Thank goodness a photo is worth a thousand words, as I'm way too tired to write a four thousand word column. Besides, we'd all be asleep long before finishing, so this is better.

Buffalo season is definitely upon us, and we skinned 16 yesterday. Thankfully only about half that today and tomorrow, and then another few hundred more, and it'll be February.

October, though... meat seems to be a recurrent theme. Good thing there are varying kinds of harvests available, as there was literally only one afternoon all month suitable for grain harvest. Plus two others ranging from marginal to somewhere sub-...zero, perhaps.

Plus I was hunting on the sub-jective one, most recently. Got home by about 2:00 PM, on opening day of big game season, the 25th, and fortunately Cody had the day's buffalo skinning handled. I did briefly consider firing up the combine, and later heard a neighbor did (and was combining amongst the elk!), but no. No way near dry enough, and not after an overnight backpack trip, maybe eight miles and more vertical than I'd thought.

It's kind of a hit or miss spot, although you could run into Mr. Big here. I was just tickled to get into a decent herd of elk, ~30 head or so. Cows, spikes, and a raghorn was the biggest I saw. Not even tempting...

Especially as Cody had the sweet access for the next morning, on a place barely out of town where he'd done quite a bit of haying over the years. Still, he says it's the most challenging place to run a balewagon, of anywhere they hay!

But the rancher apparently likes him, and Cody got what is literally the only tender elk we've ever had! And, the rancher loaded it with his tractor, which is just mind-bogglingly easier than our usual modus operandi, and sets another record in that it's also the only one we've ever brought home in one piece!

Hopefully you don't mind photos of dead animals, and if so please switch to another month, but I was quite struck while dropping off a buffalo head and cape at taxidermist Jerry Andres' place the other morning (Jerry arrived here in the 'hood about the same time we did; early 80's).

I personally am kind of amazed the wolf season (for southern Montana at least) was closed basically one day into it!

Well, the "problem" was we'd already gotten pretty close to the quite conservative quota during the early season in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness. So when the remaining four (plus undoubtedly some others) met their demise on opening day, that was all she wrote. And incidentally the wolf in the above photo was one of the two last ones taken.

I hadn't bought a tag, so don't feel too gypped, although beyond that have never been taken with predator hunting for some reason. I'm not opposed to it, but it's not my thing. As far as wolf hunting though, I was definitely surprised, and mistaken once again as I'd predicted very few people would ever see one.

And no, none were shot from barstools, but there are people actively pursuing them, calling 'em in, etc., and that didn't take long...

Less successful was a quick trip Cody and I took to the Missouri Breaks, ostensibly antelope hunting but mostly scouting for a rifle elk tag I drew up there (it's not the highly sought after primo tags, but we'll see...).

That was slim pickin's! A 950 mile drive, made a big figure 8 through a whole bunch of public land, not to mention big chunks of private also (a large percentage of which is in Block Management), including huge alfalfa fields right up by the CMR Wildlife Refuge boundary, at dawn and dusk, when you'd swear every critter in the country would be out there feasting, and all but nada.

In the northern portion of our tour at least, we saw one small buck antelope, and about five or six muley does. Gads... I'm thinking the bluetongue outbreak the prior two years took a toll up there...

So we dodged (not entirely) showers and found at least some more speedy goats down in our old haunts further south, down by where Hornaday collected what they thought might be some of the last bison specimens left...

Luckily I still have some good contacts to pursue, and need to pick their brains and narrow my search. Either that or hunt closer to home... According to my GPS, my backpack camp last Saturday was only 34.5 miles from home (although it's about twice that by road). And now I'm nearing reports of perhaps decent bulls in places I've hunted a lot, almost in the back yard here (it's a big yard), where there didn't used to be any...