Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Grizz are Once Again Denning on the Plains

A sure sign of a recovered population (too long to post here):

http://www.greatfallstribune.com/ar...inter-dens-discovered-far-east-mountains

That is good to see.

Wow! Interesting article. Thanks for posting it up.

Alright. Good news.

Can someone tell exactly why this is good news?

Cause it means they might actually open a season on them.

I wish those bastards would stay in the hills. I don't like having to worry about them while I walk creek bottoms for pheasants.

Schitt�..we got them here, where we shoot gophers�.




If we are running the Polaris and can carry extra stuff, we keep a shotgun loaded to the gills wit buck in it handy.

Interesting article thanks for the link.

I'm all for more folks having to worry about bears when their kids leave the house.

Just trying to spread the wealth around.

No kidding! I could have told them that! I wonder how much money they spent researching it?

This is Deep Creek


We killed 4 deer on Deep Creek this year and we never went in the brush unless we had to. My little brother is friends with a kid who owns a large chunk of land along deep creek. He knows of several bear dens along the bluffs and pointed a couple out to us while hunting. They are up on the side of the hill in plain sight

You can't tell me this one goes way back up into the mountains to den up. This picture was taken only a month or so ago


And I just heard on the radio this morning that a 4 year old griz was just caught in a wolf trap on Tuesday just west of Depuyer about 30 miles north of here.

I've got tons of pictures of grizzlies that I've taken within 10 miles of Choteau which is about 30 miles from the mountains and they have been seen out around Dutton and Fort Benton which is another 25 and 50 miles east of here.

DT, that is a neat pic.

Very cool lookin'(and big) creek bottom.

Sam, it is an awesome place. The deer my dad, brother, buddy, and I killed all came out of there. They come out of the canyon at night and feed in the CRP to the north (right side of the picture).
One of the bear dens is only 1/2 mile or so from where that picture was taken. There is a road that goes through the bottom and it's insanely thick down there. Just a little path wide enough for a pickup follows the creek. Can't see 10 feet into the brush. The landowner has trail cameras set up along the trail and from what my brother says, he gets some insane pictures of grizzlies.

A couple years ago a griz was spotted from Loma. F&G set a trap and caught five of them IIRC�.

IIRC, there was the occasional griz on the plain around Choteau already by the mid-'90s.

I guess it is all a matter of perspective. I spent several weeks bumming around McKinley Park in my youth. I saw LOTS of grizzlies. I consider myself blessed for having done so.

A buddy of mine lives on the western edge of Choteau and has seen grizzlies on his few acres more than once.

He also killed a grizzly when it was legal back in the 60's, while hunting with two of his sons on the Front. He likes having them around.

Bite your tongue! The anti's will rally around this development like they did for timber wolves. If there is a word of a "season" they will clog up the courts with injunctions, environmental impact statement demands, rallies and protests.
Watch for the Center for Biological Diversity to show up.
They are as evil and vile as they come.

Yeah, the tags will be for sale at Walmart, along with Desert Bighorn tags. You betcha.

For quite a while the betting was against a wolf season, but today yes, you can buy wolf tags at Montana Wal-Marts.

Montana lost its grizzly season in the early 1990's when a judge ruled the game department had never done an environmental impact study to back up their contention of sufficient bears. They've been gathering data ever since, including by using the best evidence of bear numbers yet, DNA analysis of hair left at various baited sites.

It will take a while, with the inevitable lawsuits, but the recent federally recommended delisting of the Yellowstone bears will be major step toward a hunting season in the lower 48. I'm guessing one will occur in the next five years or so. The antis will sue and sue, but the USFWS and Montana game department are now very experienced with their tricks, and will be well-prepared.

This is good to hear. Maybe the bears will start to respect the sound of a gun shot the, and not know it as a dinner bell.