Category: Hook & Bullet Blog

Here's an thought-provoking story from the Minneapolis Star Tribune about the need for hunting mentors. I've written about this in my column recently, about how millennials may be key to R3 efforts and how outdoor education courses for women are important to fishing and hunting. And these piece from the New York Times explains how this younger generation's motivation to hunt may be slightly different from the past: Wade Truong and Rachel Owen are all about moving quality protein from field to table.

Groups trying to stop Wyoming's planed grizzly bear hunts this fall say the state borrowed part of Montana's quota to increase possible females killed from one to two. Officials in both states dispute this.

Under the Wyo proposal, hunters could kill up to two female grizzlies, even though the state's allocation is just 1.45. Montana's female allocation is 0.9 females. The states have agreed to round up or down the allocations, so Wyoming should only have one female tag, as would Montana if it had set a hunt.

Wyoming's hunt also provides tags for up to 10 male bears. All grizzly hunting would cease, however,  once two females tags are filled to prevent more females from being mistakenly killed.

The last remaining caribou herd in the lower 48 has been declared effectively extinct, according to a story in the New York Times. Recent aerial surveys counted only three animals in the herd.

Woodland caribou once ranged into Montana as far south as Lolo Pass in the Bitterroot.

The small and dwindling herd that roamed into the United States used the  Selkirk Mountains of northern Idaho and Washington near the Canadian border part of the year.

A University of Montana wildlife biologist blamed mismanagement in British Columbia for the vanishing herd.

“The functional loss of this herd is the legacy of decades of government mismanagement across caribou range,” said Mark Hebblewhite, a wildlife biologist at the University of Montana, in the story in the New York Times.

The animals require old growth forest to survive. During the winter the animals move up slope in areas of heavy snow. The caribou's large hooves allow it to stand on, rather than plunge into deep snow. This allows them to feed on Old Man's Beard, a lichen that grows in old growth trees.

The deep snow also protects the caribou from predators, which move down slope in winter.

Montana FWP's new plan to combat Chronic Wasting Disease includes killing more bucks, the primary carriers of the disease. The Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission will vote on the plan at its meeting Thursday in Helena.

A little hunting humor from The New Yorker.

Change sometimes comes slowly, but when it finally arrives the transformation can be sudden and dramatic.

Such is the recent transformations of American culture powered by the #MeToo movement and the outing of sexual harassers, or worse. These are people, mostly men, who have been protected for decades. Hopefully, society will dismantle the unseemly protections that long shielded these abusers from accountability, forever.

What does this have to do with Montana hunters and anglers? Only this: one of the latest abusers forced out into the market square of accountability is Wayne Pacelle, the now former CEO of the Humane Society of the United States. The Humane Society of the United States, by the way, isn’t that local organization with a similar name that helps deal with the problem of homeless pets. The Humane Society of the United States is a different organization, and it is one of the most strident and well organized anti-hunting organizations in the country. Pacelle, who was CEO for more than a decade, made it so.

Needless to say, I won’t shed a tear about Pacelle’s passing from the Humane Society. But I am still seeking the appropriate approach for dealing with other shamed public figures — and their work — that I have admired. I learned the fundamentals of preparing Italian food watching Mario Batali’s “Molto Mario” cooking show. Kevin Spacey has long been one of my favorite actors, and “American Beauty,” in which Spacey ironically plays a middle-age man with an inappropriate attraction for a girl still in high school, is an amazing film that ultimately reaffirms the unshakable power of love and family.

Do I get to continue watching on reruns, if they ever reappear? Should I stop making Batali’s Southern Italian recipes that became a family staple when my daughters turned vegetarian and I needed non-meat culinary inspiration?

While were on the subject, I still own a Jeff Smith cookbook. I watched Smith’s “Frugal Gourmet” religiously back in the pre-Food Network days. However, he was rightly driven from his PBS television show after reports of his history sexual assaults became public.

Do I keep the book? Will I ever again watch “American Beauty?” Do I make lentil pasta when my daughters visit on college break?

The lentil pasta is a yes. On the others, it’s probably a “yes,” but I’m still working it out.

Editor's Note: (1-27-18) If you're not ready to abandon Batali's work, here's the lentil pasta recipe.