Flathead Wildlife, INC.

Congratulations Ron Nail. What an awesome whitetail deer!!!

Geo Johnson shot this 7 year old buck after chasing him for 3 years and a 90 minute stalk.

by Bruce Gipe, October 2023

We moved to Montana in 2020, and from the start of our journey until now I have frequently been asked by friends and family, “Are you going to go hunting?” When I first heard this question I did not understand anything about its implications. Now I know that this question is in the same category as, “Are you going to do nuclear physics?” Or, “Are you going to play professional golf?” Or “Are you going paint an amazing landscape?” Or … you get the idea.

I hiked around our forested acreage and saw many game trails and whitetail and elk and coyotes and turkey and pheasant and tracks and poop that I couldn’t identify. I saw bedding areas and smelled urine. I carried bear spray and a pistol and sometimes a 12 gauge. I set up a blind in a meadow. But I didn’t go hunting.

I put up a game camera and saw lots of deer and turkey. For some reason it was usually dark when the deer triggered the camera (a clue regarding the time of day that hunting starts). But I didn’t go hunting.

I bought a hunting license at Snappy’s. But I didn’t go hunting.

My good friend Ernie sent me one of his rifles, a Remington Woodmaster in 30-06 that he had stopped using. I took it to the range and dialed in the scope with the help of my neighbor Doug who actually understands optics. But I didn’t go hunting.

I bought boots at Snappy’s, pants and game bags (no idea what a game bag was for but they were on sale) at Cabela’s, and a jacket at Sportsman’s. But I didn’t go hunting.

I listened to the MeatEater podcast and read some of Rinella’s books and watched Alone. But I didn’t go hunting.

I bought a compound bow and took the online archery licensing course from FWP. But I didn’t go hunting.

Towards the end of our first summer in the Flathead Valley I met Jon Obst, a game warden who was referred to me by a friend because I was thinking about purchasing a jet boat for the river. Jon knows jet boats and he gave me a ride in one. We traveled up to the Middle Fork of the Flathead one August afternoon. When I realized that we were traveling in 4 inches of water over gravel bars at 15 to 20 mph I gave up on the idea of a jet boat, knowing that I would probably end up catapulting myself out of the boat into a tree. I think that’s what Jon wanted to show me. He also mentioned that he would be teaching a hunting class at the Flathead Valley Community College in the Fall.

Jon’s hunting class was great. We talked about safety and survival and gear. At the last session he brought in a guest speaker, Kendal, who talked about his journey from San Diego to the Flathead Valley and his connection to a group called Flathead Wildlife. Kendal wanted to find a hunting mentor and Flathead Wildlife provided him with a group of veteran Montana hunters and fishermen and women who were willing to teach.

That made sense to me. My Dad didn’t hunt. We had BB guns and pellet guns as kids growing up in Southern CA, but we didn’t hunt or camp or fish. I hadn’t gone hunting because I didn’t know where to go or what to do when I got there. My wife and I joined Flathead Wildlife and we started participating in its meetings and community service activities (the annual Flathead Fishing Fair at Snappy’s, the Brooke Hanson Memorial Fishing Day at Pine Grove, fishing at Snappy’s Pond with veterans from the Columbia Falls Veterans Home, trash clean up at the Hubbart Reservoir, selling blue bird houses, advocating for conservation easements, donating to 4-H shooting sports, teaching bear awareness, etc.)

In the Fall of 2022 I went on my first real hunting trip with five other FWI guys (Jim, Brent, Jack, Tony, A person walking on a sandy beach

Description automatically generatedKendal, Read). We traveled east to the Great Plains south of Malta and set up camp in wall tents. We arrived on a very warm Wednesday afternoon in October. We scouted on Thursday (Hunting Districts 620 and 630) and shot 3 antelope on Friday (Jim, Tony, Read). It was amazing to watch a stalk and shoot evolve in slow motion as Jim and Jack quietly set up on a ridge above a small herd and Jim nailed the shot from 320 yards, adjusting for a stiff crosswind. I participated in gutting his beautiful doe and pulling the game cart back to the truck.

It started raining Friday night and the plains turned to gumbo. We hunted Saturday morning in a light drizzle, saw one mule deer, and returned to camp mid-afternoon. That night it started to snow and the temperature dropped. On Sunday morning we hunted in the snow, and gumbo and wind for several hours. My boots had golf ball-sized ice balls of mud on the soles and I could barely stay up on any kind of sloped ground. We gave up around noon; it was snowing hard and was very cold.

That night the rain fly partially detached from our tent and flapped hard all night long in 30 mph wind. One corner of the tent froze. My corner came loose from its tie downs and continually popped against me as I tried to sleep on my cot. I could not get warm and literally put on every piece of clothing that I had in my bag. I was miserable and convinced myself that we would be stuck out there for days. I tried to brace myself by thinking about the pioneers and Lewis and Clark and others who had survived similar or worse conditions for days or weeks at a time. Finally at 3 am I woke Brent up (he wasn’t really sleeping) and offered to make him hot chocolate if he would re-start the fire in the stove. We warmed up and amazingly, the wind died down and we were able to drive out on dirt roads that were covered by several inches of new snow under beautiful blue skies. My first hunting trip was a success despite the fact that I never fired a shot!

Description automatically generatedThat Fall I also was with my friend John when he shot an elk from 30 yards with his bow. The week after Labor Day we heard elk bugling and on a Friday morning we got out early in thick fog. John missed a shot at 50 yards on a large bull who appeared through the brush about 15 minutes after we started walking. We continued east and found a small herd. Cow calling yielded two calves who came running towards us; one stopped at the edge of some water and one came across and stopped long enough for John to hit him with a perfect shot. We drug him out on a mat. It was John’s first elk—he grew up hunting and had killed many deer but had never had harvested an elk. He gave us the tenderloins and they were fantastic!

Later that season I also went on a Saturday trip with my friends Frankie and Holly and their son Josh and saw Josh get his first deer on a very cold day (12 below) outside of Marion. On the last day of the ‘22 season Frankie, his friend Tim, and I left Frankie’s house in Columbia Falls early and drove to Eureka in heavy snow. We parked at a Forest Service gate. The snow had stopped when we got there, but it was dark and windy as we started our walk west towards Lake KooCanUSA. It was intermittently snowing. We saw three large cow elk walk up to a fence and jump over. Frankie had already filled his tags for the season and Tim wanted a bull and I could barely see anything in the heavy snow so once again there was no shooting but it was an amazing (and exhausting) 10 mile walk on November 26, and I was on a hunt!

This year (2023) I was fortunate to be on an antelope party permit for HD 650. Jim, Brent, Bill and I left Kalispell early Thursday and arrived at the Nelson Creek Campground with enough daylight to put up 2 tents. The wind was howling and the temperature was dropping. The water in the Ft. Peck Reservoir was whitecapping and our campsite on a knoll above the water was taking the full brunt of the wind chill. My new 30 degree Nemo sleeping bag did not do the job and by morning I was wearing 2 base layers, a down jacket, 2 socks, gloves, and a beanie.

On Friday Jim and I scouted to the north on Highway 24 while Brent and Bill headed south. We had cell reception and Brent and Bill picked up an excellent tip from a Block Management employee who advised that we look at a BMA that was further north. The antelope were not abundant but there were more than we saw the prior year in HD 630 so after driving the back roads we decided that is where our next day would begin.

During the day the wind died down and the temp was in the 30s at night. I had an extra sleeping bag so I got into that plus a liner (supposedly gives you another 14 degrees of coverage, plus 2 base layers, etc. and I was still cold but did manage to get a few hours of sleep. We were up at 4:30 on Saturday, had some oatmeal and coffee, and headed out to the BMA.

We arrived before sunrise and signed in. One other truck showed up but left. We started walking in the dark with headlamps and in about 1.5 miles were standing on a ridge where we could see antelope to the south and to the north. The sneak options looked better for the two animals to the north so we headed back the way we came, re-crawling under two barbed wire fences before entering a coulee that meandered in the right direction. Cows looked down on us as we walked by and expressed their opinion that we should leave.

As we started to come out of coulee we could see an old well and water tank ahead. Jim started urgently waving me down and whispered that there were several more antelope ahead on the other side of the well. I had chambered a round when we left the truck and went down to a knee and set up my shooting stick and removed my scope cover and took the rifle off safe when I saw a couple of does about 150 yards ahead. They seemed to be heading down into a ravine. I sighted on one and Jim said, “Wait, there is a big buck coming!” About five does were moving down into the ravine when a beautiful buck appeared in front of them at about 100 yards. I could only see him from the neck up—I was shooting uphill and a sage bush hid the rest of his body.

I thought about waiting until he moved out but decided to go ahead and pull the trigger before he could run. I was pretty sure that this was a shot that I would regret not taking if I waited. He went down immediately. It was 8:30 am on Saturday, about an hour and half into the season and I was hunting! We gutted the antelope, then Jim headed the 1.5 miles back to the truck for the game cart. About 45 minutes after Jim left another buck strolled by to the north in a wide open field. He didn’t move while I ranged him at 206 yards … I felt really bad because that would have been Jim’s animal if he hadn’t left to get the cart.

Carting the animal back to the truck was my job (Jim walked north to see if he could locate the buck that I saw). By then it was mid-day and hot and I was out of water. After about a half mile of dragging the cart through narrow cuts in a ravine I decided to leave it and walk back to the truck for water. By about 3 pm Jim had returned and we were loaded and ready to return to camp. Later we learned that Bill had taken a shot and missed cleanly from about 340 yards—there was a crosswind half way that he didn’t see from his shooting position. Brent saw a few animals but could not get any of them to stop moving. That night as I drifted off I kept seeing my antelope in the cross hairs and hearing and feeling the shot.

On Sunday we were up again at 4:30. The plan was to return to the site from the previous day and get Jim his antelope. I knew that the odds were high that it was going to be another long hot day of searching.

It was still mostly dark, and just as we were pulling into the parking area I saw movement to the right about 300 yards off the road. It was a large buck! Jim signed in and we carefully proceeded up to a ridge line. I was giving Jim lots of room, not wanting to give our position away. Jim crawled up to a shooting position on a ridge, ranged the animal at 313 yards, and fired. The antelope dropped about 30 feet from a fence to private land—if we hadn’t got there early he undoubtedly would been out of reach in the neighboring alfalfa field. We finished gutting and carting Jim’s buck back to the truck by 9 am! We returned to camp and hung his animal next to mine on the meat rack and removed the skin and bagged it. We covered the rack with a tarp to block the sun. Fortunately there was a breeze.

Later that day Bill got his buck after a 10 mile round trip walk. Brent drew the short straw and could not get close enough for a shot. That night we celebrated with whiskey and pork chops and three animals cooling on the meat rack outside!

How I “Learned To Hunt”, Part 2

The November newsletter contained a great article by Bruce Gipe detailing how he learned to hunt as an “adult-onset” hunter. Bruce had harvested a dandy antelope buck earlier in the season but said his hunting education was ongoing. Bruce persisted into the general season, using a muzzleloader. There were some encounters with deer and elk but nothing worked out. However, the Heritage Muzzleloader Season gave him one last chance. Bruce continued to work, switching from round balls to conicals and working on different loads to improve accuracy. He finally decided he needed a new rifle to really deliver accurate and humane shots. What a great excuse for a new firearm! Bruce also sought advice from some muzzleloader hunters and an online forum. Bruce tried several stand locations, it finally all came together when he shot not one, but two whitetails in HD 170 in just a few minutes. It was fun watching him reload as the 2nd deer came in, muzzleloaders definitely add a new element of challenge. Fittingly, Bruce was presented with a “First Deer” certificate by FWP Wildlife Manager Neil Anderson at the Hunter Celebration. Bruce commented “Aren’t these usually given to 12 year olds?” But a first is a first, I think he can now call himself a hunter.

The volunteer work crew in action built 610 bluebird nesting boxes.

The nesting boxes will be on sale at Sliters in 3 locations and Murdoch’s (Kalispell).

Laura Nyberg and Sandi Vashro enjoy a day of fishing at Tally Lake

Laura’s BIG catch

Kendal and Shelly Bortisser moved to Montana 2 years ago, became members of FWI and quickly adopted the Montana life style. Kendal decided to take up hunting at age 58, I (Jim Vashro) was honored to accompany Kendal on his first hunts and pass along a few tips. Studies show that hunters who take up hunting later in life are more likely to stay with the sport. Kendal did things right, taking Hunter Education, a Beginning Hunting course at FVCC and talking to lots of hunters. Our first hunt was for antelope near Miles City. A group of us endured 6 days of extreme heat to snowflakes, constant high winds and even a prairie wildfire. Despite the challenges, Kendal said he enjoyed the entire experience, culminating in taking this dandy antelope after a long crawl through sagebrush and prickly pear and laying in the rain for ½ hour waiting for the buck to stand up.

Following that success, Kendal and I turned to deer hunting. Early season cold and snow quickly turned to crunchy snow, making it near impossible to sneak through the woods. Warm days made the bucks go nocturnal. Despite all that, after each deerless hunt Kendal would exclaim what a great day he had had. Kendal’s patience and optimism paid off when a friend took him on some private property after Thanksgiving. Kendal spotted this 4×4 whitetail buck and dropped him in his tracks with a well-placed shot. Welcome to the Hunting Fraternity, Kendal.

This is Tyler Nyberg’s first whitetail and his first deer hunt since getting out of the Marines.

Jim Vashro hunts the East side of Montana and scores.