In case you thought California was just beaches and movie stars, here is a look at the Eastern Side of the Sierras.  It gets you ready for backpacking season in July.

This is not far from where I killed my Tule Elk.

Collin has been around the Outdoor industry for quite a while doing internet marketing and website design since getting his degree.

Greenhorn – A newcomer, especially one who is unfamiliar with the ways of a place or group.

About MT Greenhorn:
Montana Greenhorn is an online semi-live video blog that brings you through the ups and downs of one western hunting “greenhorn.” That greenhorn is me, Collin Cottrell, and I will share my real life experiences as I write and produce daily and weekly video clips and blog updates showing the transition of becoming a western hunter in Montana after growing up in Minnesota.

Semi-live Online Show
Through the technology of the internet, blogging, twitter, facebook, youtube and more… MT Greenhorn will keep you up-to-date with all aspects of becoming a western hunter and is for all ages. I will show you the whole story through the year as I train and prepare for the mountainous backcountry and tough terrain of the wild west!

Different aspects that I will focus on throughout the year will include: hiking, working out, calling, tracking, marksmanship, wilderness navigation, scouting, correct clothing and equipment, survival skills  and basic woodsmanship.

More about Me
Like I said above, I grew up in Minnesota and I came to Bozeman, MT from a small rural town called Verndale, population 575 people. Look it up sometime! As many people know, whitetail deer hunting is very popular in the Midwest and this is what I grew up doing. I developed a dream as I grew older and more passionate about hunting to move west and hunt its big game. So, after a few years of college, playing college football and starting my own Internet Marketing business, I was able to make the move!

He is the HTML genius behind Sage Creek Forums, and did much of the design and upkeep on the Outback Outdoors semi-live Site.
Now he has teamed up with Rocky Mountain Bowhunter TV, and is quickly building his name in the outdoor industry.

Collin has just recently launched his own blog Montana Greenhorn where he details his conversion to the Western way of hunting and outdoor pursuits. it is refreshing to find a blog where the author lets the readers know that they are in the process of learning a new way of doing things.

I think we will see lots of new developments from this humble young man in the months and years to come.

Clu Cotter, DFG Associate Biologist, 48 years old, Kevin O’Connor, DFG Senior Biologist Supervisor, 40 years old, and Tom Stolberg, DFG Scientific Aid, 31 years old, all of Fresno, lost their lives in the helicopter crash. Helicopter pilot Dennis (Mike) Donovan of Landells Aviation, also lost his life. The families of the victims have been notified.

Phillip’s post on the Hog Blog  about the deaths of  these three California Fish and Game employees, and their pilot  brought up some old memories.  In 2000, one of my college fraternity brothers, Keith Williams, was killed in a helicopter crash while doing an aerial wildlife count in the rugged mountains of  North Central Idaho. 

Just this week three Idaho fish and game biologists cheated death when their helicopter went down doing a similar aerial count, not far from Keith’s crash site.

A helicopter carrying two Idaho Fish and Game biologists and a pilot crashed just past noon Friday Mountain Time zone in the Kelly Creek area on the North Fork of the Clearwater River.

None of the three people on board suffered life-threatening injuries.
The two research biologists were trapping and radio-collaring elk, moose and wolves in the Clearwater Region.

The contract pilot and the biologists were in a Hughes 500 helicopter operated by Quicksilver Air.

Fish and Game biologists fly about 1,000 hours annually in aerial surveys, wildlife counts and capturing wildlife for research.

Fish and Game has had no aircraft accidents involving injuries since a wildlife biologist was killed in December 2000 when the helicopter he was in went down while on a wildlife count in northern Idaho.

Fish and Game flights have been suspended until Monday, pending review of safety procedures. Fish and Game takes safety seriously; all personnel are required to take safety training before flying and adhere to strict safety procedures

 We don’t often think about how these behind the scenes hard working individuals put their lives in danger to do the hands on management tasks such as doing winter wildlife counts and dealing with rogue animals.   Dr. Blake Sasse wrote about the dangers involved in wildlife work in his 2003 journal article  Job-Related Mortality of Wildlife Workers in the United States, 1937-2000,

Wildlife biologists face a variety of job-related hazards that are unique to this profession, most of them involving the remote areas where work is performed and the unusual techniques used to study or manage wildlife. Information on biologists and others killed while conducting wildlife research or management was obtained from state and federal natural resources agencies, solicitations on wildlife-based internet discussion groups, and published obituaries. Ninety-one job-related deaths were documented from 1937 to 2000. Aviation accidents, drowning, car and truck accidents, and murder were the most common causes of death. Thirty-nine aviation accidents accounted for 66% of deaths, with aerodynamic stalls and power-line collisions being the most significant causes of accidents for which information was available. These safety threats should be taken into consideration during the design and planning of future research and management projects.
Abstract from a 2003 Wildlife Society Bulletin available at :
http://www.jstor.org/pss/3784446

So when you pick up your hunting license and apply for your hunts in the West this year, raise your glass to toast those unsung heroes who gave their lives to ensure the well being of the game we pursue. 

Here’s to ya, Clu, Kevin, Tom, Dennis and “Loaf”.  You all made the ultimate sacrifice and we will remember you.

While John is pursuing Colorado Pronghorn, he left a few stories that you might find enjoyable. He will be back on the 22nd.

“If a fella can’t buy someone a ham sandwich when he’s alive, why bother buyin’ him flowers when he’s dead?”
A local rancher as he was turning down payment for a few gallons of fuel from a neighbor.

This epitomizes the Western tradition of taking care of folks in the community when they need help. It is one of the things that makes living in the west such a privilege.

Many people have written about hunting and occasionally I will find a quote that truly makes me think that this person was rattling around in my brain and expressed exactly what I was thinking but couldn’t elucidate.

I’ll include a few of these thoughts here….

Jose Ortega y Gasset,(May 9, 1883 – October 18, 1955)  wrote Meditations on Hunting which is still the most quoted piece of literature on hunting.

“One does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, one kills in order to have hunted…If one were to present the sportsman with the death of the animal as a gift he would refuse it. What he is after is having to win it, to conquer the surly brute through his own effort and skill with all the extras that this carries with it: the immersion in the countryside, the healthfulness of the exercise, the distraction from his job.

Aldo Leopold, in A Sand County Almanac is well known for this quote:

“A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience, rather than by a mob of onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this fact.”

Snakey” on the Kifaru Forums, quoted an “old hunting article”…” from a back page story by Gary Sitton (writing as Jacob Bowers) Hunting April 1991. It was reprinted in last months issue of Hunting and is a good article as a whole. ”

“No matter what happens, whether you succeed or not, if you stand up and do it right and pay attention, hunting will always give you what you need. It may not be what you were looking for, but it will absolutely be important enough to justify whatever you did to get it.”

Many my favorites is from an author by the name of Edison Marshall from his book Heart of the Hunter.

“At that early age I had not yet isolated the fact, although I had seen it’s signs, that hunting is a lonely sport, that a hunter is essentially a lonely man, more often than a ‘lone’ man; and the bigger the game, the lonlier it gets”

“To judge from the trophies, the only legal evidence, the only record, they had a better trip.  Yet there was another counting that only Dean and I knew.  By that counting, made up of failure, success, dreams, facts, snow on mountaintops, or beaten in to my face, firelight and dawnlightand starlight, in truth countless imponderables, my trip was one to cherish all my life.”

What words on hunting inspire you, and make you think?  What words describe what hunting means to you?

A fellow Pope and Young measurer from the San Diego area, Nate Treadwell has saved for 3 years to go on the hunt of a lifetime in South Africa.  What does a South African hunting trip have to do with Western Hunting?  Well it just goes to show that western hunters like Nate can adapt to hunting situations anywhere in the world.  Those spooky San Diego and desert deer gave Nate plenty of practice in the years leading up to this epic adventure.

He spent months testing broadheads for this trip and destroyed a number of them performing the “Treadwell test” to pick out his leading blades.  In the future I will cover which heads performed best in his torture test.

His research paid off as the following pictures show:

A female Blesbok

An old Impala.  Even I can see the Mass in those horns…Lots of character

A real nice 24 inch Impala.  Can you say TROPHY? You see how there is more horn length and the way they sweep out back and up…Something about Impala intrigue me.

Warthog.  Those are some impressive teeth.  I guess Nate’s experience on Tejon Ranch Hogs paid off.

Nate’s Kudu.  The Elk of Africa.  Nate related a story that he captured a BIGGER bull on Camera, but this one looks plenty good to me.  I’ve heard of many a bowhunter who was skunked on Kudu multiple years before connecting on one.   

In a future column, I will show the photos from another fellow California P&Y measurer who was on the trip and went 5 for five arrows, spoken of in hushed and reverent tones as Bok Baard .

All seasoned hunters know about it…The feeling of anticipation that turns your brain into mush the week before a big hunting trip.  Your attention span is diminished to short bursts of dealing with short tasks in between dreaming about the adventure you are about to embark on.  You ramble about your preparation to workmates endlessly about the minutia of your plans.

Then there is the calls and emails from other hunters who are in the same boat, or just returning from a successful trip.  I will be featuring some of these photos over the next few days that have arrived in my inbox, so you too can experience the anticipation with me…

• My buddy Ed just returned from Kodiak Island and is headed out soon to Western Oregon after Elk. 
• A couple of Southern California buddies returned from Africa with a laundry list of trophies. 
• My Bay Area friend Rich is headed to Northern California after blacktails , then on to Wyoming for archery elk. 
• Zeke, our resident Sage Creek triathlete sent me a text message that he is in Central Georgia hunting feral hogs.  He has plans for Bear and Deer in Bzone later this season as well.
• My Alaska archery connection Doug is headed out with his son to Kodiak Island with a Mountain goat tag and Sitka blacktail tags. 

Tick Tok, Tick Tok

On the Sage Creek Forums, a number of hunters from Idaho are members.  It stands to reason since the Forums are run by Scott Whitehurst of Athol, a small town in the Panhandle of Idaho.  A llittle more than a week ago, there was a post that caught my attention:

Mon Jun 23, 2008

First post here all. I’m in the position of having found a GPS out on a hillside, and I’d hate to lose one of those, so I’m trying to locate the owner. The GPS was found somewhere on the South Fork of the Clearwater River, somewhere above Harpster.

While I don’t know much about GPS’s, and neither did those that were with me, I’m told that most have an “Owner” screen that comes up when the unit is turned on, with address, phone number, etc. This one didn’t, at least it didn’t when we figured out how to turn it on and somewhat navigate through it. I guess one of us could have messed up and deleted something we shouldn’t have.

I have found a “Home” waypoint, which (with the help of others) plugged the coordinates into Google Earth. This took me to a screen shot of a place somewhat outside of Harpster. I’m a 7-hr drive away from this location….otherwise, I’d drive to the place myself and inquire. If any of you know of anyone that has lost a GPS, and can provide the model number and likely location that it was lost, and other waypoints that are entered, I’d gladly mail the GPS back.

Failing that, next time I’m up that way, I’ll make the drive to the place myself. Thx for the help.

Now I don’t know about you but there are probably a number of people out there who might consider finding a GPS lost on a hillside, in a remote river canyon to be their good fortune.  The temptation to keep it would cross the mind of nearly anyone…  But this guy was determined to find the owner.

The suggestions rolled in , see if the local sporting goods store knew anyone who lost a GPS, Local LEO’s, A lost and found ad, etc.

 Tue Jun 24, 2008

A member on another forum who visits this forum suggested I try here. I even emailed (and got a reply!) from the GPS manufacturer when I provided the GPS serial number, hoping the owner had registered it for warranty. It hadn’t been, so I’ll run out my search options as best as I can.

Sat Jun 28, 2008

I called Rae Bros and they had no reports of lost GPS’s. I left a Lost & Found ad with the Free Press, and, sent an email to Grangeville law enforcement to see if they had any Lost reports of GPS’s. We’ll see what happens, if anything!

Then I checked in this morning, and I saw that all his hard work had paid off.

Wed Jul 02, 2008

A successful day for me! I found the GPS owner (a Mr. *******). I placed a ‘Lost & Found’ ad in the Idaho County Free Press in Grangeville and got a call today on it. I returned the call and the Owner was able to name off the ‘Home’ N & W coordinates, and several other waypoint names that were entered in the unit. He gave me his mailing address, so it will be off to him shortly.

Turns out someone borrowed the GPS from him to go find a specific tree, then lost the unit on his way out.

Thx everyone for your helpful suggestions

Folks, this is a great example of modern technology meets the “Code of the West” .  Good things still happen to good people.  Even when people aren’t looking. So the next time you have a chance to help out your fellow outdoorsman, even if you don’t HAVE to, remember this example.  We all could be on either end of this situation, and I think we can all agree that in this case it was definately a WIN-WIN outcome.

Here’s to more Happy Endings…

“Adversity introduces man to himself” Anonymous

It was printed on a bookmark sent to me from a friend who is fighting Parkinson’s, and it made me smile.  Not because I want to wish adversity on anyone, but because I identified with the statement.  It seems that when we are faced with a dire situation physically, financially, or emotionally, when we look back on that experience we recognize qualities we didn’t know we had.  Sometimes it is a good quality such as being steady and resourceful under pressure.  Sometimes we see our faults and we can work to correct our quick temper or pessimistic tendancies.

Perhaps that is why humans find ways to challenge themselves physically, or mentally.  We desire to push our limits and see just who we are when things aren’t in our favor.  I know that pushing myself in training will only pay off in the future.  It makes the discomfort, whether at mile 20 in a marathon, or day 6 of a backcountry hunt, more bearable, because I have felt this before, and I survived.

Use this quote when the going gets tough, cause I know you are tough, and you will get going…

When I think I am doing everything I can do to be a better bowhunter, Cameron Hanes, from Oregon, makes it look like childs play!   

Cameron Hanes’ New Years Resolution

I have to admit that part of what got me into bowhunting was the intensity and dedication I saw in other bowhunters. Cameron goes well above and beyond that.