Endangered Species Act: the law of the land

[a version of this editorial by me was printed in the Montana Standard newspaper]

How sad, that we the people of the United States must sue our own government if we want the law of the land to be enforced. Whatever happened to the notion that America is “A nation of laws, not of men?” Under the Bush administration, we have become a nation where the executive branch rules with arbitrary and capricious power.

No one disagrees that the Big Hole River grayling (aka “Upper Missouri River Fluvial Arctic Grayling”) is on the verge of extinction. And yet the US Fish & Wildlife Service deemed Big Hole grayling insignificant— ignoring its own scientists, a peer-review by professional fisheries biologists, and the law. The Center for Biological Diversity, along with a group of plaintiffs including me, must sue the federal government to enforce the law.

Blame Julie MacDonald, the Bush appointee who dictated endangered species decisions – including the decision that Big Hole grayling are insignificant – at the Department of Interior. Though MacDonald resigned following accusations of politically bulldogging agency scientists, the damage lingers.

Mike Stempel, a Fish & Wildlife Service administrator, made several outrageous statements in a recent Montana Standard article.

Stempel stated there are 6,000 grayling in the Big Hole River. The truth is, Montana FWP biologists can’t even find enough grayling to estimate the population size. It has declined significantly from an estimate made several years ago of approximately 1,000 breeding age fish.

Stempel stated that the Endangered Species Act is “not the best tool” to protect grayling, and that Montana is doing just fine in restoring the fish. The truth is, Big Hole grayling have declined steadily under Montana FWP management ever since FWP “discovered” the fish were in trouble in the 1970s. At this point, the ESA is the only tool.

I admire the small handful of Big Hole ranchers that have made personal sacrifices in water use in order to help grayling. The simple fact is, however, that Big Hole irrigators (as a group) consistently dewater the river each year: year, after year, after year. Voluntary efforts have failed at maintaining minimal river flows needed to sustain Big Hole grayling.

How sad, that our children and grandchildren may have to venture to Alaska in order to catch a grayling. It is wrong that our government is willing to sacrifice our natural heritage. The Endangered Species Act works, as demonstrated by the success in recovering bald eagles and many other once-rare species.

Legal Challenge to FWS Decision re: Montana fluvial Arctic grayling

For Immediate Release, November 15, 2007

Contacts: Noah Greenwald, Center for Biological Diversity, (503) 484-7495
Pat Munday, Grayling Restoration Alliance, (406) 496-4461
Leah Elwell, Federation of Fly Fishers, (406) 222-9369 x102
Jon Marvel, Western Watersheds Project, (208) 788-2290

Protection sought for Montana Fluvial Arctic Grayling

LAWSUITS FILED TO PROTECT GRAYLING AND FIVE OTHER ENDANGERED SPECIES

Helena, MT.— The Center for Biological Diversity, Federation of Fly Fishers, Western Watersheds Project, Dr. Pat Munday and former Montana fishing guide George Wuerthner filed suit today to overturn an April 24, 2007 decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service denying protection of the Montana fluvial arctic grayling as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. The suit was filed simultaneously with several other suits filed by the Center for Biological Diversity on behalf of six endangered species.

“The Montana fluvial arctic grayling is on the brink of extinction in the U.S.,” said Noah Greenwald, conservation biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “In decisions over the grayling, and dozens of other wildlife species, the Bush administration has repeatedly disregarded survival of the nation’s wildlife.”

Rather than concluding Montana grayling are not endangered, the agency instead decided that extinction of the Montana population, which is the last in the lower 48 states, is insignificant. According to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the decision went against the recommendations of the agency’s own scientists. It was made in Washington, D.C., under the influence of Assistant Secretary of Fish, Wildlife and Parks Julie MacDonald, who resigned under pressure April 30th after an investigation by the Department of Interior’s Inspector General found she had bullied agency scientists to change their conclusions and improperly released internal documents to industry lobbyists and attorneys.

“In denying the grayling protection, the Bush administration has once again ignored science and the law,” stated Dr. Pat Munday, Director of the Grayling Restoration Alliance. “Unfortunately, this could spell disaster for the last river dwelling population of the grayling in the continental U.S.”

Once found throughout the upper Missouri River drainage above Great Falls, the fluvial arctic grayling has been reduced to a single self-sustaining population in a short stretch of the Big Hole River. A primary factor in this range decline was, and continues to be, the dewatering of the grayling’s stream habitat and degradation of riparian areas. Extensive water withdrawals from the Big Hole River and seven consecutive years of drought continue to threaten the Big Hole population. In recent years, so few grayling have been found that Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks have not been able to estimate their populations, suggesting grayling populations are on the brink of extinction.

“The grayling is a unique part of the natural heritage of Montana,” said Leah Elwell, conservation coordinator for the Federation of Fly Fishers. “Loss of the grayling would be a terrible tragedy for anglers, Montanans and the nation.”

In addition to challenging the government’s refusal to protect the Montana fluvial arctic grayling, lawsuits filed today by the Center challenge decisions to deny the Mexican garter snake (Arizona and New Mexico) protection, drastic reductions in critical habitat for three endangered fish found in rivers in California, Arizona and New Mexico and refusal to grant critical habitat for the Mississippi gopher frog. These actions follow a September notice of intent to sue over 55 species that were subject to corruption and high-level political interference within the Bush Administration’s endangered species program. (see www.biologicaldiversity.org/ )

In their challenge of denial of protection of the grayling, the groups are represented by attorney Judi Brawer.

Background

A member of the salmon family, the arctic grayling is a beautiful fish with a prominent dorsal fin that is widely distributed across Canada and Alaska. Historically, fluvial populations of arctic grayling existed in only two places in the lower 48 states: Michigan and the upper Missouri River of Montana. Populations in Michigan went extinct by the 1930s, and populations in Montana were restricted to the Big Hole River by the end of the 1970s. Studies demonstrate that Montana fluvial arctic grayling are genetically distinct from populations in Canada and Alaska, and genetically and behaviorally distinct from lake populations in Montana and other states. Studies also show that grayling adapted to lake environments do not maintain their position in rivers but instead allow themselves to drift downstream.

The Bush administration has listed fewer species under the Endangered Species Act than any other administration since the law was enacted in 1973, to date only listing 58 species compared to 522 under Clinton and 231 under the first Bush president. The Bush administration has not listed a single species in nearly 18 months. In August, the Center presented Secretary of Interior Kempthorne the “rubber dodo” award for failing to protect any new species under the Endangered Species Act.

Going Elkless (Almost): Elk Hunting near Butte, Montana

There I was, combing the hills several miles from the road on the last day of elk season. I had grown entirely too smug about elk hunting, having shot bull elk four-out-of-five years that I hunted them, and having shot several cows within a mile or so of the highway. Not this year.

Season began with me at a conference in Washington, DC. Of course, conditions were perfect with cold weather and eight inches of fresh snow. The second week, I was complacent. My friend Don was coming to hunt the following week, and so I roamed the hills and even passed up a shot at a cow. Well, it wasn't a good shot, and as my friend and now-retired colleague Dennis Haley counseled, "Hunting elk in timber is a percentage thing. If you are patient and get into them six or seven times, then you will get the good shot you want. There's no need to take those "iffy" shots."

Here's AJ, crashed for a nap in the warm noonday sun after we climbed into a remote (and elkless) Pintler basin:

Meanwhile, I ate my lunch and waited for the tea to boil:

Don Kieffer arrived from upstate New York the first week of November. The weather was beautiful: warm, sunny, and lousy for elk hunting. Up high, the old snow metamorphosed, turning icy and crunchy. Down low, the snow melted away. But we had a great time hiking the hills:

Visiting some of my favorite elk haunts:

And of course enjoying a hot cup of tea come noontime:

As my old friend BAT (aka Bob Thomas) likes to remind me, hunting is a lot more than killing. Especially on those blue sky days when the weather is just too damned good for serious elk hunting, you can lie back and listen to the serenade of migrating flocks of snow geese:

And swans:

Don & I also saw a peregrine falcon, and visited the spot where indigenous peoples mined jasper for tools:

After Don left, I tried to get more serious about elk hunting, but still the weather was not conducive to it. Hunting at such times becomes a good excuse for hiking into spots that need to be visited from time to time, such as these logging-era cabins, probably built to feed the flume that sluiced cord wood from the Big Hole valley to the Anaconda smelter:

And when the elk are hard to find, there is the occasional moose; here, a cow and calf on a remote, windswept ridge along the Continental Divide (folks don't think of moose as mountain animals, but they are in Montana!):

And the occasional fool hen (this one, felled with a rock, made a welcome and savory supper that night):

Finally, though, right at the end of season, conditions turned favorable with new, quiet snow and consistently cold temperatures. I spent a day or two hunting a spot that I had hunted many times over the years with Brent Patch and Dave Carter. In those years, I had not learned the lessons of a good "black timber" hunter, and wasted a lot of time peeking into parks and coursing through open stands of lodge pole pine.

In the timber, you keep your nose to the wind, move slowly and quietly, and check out all those stumps and rocks that look very much like elk:

Two Butte boys, hunting a park along the ridge line, flushed a bunch of elk from the north-side timber just below the ridge. I smelled them out ahead of me, found their tracks, began repeating my mantra ("I will honor your spirit and use your flesh well."), and began still hunting. One mile into the chase, they passed through a stand of dense Douglas fir, meandered about, and I thought sure they would bed down. It took me an hour to track them slowly and carefully through a half-mile wide thicket, sometimes crawling on my hands & knees to be quiet and stay below the branches. I could smell them and knew they were not far ahead. They continued through and fed in a small park. This told me they were relaxed and not worried about a predator on their heels. Very encouraging.

And then there they were, heads tilting and ears twitching, bedded in some thick, snow-covered firs at the park's edge. In timber, one seldom sees a whole elk. Because of the roll of the slope, I could not see any elk shoulders or ribs, my preferred shot. I usually avoid neck shots, since if you don't hit the spine there is not a quick death. But the elk were just seventy yards or so away, and I had a good rest on a tree limb. She never moved from her bed:

An hour or so later, I had the carcass split into two halves, dragged well away from the gut pile where the coyotes and ravens would be less likely to feed on it, and covered with pine branches until I could return:

The heart, liver, tenderloins, back straps, and tongue I laid out on the snow to cool:

Together, they made a forty pound load in my little rucksack. By the time I reached the road, three miles distant, the load felt like one hundred and forty pounds.

At the Check Station, I learned from the nice biologist that there was a Forest Service road within a half-mile of where I killed the cow. The next morning AJ came along to help me, and his good company and a sled made for a pleasant down-hill drag:

"I will honor your spirit and use your flesh well." This promise began with a supper of elk liver and onions last night, the heart is ready for pickling, and there are already plans for barbecued ribs, grilled tenderloin, back strap schnitzel, and roasted tongue with huckleberry glaze. Elk are great animals, and deserve the honor of a great (and arduous) hunt.

Montana Mule Deer Hunting

Mule deer hunting is to elk hunting as an easy morning hike is to a three-day peak bagging trip. Both mulie and elk hunting are wonderful pursuits, but they differ enormously in scale. And of course there are exceptions, such as the high-country, wilderness, "pack 'em out six miles" hunts that my young friend and superb bow hunter Chad Krause engages in.

A word about ethics: since I am talking about hunting and not mere shooting, I'll omit any serious consideration for the way that many of my fellow Butte residents "hunt" mule deer. As one good friend and former student (and a pretty good guy in most ways) puts it, "Hell, elk hunting is about hunting. Mule deer? We road hunt them fuckers."

Mulies inhabit a wide range of habitat in the Northern Rockies, from the flat sagebrush prairie to the jagged, broken foothills to the alpine meadows and goat rocks. Thanks to my friend and former hunter Dave Carter, I learned of a jagged, broken ridge that fits my ideal for a perfect mule deer hunt. It is far enough away from roads to keep the riff-raff out, and yet with a little planning and good luck you can find, kill, and haul out a mulie buck in a half-day's hunt. Sometimes.

This past weekend, I was blessed with two mule deer hunting partners: our "little brother" AJ and my old friend Don Kieffer. The latter made a long-overdue visit from upstate New York, where he is blessed with fine white-tailed deer and turkey hunting. Here's Don, hiking across some typical sage brush and mountain mahogany habitat on the slopes of our ridge, where we expect to see both white-tailed and mule deer:

Oftentimes, especially during the rut and with heavy hunting pressure, a mule deer buck and "his" does head for the highest, most rugged country they can find. And so this is where we spent our time, clambering along the top, staying off the ridge line, glassing carefully for bedded deer, and stalking every group we could find. I'm fussy about mule deer hunting, and generally avoid shooting the big bucks or any buck with a lot of does. Dominant bucks are stinky, and I'm talking gag-a-maggot stinky here. Usually, the stink seems to stay on the hide, but occasionally it permeates the meat no matter how carefully you field dress, skin, and butcher the critter. Ask Brent Patch, who once killed a stinky big buck whose strong-flavored wild flesh refused to be tamed by the strongest and hottest of spices!

Three humans moving through mulie habitat is a bit much. Mule deer have sharp vision and acute hearing, and still-hunting is difficult at best. After a brief conference, AJ hunted one way along the ridge while Don & I went the other. AJ was barely out of sight when we heard my little 25 Roberts crack once and then -- a minute later -- once again (I gave him three cartridges this year). Sure enough, AJ killed his buck:

And what an unusual rack: a 6 X 6 with triple brow tines on once side, double brow tines on the other, and one set of double points:

Maybe it was a mulie-whitetail hybrid, or maybe just a case of too much testerone. He was a stinky one, and ruled over about twenty does. Almost before Don & I could figure out what was going on (we're a little slow on the uptake, sometimes), we saw AJ a mile below us washing his hands in the river, his buck safely stashed along the railroad tracks. Like last year, we found a mountain bike handy for the two-mile trek along the railway grade. Tough going, but it beat dragging all the hair off on the rough ballast between the ties:

Don & I have 50-some year old knees, and by the time we got AJ & his buck back to the truck, we were tuckered out and it was dark. Did I say that you could hunt this ridge in a half-day? Well, there was a qualifier about "good planning and a little luck" with that claim. And not being 15-years old--an age when no task seems too daunting if you want to do it.

After letting the ridge quiet down for a day or so, Don & I went back and sure enough found the perfect mule deer buck: a fat forkhorn. Not too rutty. Young & tender. And in an appropriately rugged spot near the top of this outcrop:

Just before we saw the buck silhouetted on the ridge, we watched a 3/4 curl bighorn ram strut out of the sagebrush ahead of us, and a yearling moose ford the river far below us. Don's 7 X 57 is a great deer rifle, and he was generous in letting me shoot it. The rifle dropped this little buck in its tracks. It took longer to move it the first two hundred yards out of the rocks than it did to drag it the next mile to the truck:

With the two of us ferrying packs and rifle and taking turns on drag duty, we were home well before noon. A sandwhich and quick cup of coffee, and us old guys were starting to feel young again. We had time to drive back over to the lower Big Hole for a quick afternoon antelope hunt.

It took awhile to locate them in the basin where I usually hunt. We drove by three or four mulie bucks that would have been a Butte road hunter's dream. Turns out, all the antelope bucks and does were together in a herd of fifty or more critters. By the time we spotted them and stalked within almost-shooting distance, the sun was well behind the western ridge. Though I was sorely tempted, Don wisely suggested we save this one for another day. As Chad Krause pointed when I told him this, "A lot can go wrong real quick. Especially when it's getting dark." Good advice, Chad. Good judgment, Don.

EcoRover Goes To Washington (D.C.)

Thanks to some "spark plugs" such as Sara Pritchard (http://www.sts.cornell.edu/viewprofile.php?ProfileID=273) and Tim LeCain (http://www.montana.edu/history/faculty/lecain-tim), there is a lively "EnviroTech" group active within organizations such as the Society for the History of Technology (http://www.historyoftechnology.org/) and the American Society for Environmental History (http://www.aseh.net/). After many years of not attending SHOT meetings, Sara's leadership in putting together a roundtable discussion titled "Common Ground? Perspectives on Integration of STS [Science & Technology Studies] and Environmental History Thus Far" drew me back to the organization. Thank you, Sara!

At the three EnviroTech sessions, there were insightful papers and lively discussion on topics such as: the entangled relationship between the idealized pristine landscapes of our imagination and the real managed landscapes of our experience; the role of political and economic power in environmental justice; and practical distinctions between natural and unnatural landscapes. This was all great fun and serious stuff, and discussions were especially interesting because of the wide range of scholars involved--ranging from pragmatic environmental historians such as Fred Quivik that provide testimony on Superfund cases to the venerable MIT scholar Leo Marx (b. 1919) who wrote the landmark text, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (1964).

That was Friday. Saturday found me with the SHOT tour of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park (http://www.nps.gov/hafe/), learning about the manufacture of US military rifles before 1865, John Brown's raid (and its huge symbolic importance to African-American history), and the manner in which people dealt with floods in this narrow, steep-walled river valley. Thanks to Merrit Roe Smith, author of Harpers Ferry Armory and New Technology (1980) for allowing us to press the "tour guide" lable upon him. Park employees are required to read Roe's book, and we heard that at least one ranger refers to Roe as "The God of Harpers Ferry." Wow, it's not everyday that God guides you up to "Jefferson's Rock" to look out over what TJ described as "one of the most stupendous scenes in nature" and "worth a voyage across the Atlantic." Let freedom and nature ring, Tom!

Sunday on the mall: a quick trip through the WWII Memorial (which confirmed my prejudice against it--somehow it does not capture for me either the war's historical importance or the enormous sacrifice it required of Americans, Russians, and others; a jaunt through a group of Native Americans drumming for peace; and a study of the tired faces, happy friends, and others participating in a "Race for the Cure" breast cancer event.

I then stopped in the National Gallery of Art for a visit with the work of American painter Edward Hopper. Surprise: Hopper wasn't just the landscape painter I knew through his study of Maine lighthouses. My intended one-hour tour turned into an extended (and exhausting) three-hour tour.

This self-portrait helps set up what I found to be a fascinating theme running through many of his paintings: the interplay of rounded forms (here represented by hat, face, shoulders) with sharp angles and blocky forms (floor, door casing, door):

In Automat (1927) -- named for the automated diners of the period -- a contemplative (perhaps not lonely, as most critics have described it) woman holds a cup of coffee. This is Art Deco in all its glory: hat, face, shoulders, cup, saucer, table, chairs, lights reflecting in the window... It's the curvy world of post-Euclidean geometry. As I like to tell my students, "THERE ARE NO STRAIGHT LINES IN NATURE."

I learned about the fascinating connection between Hopper's view of the world and Hollywood, and I look forward to watching Steve Martin's homage to Hopper, Pennies from Heaven. Somehow, this painting, Office at Night (1940), seems like a scene from radio entertainer Garrison Keillor's "Guy Noire" skit. Nice curves, Hopper, and they ain't all about hats and tables:

And, finally, Western Motel (1957). Nice headlights:

Wow. Hopper's lighthouse and urban rooftop scenes are great, too. Exhausted from art immersion 101, I headed over to the Capitol City Brewery, had three quick pints, picked up my luggage from the hotel, and road the Metro out to Reagan Airport for my flight. I need to visit D.C. more often.

Pickled Heart

Grandma Beryl Nell Munday, good Scot Irish Presbyter that she was, wasted not. Though I now wish I had recorded her recipes for things such as stewed deer kidneys, I did not like such dishes and so paid as little attention to them as I could. For some reason, however, I liked her pickled deer heart as one of my earliest memories of food. Call it comfort food, perhaps, but the memory of those thick slices of pickled deer heart with butter-laden hunks of fresh "Colella bread" (from our neighborhood Italian bakery) still makes my mouth water.

Gram's recipe was pretty simple, and it's tasty in all its forms: pickled deer heart, pickled elk heart, or pickled antelope heart. First, you need one dead critter with a heart.Her are the steps:

1. While field dressing the animal, cut the heart away from its connecting arteries and veins.
2. Set the heart aside in a clean place to drain and cool while you are finishing the field dressing job.
3. Carry a clean ziplock bag to transport the heart in your pack.
4. Once home or back at camp, rinse the heart in fresh cool water, poking your finger into the ventricles to help remove any blood clots.
5. Soak overnight in a cool place with enough water to cover plus a handful of salt.
6. Rinse again, and place whole in a pan of cool, salted water, over medium heat and boil until done: this takes about a half hour (once the water begins to boil) with a small antelope or deer heart, and about one & one-half hours with a large elk heart. Remove from heat and allow to cool.
7. After cooling, cut the heart into three or four pieces by inserting the knife lenghtwise into the chambers. Carefully trim away all fat and surface blood vessels, cut and peel away the outer layer (epicardium) and the inner layers of the chambers ("heart strings" or tendineae).
8. Slice the trimmed pieces into strips approximately 1/4 inch thick.

9. Place in a clean jar, add about a tablespoon of pickling spice, cover with vinegar, fit the lid and store in the 'fridge.
10. The pickled heart slices are ready to eat in about five days.

I have tried different vinegars, and like red wine vinegar the best. Vary the recipe with other spices: dill, hot peppers, garlic cloves, and onion are all good additions to the pickling spice. Some people add sugar, but I care for sweet pickled heart about as much as I care for sweet pickles.

Serving suggestions: Bring the slices to potluck parties as an appetizer, arranged on a small platter with crackers and perhaps some pickles and/or peppers such as jalapenos. People -- many of whom do not especially like "game" or venison -- seem to enjoy this treat. You might want to explain that "the heart is just another muscle" (and not an organ per se such as liver). The best serving suggestion of all? Eat the slices with fresh, buttered slices of Italian bread and wash down with a cold beer on a hot afternoon.

Pickled heart will keep at least one year. Enjoy!

Is THAT all there is... (to an antelope hunt), my friend?

An old friend from Pennsylvania (thanks, Bob!) emailed me about the previous "Pronghorn Antelope Hunt" entry. I'll exagerrate for effect, but the message went something like "What's this bullshit about a hunting story where it's all about what you bring home in the back of the truck. Have you lost your ethics?"

Well, no, I haven't. Now don't get me wrong: my hunter role models are the San "Bushmen" hunters of the Kalahari. They'll shoot a giraffe with a little poison-tipped arrow and then track the beast for five days if that's what it takes to bring home the meat. Even with unwounded game, they get on a track and will not say quit (see the marvelous documentary films by John Marshall).

Still -- whether for the San or me -- there is a lot more to it. Hunting is life. Hunting is a deep relationship and bond with nature. Hunting is learning to see and feel the rhythm of life. On the recent antelope hunt, hunting was:

• Meeting the curious jackrabbit that hopped over to within six feet of me in the dawn twilight.
• Seeing the coyote hunt its way up the coulee, and then jump out of its hide as its nose scented my backtrail.
• Wondering how those large slabs of volcanic rock along the ridges became so waterworn and smooth.
• Pausing occasionally to sit down (watch out for the cactus), feel the warm sun, keep my nose into the cool breeze, and take in a vast landscape without another human in sight.
• Wondering how sorry I might be for leaving my knapsack with water, food, and rain gear in the truck on a warm afternoon as I made the stalk.
• Watching a mule deer doe and her two fawns nonchalantly feed as they wondered what those high-strung, flighty antelope were so excited about.
• Knowing that the ravens, whose excited croaking and flying back and forth between me and the butte, were telling me that antelope were there.
• Carefully gutting the antelope doe to keep the meat clean and sweet.
• Feeling the weight of the doe slung across my shoulders, smelling her strong antelope scent, and picking a good route to the nearest road.
• Being VERY sorry that I had not brought the water bottle as I draped the doe over a sagebrush and began the hike back to the truck.

Yes, there is a lot more to hunting than what comes home in the back of the truck.

Pronghorn Antelope Hunt: Big Hole River Valley, Montana

As I put the rifle case in the pickup bed, I looked up through the frosty predawn darkness at Orion, the hunter's constellation. Pausing a moment to gaze, I hoped to see an Orionid meteor or two, but did not. A minute later, ice scraped off the windshield and coffee in hand, I was ready to roll.

Driving from Butte to the Big Hole, I reflected on why I don't like to hunt opening day of antelope season. Pronghorn antelope are odd creatures compared with newcomers to the North American continent such as elk or white tailed deer. As a creature that evolved at a time when cheetahs, short faced bears, sabre tooth lions, and other large, fast predators roamed the North American plains, antelope use their amazingly large eyes and incredibly fleet feet to keep them safe. But the pre-Pleistocene predators did not have rifles capable of shooting accurately at 200 yards. The antelope's 8-power vision and 60 mph speed can make them far too complacent about human hunters within rifle range--as the pre-hunting season photo attests:

Opening day hunters take advantage of this by road hunting. They blast away at every pronghorn within range--and often far out of range of their shooting ability, which results in many wounded antelope. I get so aggravated by the lousy ethics of these hunters that I avoid hunting opening day, rather than be tempted to put a bullet through some moron's engine block. After opening day, antelope fear, flee, and hide from the mere sound of motor vehicles.

I parked down the valley from Old Charlie's place. Although I heard Old Charlie had been sent to a nursing home, it's hard to shake a feeling that the 90-year old codger still, somehow, inhabits the place. But as I climb the steep glacial till of the hillside, I get high enough to look up the valley at the old homesteader's log shack. No smoke curling from the chimney. No lights. He really is gone.

The rancher who was kind enough to give Old Charlie a place for the old boy, his dogs, and his one good horse to live has replaced that distinguished lot with about two hundred head of stinking cattle. It's been a hot, dry summer, and it looks as if they've spent the entire last few months along the spring in the old hay field below the shack. The meadow ground is churned into cowshit-laden mud, the uplands are hammered into dust, and there's not a sign of antelope anywhere in the mile-wide ridgeline radius I swing around Old Charlie's place.

So much for the first hunt of the morning. For the past five years or so I shot my antelope in this area, spent some time talking (well, listening really--the old boy was deaf as a post) with Charlie, and made it home by 10 a.m. This year would require a little more hunting.

The sun is well up on these antelope hills, and it's a vast landscape from which to choose a place to hunt:

For the second hunt of the day I drove up the valley and to the east, and park near a prominent butte where Dave Carter, Rick Douglass, and I occasionally hunted. The butte's outer rim forms a more or less circular steep wall of rock, and in the center lies a hidden depression where antelope often hide after opening day madness. Here I find three buck antelope, none of which I am interested in shooting. I hunt primarily for meat, and have found that buck antelope are too gamy tasting even for me. Furthermore, I'll need to carry this antelope a quarter mile or more to the nearest road, and does will weigh 60 to 80 pounds field dressed, whereas bucks are 20 pounds or so heavier.

Discouraged, I hike back to the truck and drive several miles of low range, rocky, ass-pounding Bureau of Land Management road. My plan is to stop at another spot where Dave and I used to hunt, in some hills and hidy-holes above a rancher's alfalfa field. Though adjacent to a blacktop highway, oddly enough other hunters don't seem aware that there are antelope there--perhaps because you must walk to get to them. Upon reaching the main access road, I drive a mile or so and -- on a whim -- decide to turn back up onto the BLM land.

I drive two miles up the valley, park the truck, and step out to glass the ridgeline to the east. Sure enough, a mile away, I see a herd of eighteen or so antelope feeding along the side ridge. And amazingly enough, several of them are looking right at me. The whole herd becomes nervous and follows the lead doe on a line up and over the ridge, but angling back toward the butte I hunted earlier.

I park as closely as I can--perhaps a half mile from the ridge and a mile from the butte. Hiking up and over, I watch the last few antelope, barely within rifle range, as they top the next ridge leading to the butte. One more hike, I tell my feet that have been pounding all day over this rocky, cactus-strewn desert. And sure enough, they are here in the bowl, some already beginning to bed down. I watch them several minutes, though one young doe notices my silhouette peaking through a sage brush and is coughing nervously. The others gather round, trying to see or smell or hear this reported threat.

The range is only about two hundred yards, but there is no handy rock for a rest and I hate to sprawl prone among all this cactus. I'm thankful for my shooting sticks -- two arrows tied together to form a "V" -- a simple innovation taught me by now-retired professor Jack McGuire. I choose a young doe (I do not want to shoot either the lead doe or a fawn), hold the crosshairs low behind the shoulder, take a deep breath, exhale a bit, and squeeze the trigger on the little 25 Roberts:

Now the work begins. It is 3 p.m. By the time I field dress the doe, hike down to the truck, drive around and up nearer to the butte, hike back to the kill, and carry her 65 pound carcass to the truck, it is 6 p.m. Thank you, Orion.

The Chokecherry Rhythm

Here at 6,000 feet in the Northern Rockies, we are perhaps more sensitive to the ebb and flow of seasons. You can thrive on the cyclic rhythm of change. When spring sweeps up the flanks of the Great Divide, it can take your breath away as snow drifted ridges green up, seemingly overnight. And each change of season is a chance to reflect on our tilting journey around the sun.

Woke up this morning to a half-foot of fresh snow, heavy and wet like concrete, a welcome respite after a hot dry summer:

Slippin and sliding my way down the hill and past a patch of chokecherry shrubs (Prunus virginiana), I looked closely but could find not a single fruit left by hungry birds:

My year rolls along buoyed up in part by the rhythm of the chokecherry, from the buds and tender leaves of late April:

To the lovely, thick-scented flowers of late May and the heavy, ripe fruit of late-August:

Chokecherry was an important plant to native peoples, and well known to white culture as well. While we today look at chokecherry primarily as a source of fruit for jelly, Lewis & Clark -- like the aboriginal American peoples -- knew it as medicine. When Meriwether Lewis fell ill with intestinal cramps and fever, his men gathered chokecherry twigs from which he made a "strong black decoction of an astringent bitter tast." This brew had Lewis feeling better and able to travel the following day. Sacagawea may have had her own thoughts about this shrub, having been captured while gathering the fruits.

Thanks to the good hands of Brent and Karina Patch, I can enjoy my medicine each morning: chokecherry syurp on waffles. Despite the early snowstorm, I feel better already!

WANTED: Graduate Candidate in Environmental Communication

Seeking a student interested in pursuing the MS in Technical Communication in the research area of Environmental Communication.

NSF funding for tuition and a $1500/month stipend, beginning January 2008 and ending May 2009, including summer 2008.

The research is centered on the role of citizen participation in shaping Superfund remedies at various sites in the Upper Clark Fork River Basin of Montana (“America’s Largest Superfund Site”). Tasks may include oral interviews of participants; reading and summarizing relevant literature; rhetorical analysis of risk communication; and reading, classification, and coding of documents based on Actor Network Theory.

The Department of Professional & Technical Communication offers the MS degree in Technical Communication. For more information on admissions requirements, the curriculum, and the faculty, please see the department website at http://www.mtech.edu/hss/ptc/grad_program.html .

If interested, please email me directly with a letter of interest and a resume to pmunday@mtech.edu.

Thank you,

Professor Pat Munday, PhD
Technical Communication Department
Montana Tech
Butte MT 59701