hurts economic development.  After half a century of recovery efforts, only a few hundred species have got delisted. On the other hand, the whole wo...

Last April, Scott Snelson was quietly transferred from his post at the Spotted Bear District to a desk job at the Flathead National Forest headquarters at the behest of then Forest Supervisor Kurt Steele. Snelson finished his career as a staff officer of recreation, engineering, heritage and land. He retired a few weeks ago. Snelson had a long career with the Forest Service before being named dist...

Thirty-one years ago, 1,321 mule deer were shot by hunters in Hunting District 502 — a record high. In 2021, the total mule deer harvest in HD 502 was 477.  There are a number of hunting regulations being proposed for big game species in Montana that the Fish and Wildlife Commission has on its Dec. 14 meeting agenda. Anyone interested in their hunting district or region should check out the online...

In late October, what appears to be an adult male grizzly bear was captured on a game camera in the Missouri Breaks. Although tracks of grizzlies have been found farther east, in the Winifred area, this was the first photographic evidence of a grizzly so far from the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem. The photo is both surprising, in that a bear made it so far without getting into trouble with...

It's no secret that glaciers in Montana and the world over are disappearing. But now a new study puts a number to the losses, at least for the Western U.S.  Of the West's 612 officially named glaciers, 52 no longer qualify as glaciers. That's according to a study released last month by Portland State University. The research, published in the journal Earth System Science Data, delineates a glacier...

The Interagency Bison Management Program partners met at Chico Hot Springs Resort in early November. The partners include tribal representatives, state and federal officials.  When the Park Service attempted to change some language in the group’s adaptive management plan, the executive officer of the Montana Department of Livestock protested. But, there’s a lot more to this story than this one mee...

For decades, the freight trains trundling over Marias Pass toward Glacier National Park and the Great Bear Wilderness along a 206-mile stretch of tracks between Shelby and Trego have posed a threat to the grizzlies living in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem grizzly bear recovery zone, particularly when a derailment causes a grain spill, or a train-killed deer or livestock carcass draws th...

The Greater Yellowstone Coalition recently announced it had raised $6.25 million to buy out Crevice Mining Group’s 1,368 acres, claims and water rights just north of Yellowstone National Park’s border. Crevice came onto the scene in 2015 when it proposed mining on a mountainside above Gardiner. The proposal led to more than 400 local businesses and groups fighting to protect the area. The oppositi...

On Oct. 13, news broke that the owner of Holland Lake Lodge has decided to cancel his controversial expansion and upgrade plans at the resort. He’s ending his partnership with a large Utah-based resort company called POWDR and is trying to sell the lodge. It’s huge news in Montana, as for the past year there’s been quite a bit of an uproar as people protested the plan. You can’t drive anywhere in...

It was a chance encounter with a northern pintail drake that made Chuck Black’s lifelong dream come true. That dream: to win the Federal Duck Stamp art contest and have his painting in the pocket of every waterfowl hunter in the country. Chuck’s interest in the Federal Duck Stamp started as a youth growing up in Minnesota, where water-fowling is a religion and many of the legends of the contest ca...

In late September the Legislative Audit Division released a report investigating Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Enforcement Division. The audit documented a division riddled with morale problems and distrust in management. What’s more, the report found FWP’s Human Resources Division – which is responsible for all FWP employees – was opening the agency up to the risk of litigation because of it...

A little over a month ago, the world watched in horror as fast-moving flames leveled the idyllic oceanside town of Lahaina on the Hawaiian island of Maui. The fire had started just that day but winds from a distant hurricane swept the flames into a firestorm that killed more than 100 people, making it the deadliest American wildfire in more than a century. Similar things happened around Montana th...

On September 1, the U.S. Interior Department announced that the last energy lease in the Badger-Two Medicine area had been relinquished. This piece of ground surrounded by the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness, was considered sacred to the Blackfeet. It was also considered so valuable by the Louisiana-based Solenex LLC energy company, they held ont...

If you were a grizzly on the move, where would you go and how would you get there? As the federally protected bears roam farther each year beyond their recovery zones, more Montana communities are seeing grizzlies for the first time in decades. Eventually, wildlife managers hope that two separate populations centered around Glacier and Yellowstone national parks could connect. And the species’ rec...

The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks recently released the results of two hunter surveys. One was sent to 5,000 residents and another to 800 nonresidents. The surveys asked questions about the state’s management of elk and mule deer, two iconic species in the state. Brett French, outdoor editor at the Billings Gazette, recently wrote about the results of the survey. Since the story...

Ailments like brucellosis and chronic wasting disease have become well-known in hunting circles over the past few decades. Both are known to infect elk and be spread by close contact between infected animals.  That’s why it seems ill-advised that Wyoming operates winter feedgrounds for elk. Spread across the western third of the state, the sites congregate elk allowing brucellosis and CWD to sprea...