Maggie's Farm

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Wednesday, June 20. 2007

Big Griz

750 lb. male Griz caught in Montana, collared, and released, near beautiful Choteau, MT - "The Paris of the Rocky Mountain Front."

In reality, if he was looking for a decent meal then downtown Choteau is not the place, but you can buy cigareets and whusky there. I have been there.

Posted by Bird Dog in Natural History and Conservation at 17:02 | Comments (37) | Trackbacks (0)

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The best thing about Choteau, my fellow rail historians, is that it is on the old Milwaukee Road branch line from Great Falls to downtown metropolitan Agawam MT, passing the aptly-named Freezeout Lake.

Nothing like Big Sky country.
#1 Skookumchuk on 2007-06-20 17:28 (Reply)
Been to Freezout Lake a few times. Mainly bird-watching.
#2 BD on 2007-06-20 17:43 (Reply)
I understand there is good fly fishing also, in the Flathead and elsewhere. Will have to do it sometime.

750 lb is of course plenty big, though just a little guy compared to what we have in coastal Alaska up north of us.
#3 Skookumchuk on 2007-06-20 17:49 (Reply)
Said the braggart Westerner...
#4 Skookumchuk on 2007-06-20 17:51 (Reply)
My wife is up in Montana right now tending to some of our business and visitig her folks. She told me about this bear night a'fore last. The Helena paper has a write up on it

Helenair.com

Dang thing had a 40" neck. I'm glad they just captured and relocated...

The Choteau area opens towaerd the east into some rolling hills. There's anothe place Called Augusta that is where the wild west still is..it's also a jumping off spot for the "Bob" ....the Bob Marschall Wilderness which is the largest area in the US lower 48 with NO roads..you hike in or packhorse in...but if you go, go all the way to the "Chinese Wall" a thousand foot escarpment that runs for miles .the entire "BoB' is a thing of beauty......BUT I WOULDN'T RECOMMEND GOING..WEATHERS BAD, NO TOILETS IN MONTANA,PEOPLE ALL LIKE THE UNIBOMBER...MUCH BETTER TO GO TO TEXAS OR ARIZONA, HIGH TAXES,COLD COLD COLD MILITIA OF MONTANA ETC ...STAY AWAY IS MY BEST ADVICE.

OH YEAH THOSE BEARS DO EAT PEOPLE ALL THE TIME, THOUSANDS EACH YEAR..WOLVES ROAMING TO SNATCH SMALL CHILDREN...TERRIBLE PLACE....
#5 Habu on 2007-06-20 18:10 (Reply)
Bear thread! Bear thread!

Ya'll need one of these:

http://www.remington.com/products/firearms/shotguns/model_870/model_870_xcs_marine_magnum.asp

In my case, I took their basic lefty model and converted it to a rough facsimile of the above at a mere three times the price.
#6 Skookumchuk on 2007-06-20 18:19 (Reply)
And southeast of Choteau, a lovely railroad passenger station in the nearby grand metropole:

http://www.greatfallstribune.com/communities/gallery/history/history.html
#7 Skookumchuk on 2007-06-20 18:29 (Reply)
(from the link)

"Choteau's mayor is Dan Clark. (He) began serving as mayor shortly after moving into town from Arizona. He ran unopposed with the campaign slogan of “Vote for Dan… he’s better than nothing.” He has run unopposed ever since."
#8 buddy larsen on 2007-06-20 18:31 (Reply)
Well see, it's good to limit one's expectations in these things. Horrible, ineffectual, clueless, out of touch politicians. Add it to Habu's list of reasons.
#9 Skookumchuk on 2007-06-20 18:34 (Reply)
You got that right, but I didn't want to be accused of piling on...

Also Skook that 870 is impossible to beat..a great weapon..

most folks who are hiking also need to know that you only have to outrun the slowest person in the group. If it's close an elbow or ankle sweep should give you the advantage, then you can turn back with the 870 and put the person being mauled ..I mean the bear out for good.

BTW Choteau is pronounced show - toe
#9.1 Habu on 2007-06-20 18:49 (Reply)
Had you been taking the train from Choteau to Great Falls in the 1940s, the lunch menu would have included:

Supreme of Chicken Washington (baked chicken with green pepeper, pimentos, carrots, onions, artichoke hearts)

or

Pork Sausage and Sweet Potatoes (with scalloped Brussels sprouts and Richmond Corn Cakes)

and

Baked Pear Crunch with Lemon Sauce.
#10 Skookumchuk on 2007-06-20 19:00 (Reply)
I read that last line as Baked Bear Crunch
#11 BD on 2007-06-20 19:19 (Reply)
It wasn't on the menu. You had to ask for it.

You get some idea of the Chinese Wall from this:

http://myweb.lmu.edu/bmellor/personal/montana/ChineseWallAug9.jpg
#12 Skookumchuk on 2007-06-20 19:25 (Reply)
now i want some baked bear crunch. Sounds like more of an entree tho.
#13 buddy larsen on 2007-06-20 19:41 (Reply)
O/T next time you think our Congress is all civilized here are tow beaut's...in chron-order

http://etext.virginia.edu/journals/EH/EH41/Neff41.html

http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/The_Caning_of_Senator_Charles_Sumner.htm

Personally I think a bit more of this is in order !!
#14 Habu on 2007-06-20 19:42 (Reply)
Skook ....great shot of the Chinese Wall ...is that the Mrs?...brave lassie...
it is one big escarpment
#15 Habu on 2007-06-20 19:48 (Reply)
Yes, and now we have C-SPAN.

You could also have Curried Crab Meat Hiawatha, Dutch Meat Loaf with Mashed Squash, Scrambled Eggs and Codfish, or Veal-stuffed Onions.
#16 Skookumchuk on 2007-06-20 19:52 (Reply)
Is it dinner time?
#17 Skookumchuk on 2007-06-20 19:55 (Reply)
No, not the missus, just a randomly Googled photo of the Chinese Wall.

The old railroad twixt Choteau to Great Falls and on to Harlowton (where it joins the Milwaukee main line running between Chicago and Seattle) was built during the silver boom of the early 1890s. It is quite a story.

And when you are in Great Falls, you have to go here:

http://www.cmrussell.org/
#18 Skookumchuk on 2007-06-20 20:21 (Reply)
Been there, too. Nice stuff.
#18.1 BD on 2007-06-20 20:28 (Reply)
The railroads of Montana - like so many - are largely forgotten pieces of virtuoso 19th Century engineering:

http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424459437/808/ralph-earl-decamp-jawbone-railroad.html

The mineral booms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries made Montana a curious cosmopolitan place, now of course erased by all the tendentious stereotyping. Butte for example has a synagogue capable of holding a few hundred people:

http://www.helzner.com/newsletter_fall2000.php
#19 Skookumchuk on 2007-06-20 20:43 (Reply)
"virtuoso 19th century engineering" --so true, to anyone who has hiked around the old abandoned mines scattered through the Rockies. Big iron still sitting around, pretty intricate and purposeful--and hard to imagine how it got packed in on mule & man.
#20 buddy larsen on 2007-06-20 21:11 (Reply)
Nice CM Russell thumbnails here (click to enlarge):

http://www.encore-editions.com/horses/westernamericana2.htm

I don't think anybody ever painted dawn & sunset light in the American West any finer.
#21 buddy larsen on 2007-06-20 21:30 (Reply)
Yes, and nearly all forgotten. Butte, Leadville, the Sutro Tunnel through the Sierras, uncounted things.

Good Russell stuff. I especially like the dying steer he sketched for the ranch owner. One of his first sketches I think.
#22 Skookumchuk on 2007-06-20 21:41 (Reply)
yeh--later on he always worked a buffalo skull into every picture. His 'sign'.
#23 buddy larsen on 2007-06-20 21:54 (Reply)
Lotta folks don't know, he wasn't (as was rival Frederick Remington) a painter who chose cowboyin' as a genre, but rather a cowboy who just picked up painting as an extension of his drawing hobby. He got serious at the influence & business skill of the new missus, who knew they couldn't cowboy and be respectable town folk both.
#24 buddy larsen on 2007-06-20 22:02 (Reply)
Jeez, how to feel old--Russell was born during the Civil War, and died when my mom & dad were little tykes already toddling around on the earth.
#25 buddy larsen on 2007-06-20 22:09 (Reply)
And as to the mines - and the rails and the locks and dams and the factories - some day when they are freezing in the dark, they will remember these things.
#26 Skookumchuk on 2007-06-20 22:43 (Reply)
Gentlemen--there is hope still. A small, but very vocal and active group of folks in MT are trying to get the rail from Missoula to Bozeman, and Billings re-opened. Who knows what the plan is to buy back those abandoned right of ways,but they seem to think they can do it.
#27 huckleberry on 2007-06-20 23:23 (Reply)
huckleberry:

Got a link?
#28 Skookumchuk on 2007-06-21 00:24 (Reply)
Hi Skook:

Yup, sure do:

http://missoulian.com/articles/2007/03/15/news/local/news05.txt
#29 huckleberry on 2007-06-21 01:29 (Reply)
Thanks, Huck.

From what I have read so far, it sounds as if this is more the introduction of passenger service on the existing freight lines running through southern Montana, namely the BNSF and Montana Rail, than the rehabilitation of the Milwaukee right of way. But perhaps there is more than one idea floating around.
#29.1 Skookumchuk on 2007-06-21 10:17 (Reply)
I hope we have all agreed that Montana is a TERRIBLE place..please do not Californicate Montana
#30 Habu on 2007-06-21 05:40 (Reply)
I'll second that. It's full of nasty, unbathed, uncivilized people with gun racks; with rattlesnakes, horney toads, Grizzly bears and buffalo stampedes - and the bugs are terrible. The women have no teeth. Plus the regular raids by the scalp-seeking Indians on villages add to the general nastiness of the Godforsaken place.

Not to mention that half the year it's too cold and windy to go outside, and they get snow in June.
#31 BD on 2007-06-21 07:04 (Reply)
actually, the Indians were peaceful until they started reading habu on the internet
#32 buddy larsen on 2007-06-21 08:21 (Reply)
Does any one here have any insight as to what happens to the coyotes when the Griz arrive? Do the coyotes just pack up and leave, or do they not interfere with each other?
#33 apple pie on 2007-06-21 11:25 (Reply)
bears is omnivores, coyotes is carnivores; so long as both have room to run, I couldn't imagine them crowding each other. just guessing.
#34 buddy larsen on 2007-06-21 11:47 (Reply)

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