Even an unskilled bowhunter (which I was) will get lucky if he wanders around in game-rich country long enough. Eventually, I made a lucky shot on an elk and was able to stalk and shoot an antelope. I was saving my buck deer tag. The year before I had to pass on a trophy mule deer because I had already filled my tag. I hired on with a local hunting guide who needed help retrieving 4 elk from deep ...  Read More

Fall began in Montana's Little Belt Mountains chasing elk. While I loved the hunting, I felt guilty that I wasn't working. My delayed entry into the army was still several months away. I rented an empty farm house from a rancher friend. I caught Brook trout and shot ducks, pheasants and deer on the creek behind the house and caught a five pound rainbow trout in the pond out front. The highlight of...  Read More

A friend that I grew up with moved into our trailer in the Spring and slept on the couch. Brad G. was all about Montana and still lives there to this day. Recruiters were always coming into the school and talking to students, and I had always regretted not serving in the military. Just like that, the two of us enlisted in the infantry on a 6 month 'delayed entry' program so that we would be able t...  Read More

As a Montana resident, I could finally hunt deer, antelope and elk. For me, the most exciting hunting was going after elk with my bow in the early season when the bulls were bugling. At 20 yards, I was an excellent shot with my bow and arrow. At 40 yards I was not. Why is that? Because I was not properly equipped. Not only did I shoot instinctively (without sights) but my arrows and broadheads wer...  Read More

Year two in Moore, Montana, was even busier than year one. I also taught a unit on evolution. I had been thoroughly indoctrinated and believed (as I was taught) that evolution was a proven scientific fact. In fact, I didn't know that there were ANY people who didn't believe that evolution was fact... until the parent of one of my students came with a simple request: "If you are going to teach abou...  Read More

Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack! This was the sound of arrows hitting the side of my neighbor's garage. Oh, he had straw bales and a target, but from 20 yards, he regularly missed the bales. From the sound of things the bullseye was nothing more than a pipe dream. In his defense, learning to shoot 'instinctively' (without sights) is a far greater challenge- especially without someone to teach yo...  Read More

My second year in Montana was even better than the first. I moved out of my apartment in Lewistown and into a trailer that I shared with another teacher across the street from Moore's school. This cut my rent and utilities by more than half and I no longer had to buy gas to commute. What did I do with the money I saved? I traded in that humiliating Plymouth Horizon and bought a small, 4 wheel driv...  Read More

And just like that, the school year was over. I caught beautiful rainbow and brown trout on Spring. Creek,  had become not just good, but to my utter surprise an excellent 'wing shooter' (before Montana I could only hit the side of a barn if I was shooting from inside the barn), and had fallen in love with the people and mountains of Montana. A local rancher, John Hertel, hired me for the summer, ...  Read More

I soon made another good friend. Dan Marshall had graduated from Moore High School and was finishing his last year of college in Bozeman. He regularly drove up on his weekends to hunt. There were so many upland game birds that I literally learned how to wing shoot without ever having a lesson or shooting trap at a range. In fact, I went hunting every day after school during the season and shot thr...  Read More

Another teacher quickly took me under his wing. Doug Bingeman loved to hunt and fish and was the Moore Bulldogs' biggest fan. I was a first year teacher and Doug gave me a lot of sound advice. He also LOVED a practical joke, and was somewhat famous with both students and staff for his classroom antics. Doug reminded us all that working hard and having fun were not mutually exclusive. He did both, ...  Read More

In those days Moore, Montana was an athletic powerhouse. They were state champs in '6 man' football, but basketball was king for both boys and girls. My first year of teaching they actually closed the school several days because so many people were gone for away basketball games that it didn't make sense to stay open. During the off-season, high school boys and girls worked out 'jumping boxes' wit...  Read More

Whitetail deer, mule deer, antelope, sharptail grouse, Hungarian partridge, pheasant- as I drove a few miles from the town of Moore, Montana into the foothills of the Little Snowy Mountains, I had never seen such game-rich country. The wheat harvest was in full swing, and this new place seemed to overflow with abundance. I had come from a place where the average farm was 160 acres, but here the av...  Read More