I’ve been scouting covey birds the last few days as the new season is almost upon us here in Montana, and it’s a sad sight to see for me, as all the coveys are small and very young. The grass is almost gone from the coulees because the cattle ranchers have grazed the living shit out of them in an attempt to get more cattle money out of the market. I’m not trying to be critical of the cattle ranchers here because they need to make a living as much as anybody else does; lord knows they can’t make a living off wheat at $5 a bushel which is where it was 20 years ago, so $5 a bushel doesn’t equate to a good wheat year whereas the cattle market is as high as it’s ever been.

On the other hand, I drove some Coulee breaks the other day on some land that I’ve hunted for 30 years from guys that are very respectable, and rest rotate their land as good or better than anyone I’ve ever known. What I saw was that the upper third of the coulees were literally grazed to death because they needed the extra grass to get the cattle to market. They added extra cattle cause’ they needed the money to balance their wheat crop that wasn’t there. And then we have the problem of how much water did we get this year, when did we get it, and how much we got when we did get it. The critical water window, which is usually in April and May in this country allows the spring grass to grow, which allows the birds to hatch on time, and allows the fisheries to develop properly. If we get the proper amount of spring snow runoff, everything’s in balance. But it’s not in balance this year, everything’s out of whack. The salmon fly hatch, the rose buds and the hatch of the birds happen simultaneously, and they all came at least two weeks late or more. Spring rains that we needed in April or May didn’t get here till July and along with the July rain came thunderstorms with hail and lightning. Now imagine if you’re a small newly hatched bird that needs green forbes to eat for the first couple of days of life, and you don’t have any feathers yet. You can’t stay warm and the first day outside that you’re able to walk around, you get killed by a hailstorm or water so cold that you die freezing in the nest that night.

Well, that’s what happened to a lot of birds this year because that’s the way mother nature is. She is a cruel bitch sometimes. So Mother Nature or the Earth Mother as we know it, if you believe in Eugene O’Neill, is having a hard time getting by these days. It’s hard to take care of the babies when you don’t know how much water you’re going to get. It always gets back to water, not only how much but when it falls from the sky or when it melts in the snowpack which is another subject I should bring to light. The snowpack ain’t what it used to be here anymore, especially in southwestern Montana where the Big Hole, the Beaverhead and the Ruby Rivers run together to form the Jefferson River, which runs down to meet the Madison, and the Gallatin to form the Missouri River which runs all the way across Montana to meet the Yellowstone River to form the mainstem Missouri River on the North Dakota border. This waters the wheat belt, which feeds the rest of the world. Kinda significant, I think.

Now, let’s look at it from a little deeper perspective. The guys on the Idaho side of the hill, that being the western side have been cloud seeding up on the Lemhi drainage and the upper Salmon River because they want more water for the steelhead and anadromous strains that exist there. Their water tables are up 10% because of all that cloud seeding action on the West side of the mountain range at the Continental Divide line between Montana and Idaho now isn’t coming over to the Montana side. And the Big Hole, the Beaverhead, the Ruby and all those subsequent drainages which need that extra rain don’t get enough. So, the Big Hole is dying from either strangulation or greed whichever you want to call it. The Beaverhead is less than it’s ever been even though it’s a tailwater fishery and the Ruby is an also ran that isn’t what it used to be either. They all form the Jefferson, which has been dewatered and warm and has never been very pretty anyway. So, one of the three main branches of the Missouri River is not in good shape while the Madison still gets by because it’s the Madison, the most favorite famous river that we have here in Montana. Not only is it the most famous, but it also has a self-sustaining culture and allows the little town of Ennis to make a living off it. The Madison always gets the good water that comes out of Yellowstone Park but this year, the water was so low that they even closed waters in Yellowstone Park in June before it got too hot for the trout to survive.

And the Gallatin drainage, which has the coldest water of any of them has an algae bloom downstream from Big Sky Resort. I’ve spent at least 500 days on the Gallatin in particular, so I have a little bit of knowledge of that subject. The algae bloom is a direct result of the tremendous amount of sewage that’s being dumped into the water from the housing at the Big Sky Resort. . The Gallatin River is in trouble, the greatest cold-water stream that we have which is one of the rivers that becomes the Missouri River drainage is in the worst condition it’s ever been in. I love the Gallatin so much that I vowed never to write about it 30 years ago. Now, not only am I gonna’ write about it, but I’m also gonna yell and scream until you guys start to listen out there.

So let’s get back to where this all started, the bird hatch. The bird hatch is late so those of you that are going to hunt the great upland birds that we have here in Montana this year, please come a little late and please shoot a few less birds, don’t shoot the coveys down below half because we really need them for next year. As far as fishing goes, I hardly got to fish this year at all, because by the time I had chance to get to fish the Missouri this summer, the more I realized that the river was in horrible condition. It’s not that I couldn’t go fishing and catch fish but the river was only running at 3500 cfs in June and it should have been running somewhere between 6000 and 7000 cfs. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry from every place in America that couldn’t fish elsewhere was on the Missouri because there were stream closures on most other rivers due to the Hoot Owl conditions on water too warm to fish. So, the tourons, i.e. tourist morons, came to the Missouri and fished nymphs on strike indicators deep in the current lines to catch trout. Most of the fish they caught went into lactic acid shock and probably died. My ego is not so big that I have to catch these fish, so I didn’t fish much this year. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. I imagine you probably aren’t going to like it but I’m not here to be liked, I’m here to tell you the truth, anyway I can, anyway you’ll listen, and any way we can talk about it later. So, From Middle Montana on Derelictus road, I bid you a fond adieu.