Category: Hunting
-
Vote no on Montana ballot initiative 177
Four years ago, while volunteering for the park service, a friend and I had an encounter with the ugly side of trapping. We had forded a river in waders and were slogging up a dry side channel, to find a tree for stashing said waders and ideally enough snow to immediately click into skis. In…
-
The best things about Montana
In vague order of preference, because in two months we’ll at long last be back on the edge of the Colorado Plateau, living in western Colorado. When we moved to Montana eight years it was for me to attend graduate school, the University of Montana was the best place to offer me admission, and Montana…
-
Cowboy Coffee redux
Two years ago I detailed my preferred method of making cowboy coffee in the field, and advocated for it as the all around best method. Plenty of articles about backcountry coffee have come out since, but there is still no new news here. Via is convenient (especially as it is quite palatable cold), but expensive…
-
Sierra Designs Elite Cagoule review
I’ve been putting off writing this for a month or more, until I had it on through a good solid half+ day rain. But walking out earlier this week in two hours of steady rain, I realized that due to terrain and preference I just don’t hike in that sort of thing very often. Maybe…
-
Spanish Peaks Bighorn ewe hunt
(Two mountain goats, bedded just up and right from center.) This hunt was conceived back in the spring when I noticed that for the first time Montana was offering 15 ewe licenses for region 301, which encompasses the Spanish Peaks, a small but tall and steep range I’d never visited. Hoping that a new hunt…
-
Treated v. hybrid down; don’t believe the hype
For the problem with down jackets and sleeping bags has never been with external moisture (precip, or otherwise). Modern shell fabrics are good enough, and sticking things in drybags on under raingear or mitigating shelter condensation simple enough, that getting my insulation actually wet this way hardly ever happens. The only memorable instances involve me…
-
Puebloan venison stew
A stew made (mostly) with theoretically* native southwestern staples which has quickly become one of my favorite dishes. Dead simple, loaded with protein, and very tasty. Ingredients: 2-3 pounds venison shoulder and/or neck meat, in large pieces 2-3 cans beans of choice (black, pinto, etc) 1 can corn 2 onions 16 ounces vegetable stock salt…
-
47 miles for everything
When I die I would like to be sky-buried, cut into pieces and scattered in a propitious location for the consumption of scavengers. For over a decade my first choice location has been a particular piece of blackbrush-and-sand desert just where the BlueJohn drainage dips over into the Robbers Roost system. For about a half…
-
The 76th deer
This is what you want to see after you shoot a deer with your bow, but two nights ago it took me twenty minutes to find the blood I drew. Calm and perspective remain difficult to summon when a goal into which many hours have been sunk comes into reach. After practicing all summer I…
-
The Spyderco Dragonfly 2 and the Esee Candiru
This time last year I discussed the Candiru, a knife which does a remarkable job presenting a durable hard-use package in a tiny size. It does so at the expense of easy sharpening and precise cutting, two things which the similarly sized and shaped Spyderco Dragonfly 2 does very well. After a year of using…
Bedrock & Paradox 
You must be logged in to post a comment.