My second excuse for update tardiness, is that we took a long-overdue family vacation to the Oregon coast during the kid's spring break.  First time we've vacationed outside Montana in eight years.  Our trip coincided with heavy rain, high winds, and raging surf, but watching it from our rented beach house was kinda cool.   We got out in it some, including a session of night crabbing that resulted in a big old sack of crab legs that are now residing in our freezer.  Anyway, on our return we were again struck by the fact that we live in a virtual Paradise, and while getting out of Dodge (so to speak) is fine once in a while, there's really no place like home!

Prior to my computer meltdown, the most noteworthy item needing inclusion here was a report from our initial unguided bison hunts.  Those were an unqualified success, with nine of nine hunters collecting bison, primarily with large-caliber handguns.   Some of them have put up a website about their revolver revelations; Big Bore Handgunners.

After months of mild weather, our bison hunters were greeted with -30F temperatures.   The adjacent photo was taken along the Madison River one of those mornings.  Yeah, it was brisk out, but it was beautiful also with bright sunshine and a thick layer of hoarfrost coating everything.  By the afternoons, the temperatures had risen to somewhere around 0, and with no wind and bright sunshine it seemed downright balmy.   I even had my coat off for a while assisting with bison butchering.  At any rate; the hunters, outfitter, and myself were all immensely pleased with how this went, and we suspect these hunts will prove to be the veritable cat's pajamas.    (Fine.  You think of a better phrase.  Winner gets a buffalo burger.) 

These hunts will pick up again in May or June.  The "unguided" aspect will need some modification, at least for first-time hunters.  It's a big place, roughly three by eight miles, and in practice it'll probably wind up being more like "semi-guided".  We'll get the details sorted out on that in the coming weeks.

Speaking of bison, the wildlife group I'm in, the Gallatin Wildlife Association, is lobbying hard to modify public policy for bison from Yellowstone Park that migrate into Montana.  Currently, those bison are rounded up and slaughtered by the MT Dept. of Livestock.  The reason given is the threat of spreading brucellosis to domestic livestock.  When examined; that argument falls apart.  Foremost; there are basically no cattle in the areas next to the Park that have already been delineated as zones where free-ranging wild bison are to be allowed some measure of tolerance.   Laws already on the books allow for private landowners or their agents whose livestock are threatened by contact with bison to take care of the situation, and since there are next to no cattle in the affected areas anyway....

Plus, a notable percentage of elk in the area also carry brucellosis.  Carried to its illogical extreme; the DOL's policy would mandate exterminating all the elk in the Greater Yellowstone Area.  If you think we're mad about the bison issue....   What we'd like to see is management of these bison turned back over to the Dept. of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, and their numbers controlled by a public hunt administered by FWP.  The last incarnation of this hunt, some ten or twelve years back, had DOL using hunters to execute bison as they stepped into Montana.  That generated immense and predictable public outrage, and a whole bunch of bad publicity for the state as well as hunters in general.  We'd like to see a hunting season extending from early fall through the winter for bison that have been allowed to range into the zones outside the Park already set aside for their use.  It's really kind of a no-brainer, except for certain powers that be in the Montana Legislature, and we're working on them.  Wish us luck....