Summer 21 Issue of Backcountry Journal

BACKCOUNTRY

JOURNAL

The Magazine of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers

Summer 2021

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

THE CAPSTONE A book every conservationist should read is Jared Diamond’s Collapse. Without giving too much away, I’ll say that he chronicles the demise of societies that exhausted their natural resources.

Think ancient Mesopotamia and modern-day Iraq. Once a vibrant ecosystem, it is now a desolate desert with little hope of recovery.

We can learn a lot from history.

Our own history in North America narrowly escaped the same fate of many failed societies. In the early 1900s our great continent was in trouble. To begin with, we were systematically decimating Native culture instead of learning from centuries of knowledge.

We also were squandering our fish and wildlife resources through shortsighted actions. Putting feathers in women’s caps and wild game on restaurant plates nearly wiped away the species we still cherish today.

In response, sportsmen and women – along with others – took action. We passed laws. Leaders stepped forward. Today we enjoy a plethora of opportunities and established a conservation legacy that is unique the world over.

When I first started my conservation career in 2000 at the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Alliance, later renamed the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, a poster in the TRCA office called “The Comeback Kids” chronicled the plight of key species of wildlife – and their recovery. Wild turkeys, elk, whitetail deer, geese once on the brink of extrication are now plentiful. Today we enjoy robust populations of these species, and as my mentor Jim Posewitz reveled in saying, “Every golfer in North America has goose dung on their shoes.”

The story of the recovery of the bald eagle is another amazing success that happened later in the 20th century, pitting agriculture production and the use of DDT against American’s iconic symbol.

American conservationists chose to act in favor of the white-headed bird.

Most recently we collectively made a decision to restore large predators – wolves and grizzly bears – to the landscape. While their recovery has been controversial, there is no denying that they are now once again part of the landscape and deserve state management.

Our work as hunters, anglers and conservationists is progressing … but much remains to be done.

The cover of this journal recognizes the missing capstone of our conservation pyramid. The American bison, Bison bison, once roamed much of North American continent in herds so vast they boggled the mind. No surprise – Ed Anderson’s cover art does nothing short of inspire. Christine Peterson’s article on page 10 dives deeper into where we are in the recovery of bison – and where we’re falling short.

Challenges create opportunity and great occasions. We have a great opportunity in front of us. Achieving it would put the finishing touch on the restoration of North American wildlife and the hunting opportunities that accompany it. Even more important, however, it would symbolize a partnership with Native tribes – and take one step toward repairing promises that have been broken time and time again.

Above Photo: Burton Historical Collection / Detroit Public Library / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

The wrong kind of pyramid. 1892: Bison skulls to be processed into glue, fertilizer, dye and bone char at Michigan Carbon Works in Rogueville, Michigan.

At the time this issue of Backcountry Journal is going to press, we are days away from commencing our most important gathering of the year – BHA’s North American Rendezvous, making its return to Missoula, Montana. The moments I’m anticipating at this year’s event are many, but an absolute highlight will be the breakdown of a freshly killed bison led by Montana Rep. Tyson Running Wolf and the Brave Dog Society. Tyson and other leaders from the Blackfeet Nation are keen to teach Rendezvous attendees traditional ways of honoring the bison, the use of all its parts, and in turn learning from others who have spent a lifetime breaking down and utilizing wild game. To dine on bison the next day with modern-day culinary tools from BHA corporate partner, Traeger Grills, will be, in a word, divine.

How lucky are we to have opportunity staring us in the face?

How lucky are we to have conserved the intact landscapes that can support free roaming wild bison? Damn lucky. This is our great occasion, and I hope you join me in making a dream of chasing wild bison in the UL Bend of the Upper Missouri River Breaks and elsewhere a reality. It is our time to do our part and finally put the capstone on this great pyramid.

If I’m lucky to live into my 80s, sitting on a porch reminiscing about my life, I believe witnessing the restoration of the American bison would be one of my fondest memories. Let us not fall into folly like other societies but instead learn from their mistakes.

I hope you feel the same.

Onward and upward,

Land Tawney President and CEO SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 3

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.

There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”

– Rachel Carson

THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE NORTH AMERICAN BOARD OF DIRECTORS Ted Koch (Idaho) Chairman J.R. Young (California) Vice Chairman Jeffrey Jones (Alabama) Treasurer T. Edward Nickens (North Carolina) Secretary Dr. Keenan Adams (Puerto Rico)

Ben Bulis (Montana) Ryan Callaghan (Montana) Bill Hanlon (British Columbia) Hilary Hutcheson (Montana) Dr. Christopher L. Jenkins (Georgia)

Heather Kelly (Alaska) Tom McGraw (Michigan) Ben O’Brien (Montana) Michael Beagle (Oregon) President Emeritus

STAFF Land Tawney, President and CEO Tim Brass, State Policy and Field Operations Director John Gale, Conservation Director Frankie McBurney Olson, Operations Director Katie McKalip, Communications Director Rachel Schmidt, Innovative Alliances Director Grant Alban, Development Coordinator Walker Conyngham, Communications Coordinator Trey Curtiss, R3 Coordinator Katie DeLorenzo, Western Regional Manager and Southwest Chapter Coordinator Kevin Farron, Montana Chapter Coordinator Britney Fregerio, Controller Caitlin Frisbie, Operations Associate and Assistant to the President Chris Hennessey, Regional Manager Ace Hess, Idaho and Nevada Chapter Coordinator Josh Kaywood, Southeast Chapter Coordinator

Jacob Mannix, Alaska Chapter Coordinator Morgan Mason, Armed Forces Initiative Coordinator Kate Mayfield, Office Manager Jason Meekhof, Upper Great Lakes Chapter Coordinator Josh Mills, Development Coordinator Devin O’Dea, California Chapter Coordinator Rob Parkins, Public Access Coordinator Julia Peebles, Government Relations Manager Jesse Salsberry, Northwest Chapter Coordinator and Video Production Assistant Kylie Schumacher, Collegiate Program Coordinator Ryan Silcox, Membership Coordinator Dylan Snyder, Operations and Merchandise Ty Stubblefield, Chapter Coordinator and New Chapter Development Brien Webster, Program Manager and Colorado and Wyoming Chapter Coordinator Zack Williams, Backcountry Journal Editor Rob Yagid, Digital Media Coordinator Interns: Andrew Hahne, Keegan Shea, Tyler Turco

BHA HEADQUARTERS Contributors in this Issue On the Cover: original artwork by Ed Anderson Above Image: Ben Herndon

P.O. Box 9257, Missoula, MT 59807 www.backcountryhunters.org admin@backcountryhunters.org (406) 926-1908

Lisa Ballard, Tim Brass, Allen Crater, Tony Digatono, Jeffrey Edwards, Marc Fryt, Harlan Gale, Craig Godwin, Matt Hartsky, Jack Hennessy, Erik Jensen, Kjos Outdoors, Matt Lewis, Sean McCain, Kris Millgate, T. Edward Nickens, Josh Parks, Christine Peterson, Rachel Schmidt, Todd Tanner, Jonathan Wilkins, Jordan Wolf, John Zordell

Backcountry Journal is the quarterly membership publication of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, a North American conservation nonprofit 501(c)(3) with chapters in 48 states and the District of Columbia, two Canadian provinces and one Canadian territory. Become part of the voice for our wild public lands, waters and wildlife. Join us at backcountryhunters.org.

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All rights reserved. Content may not be reproduced in any manner without the consent of the publisher.

Published June 2021. Volume XVI, Issue III

JOIN THE CONVERSATION

YOUR BACKCOUNTRY

Backcountry Bass An Overlooked Species Is Driving Conservation in the Deep South

Photo: Craig Godwin

BY MATT LEWIS Sometimes the simplest things in life provide the most gratifying memories.

When spring arrives in Alabama, I strap on my wading boots, grab my fly rod and head down the road less traveled, both literally and figuratively. This road leads to cool, clean water that flows over ancient bedrock, cascading down into plunge pools full of hungry bass. The whole scene is framed by curtains of mountain laurel and banks lined with trillium. The fly choice isn’t as important as the delivery; a stealthy approach almost guarantees success.

Once the fly hits the water, the bass explodes, creating the perfect balance of nature’s violence within a scene of tranquility. The hues of blue that flank the fish are reminiscent of a coral reef fish.

As I pursue these fish in pristine mountain streams, many of the state’s fishermen and women are gassing up their glitter boats and migrating to the large reservoirs in hopes of catching trophy largemouth bass. Among anglers in Alabama, the importance of the size of the fish often outweighs the beauty of the fish or the beauty of the place it was caught. In a fishing culture where success is measured in inches and pounds, not experiences, the redeye bass have been forgotten. In many ways, they haven’t been discovered. In this case, the real trophy is the solace experienced while interacting with a native fish that lives in wild places – ones seldom seen by people.

Alabama is synonymous with cotton fields and peanuts, so this preconceived contrast of agricultural fields and mountain stream-dwelling bass might seem a little perplexing. The state is home to geological features created by continental collisions and subsequent mountain building that shaped unique landscapes home to some of the nation’s highest levels of biodiversity. At the tail end of the Appalachian mountain chain, 700-foot sandstone cliffs of Little River Canyon and the moss-covered bedrock and clear limestone streams of Bankhead National Forest carve out a niche for unique species, like redeye bass.

These fish call the cool waters of upland streams home and live life akin to the more familiar brook trout. Although they achieve similar maximum sizes and sport an artist’s canvas of colors, the contrast is also striking. Fly fishing for brook trout might be considered haute, like sipping merlot while listening to Mozart, while fly fishing for redeye bass might be more like shotgunning a Budweiser while blaring Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Brook trout delicately sip mayflies while redeye bass explode on damselflies while navigating around water moccasins and people splashing around them from a tire swing. These fish are hardy, aggressive predators that rule the streams in which they reside. Their diet of aquatic and terrestrial insects makes them well suited for topwater fly fishing pursuits. Three-weight fly rods and poppers replace vests full of dry flies and other gear for picky salmonids.

The riffle, run, pool characteristics of these streams lend well to SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 5

Photo: Craig Godwin

hiking and fishing waterfall plunge pools and to breathtaking scenery worthy of a postcard. Redeye bass are made for the fly rod, but more importantly, they’re made for fly fishing, a sport married to the ecology and conservation of the target species.

The redeye also faces some serious conservation challenges across its native range in the Southeast: most notably, the loss of the species due to hybridization with introduced non-native bass species. Advances in genomic techniques have shed light on the current status of many black bass species of the South ... and just in the nick of time.

Guadalupe bass in their native Texas waters were brought back from the brink of extinction due to hybridization with introduced smallmouth bass. Shoal bass have all but been extirpated from their native waters in Alabama, and Georgia is fighting an uphill battle to save theirs. In Georgia and North Carolina, entire lake’s native bass populations have been replaced with non-native Alabama bass through angler introductions.

Redeye bass are under the same attack in the Savannah and Chattahoochee rivers. Anglers introduced Alabama bass and smallmouth bass to create a fishery that they wanted, one with bigger fish. As a result, those redeye bass populations are listed as “species of special concern,” and without action it seems to be a matter of not if but when we lose them forever.

Anglers quickly take up arms and fight when a native salmonid is under attack. Breweries make limited-edition beers, clothing companies make special ads and social media channels erupt. Na6 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SUMMER 2021

tive fish in native waters matter, unless we’re talking about bass.

There seems to be an incredulous outlook on these native populations and the challenges they face.

Luckily, there is a small movement brewing to bring awareness to these special bass.

Anglers in Alabama have challenged native fish enthusiasts to catch all seven species of redeye bass in one calendar year. Through this, participants gain a better understanding of redeye bass and the challenges they face. However, the true reward is that anglers are discovering fly fishing opportunities in a state where most fly fishermen are presumed to be relegated solely to the pursuit of trout.

The redeye bass is driving the message of conservation on a watershed level in the Southeast. And along the way it’s growing the sport of fly fishing in a place and for a fish most have never heard of.

BHA member Matt Lewis is a fisheries scientist who specializes in conservation genetics of black bass, an avid hunter and fly fisherman and author of “Fly Fishing for Redeye Bass: An Adventure Across Southern Waters.” He is chair of the Alabama chapter of the Native Fish Coalition and also serves on their national advisory board. Listen to a great chat with Matt and host Hal Herring on episode 94 of the BHA Podcast & Blast at backcountryhunters.org/bha_podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

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UNITED WE STAND Our dedication to our wild public lands, waters and wildlife doesn’t expire in a year. And neither does yours. Make yours a life membership today and help us build our coalition of dedicated defenders of public lands and waters, access and opportunity, and fair chase ethics.

As sportsmen and women, our power and influence to conserve what we love lies in our numbers. When we speak up to elected officials and to land management agencies and in stakeholder coalitions across North America, we stand united, together. With your help, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers will continue to grow as a force for our wild public lands, waters and wildlife and the kind of authentic backcountry experience we are determined to pass on to future generations.

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406-926-1908

BACKCOUNTRY

JOURNAL THE MAGAZINE OF BACKCOUNTRY HUNTERS & ANGLERS SUMMER 2021 | VOLUME XVI, ISSUE III

FEATURES 10

RETURN OF THE BUFFALO

by Christine Peterson

64

CRUCIFIED

by Kris Millgate

68

INTO THIN AIR

by Lisa Ballard

73

HOLY GROUND

by T. Edward Nickens

76

PARTS UNKNOWN

by Allen Crater

80

FROM OXBOWS TO BLUE LINES

by Josh Parks

8 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SUMMER 2021

Shelikof Island, Alaska Photo: Kjos Outdoors, see more from Lee on page 58

DEPARTMENTS 03

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

05

YOUR BACKCOUNTRY Backcountry Bass

by Matt Lewis

20

BHA HEADQUARTERS NEWS

23

FACES OF BHA Jonathan Wilkins, Little Rock, Arkansas

25

BACKCOUNTRY BOUNTY

27

KIDS’ CORNER Scavenger Hunt!

by Harlan Gale

30

CHAPTER NEWS In Depth: Defending the Public Trust

by Tim Brass

39

HUNTING FOR SUSTAINABILITY A Helping Hand

by Erik Jensen

42

COLLEGE CLUBS For You, Pops

by Jeffrey Edwards

46

FIELD TO TABLE Smoked Trout Pasta with Sweet Pepper Cream Sauce

by Jack Hennessy

50

INSTRUCTIONAL Sightfishing for Trout

by Marc Fryt A Guide to Backcountry Float Tubing

by Jordan Wolf

58

PROJECT ASPEN Our Shared Land. Our Responsibility.

by Rachel Schmidt

86

BEYOND FAIR CHASE Change Is in the Air

by Todd Tanner

87

SHORT Scouting for Next Season

by Tony Digatono

91

END OF THE LINE

SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 9

PUBLIC LAND OWNER

RETURN OF THE

BUFFALO

More than 30 million bison once roamed North America. Only about 50,000 now live in wild herds, leading ecologists to say the buffalo is “functionally extinct.” Will the nation’s mammal and a symbol of the West endure?

BY CHRISTINE PETERSON Ervin Carlson was in his 20s when he saw a bison.

The creatures were being brought back to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in northern Montana, a place they’d lived for millions of years until they were exterminated nationwide by the early 1900s.

Carlson grew up without buffalo, just like his parents, and just like nearly every other Native American in the United States.

It’s why he couldn’t quite grasp the animal’s power and spirit until seeing it that day, decades ago. Even then, he’s not sure he fully understood.

But he would soon enough.

Carlson has been the president of the Intertribal Buffalo Council for well over two decades. In that position, he’s overseen bison reintroduction onto tribal lands across the country and even helped figure out how to fly three bull bison to Alaska.

“We’re restoring the buffalo for our cultural connection,” Carlson said, “but also because they used to be our economy and past history, and they can take care of us, too.”

He’s one of many Montanans, Westerners, conservationists and hunters working to restore the buffalo to the West. But it’s not an easy road. When pushed too hard, they can be big, unruly and ill-tempered. They don’t always like fences and have little regard for vehicles. But they’re also one of the best original stewards of the land.

And believe it or not, figuring out the logistics of transporting thousands of pounds of living bison to Alaska via container ship, barge and plane is actually one of the least challenging pieces in the effort to bring bison back.

The politics of bison restoration is the tough part. They’re a species that once numbered more than 30 million and were systematically slaughtered down to less than 1,000.

About half a million bison now roam North America, with more than 50,000 living as wild animals. Even with those gains, the most ambitious goals call for more of these scattered herds, many parts making a whole. Ask those most involved in the bison restoration process if one of the most iconic species of the American West, and the national symbol of the United States, could truly roam free again, and they’ll tell you maybe, sort of, it depends.

But those same bison advocates also say any gains are important, and maybe scattered populations are enough for now.

Unimaginable slaughter Most of us likely know the story of the American bison, at least the basic points: Bison roamed across much of the U.S. from Canada to Mexico and New York to Oregon.

Photo: NPS/Neal Herbert

Their numbers were particularly strong in the Great Plains where they moved in waves across the grasslands, spreading native seeds with their hooves and fur and fertilizing vegetation with their manure. They rarely stayed anywhere long.

Buffalo were critical to the nation’s first people, where humans, buffalo and countless other wildlife lived alongside one another.

But as settlers moved into the West, the bison’s fortune changed quickly.

Bison were viewed three ways: a commodity to be killed, butchered and sold; a hinderance to an expanding rail system and competition with domestic livestock; and a critical resource for tribes fighting to maintain their homelands.

The answer to all of those was mass slaughter, and the numbers are staggering.

In 1870, about 2 million bison were killed on the southern plains, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Their hides were used for leather, their bones used in refining sugar, making fertilizer and fine bone china.

“Bison bones were bought from $2.50 to $15 a ton,” the Fish and Wildlife Service said. “Based on an average price of $8 per ton, they brought $2.5 million into Kansas alone between 1868 and 1881. Assuming that about 100 skeletons were required to make one ton of bones, this represented the remains of more than 31 million bison.”

Slaughter peaked on the southern plains around 1873 with hides selling for $1.25 each and tongues for 25 cents.

“A railway engineer said it was possible to walk a 100 miles along the Santa Fe railroad right-of-way by stepping from one bison carcass to another.”

Some officials made efforts along the way to stem the bloodshed. The Idaho State Legislature passed a law to protect bison in 1864, after buffalo no longer roamed the state. Wyoming and Colorado passed laws making it illegal to waste bison meat, but they were not enforced.

The U.S. House and Senate even passed a bill in 1874 to protect female bison and prevent wanton destruction, but President Ulysses Grant wouldn’t sign the legislation.

Ultimately, the bison’s fate was a foregone conclusion.

Markets were hungry for hides. Governments and companies were ready for railroad connectivity. Generals William T. Sherman and Philip Sheridan “viewed the eradication of the buffalo as the ‘critical line of attack’ in the struggle with the Plains Tribes,” according to the Western Historical Quarterly out of Utah State University.

And the bison extermination worked.

By the late 1870s, bison in the southern portion of the U.S. had all but been eliminated, and by the mid-1880s, only around 1,000 wild buffalo remained.

Restoration Efforts

Brothers It’s impossible to tell the story of the buffalo without the nation’s tribes.

Buffalo were not only food for most native people living in the middle of the continent, they were also the source of housing, clothing, tools and, perhaps even more importantly, they were brothers, spiritually connected to one another.

“The tribes and buffalo go hand in hand,” Carlson said. “We lost a lot of our culture coming in with settlement. They took our language, and we’re bringing that back. They took our way of religion and our land. A lot of things we lost in our culture and so to me, restoring buffalo is helping to bring back a part of our culture that was lost.”

The Intertribal Buffalo Council formed in the early ‘90s to “restore bison on Tribal lands for cultural and spiritual enhancement and protection,” its website reads.

Almost 75 tribes now belong to the organization, and bison have been restored to almost 1 million acres of tribal land across the country including the Assiniboine and Sioux on the Fort Peck Reservation in northeastern Montana, the Shoshone and Arapaho on the Wind River Reservation in central Wyoming, and the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate at Lake Traverse Reservation in northeastern South Dakota. About 20,000 wild buffalo now live on tribal lands managed as cultural herds.

The hope is for bison to once again be part of the tribes’ cultural connection but also used in their economy.

“The Blackfeet are getting back to eating the healthy meat and lifestyle we used to have,” Carlson said. “Diabetes is so rampant in Indian Country, that just eating healthy foods again can help.”

But even restoring bison to tribal lands has been met with resistance from nearby cattle ranchers worried about bison potentially spreading disease, breaking down fences and competing for forage.

“I hear from the non-Indian ranchers that they don’t want to lose their land,” he said. “I know the feeling.”

12 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SUMMER 2021

Ask any bison expert, or most anyone in the West, if bison will ever reach close to the numbers they once had, and they’ll say no.

The time where the Western landscape could support 30 million creatures that weigh up to 2,000 pounds and stand 6.5 feet tall that need space to move around is gone. But efforts are underway to restore at least some of what’s been lost.

And ironically, some of the first attempts to preserve and restore bison came from the very people who participated in their destruction.

In 1905, the Bronx Zoo’s first director, William Hornaday, and former President Theodore Roosevelt launched the American Bison Society to create wild bison reserves.

“People were saying bison were going to go extinct and the Wildlife Conservation Society needed to buy up bison from people who saved them and set up lands for them to be protected,” said Cynthia Hartway, science lead with WSC’s Rocky Mountain Program. “They bought some bison and negotiated to have bison brought to them at the Bronx Zoo to set up a breeding program.

Then they found lands on the Wichita and Niobrara refuges, and that was the start of modern conservation of bison.”

Now of approximately half a million bison roaming the U.S., about 33,000 to 34,000 are managed as wild herds. Roughly 4,500 of those are in Yellowstone National Park. The U.S. National Park Service only wants about 3,000 in the herd, and any that wander north out of the park into Montana are either hunted, rounded up for slaughter or sent to quarantine to then go to tribal lands and other reintroduction efforts.

The rest are dispersed on wildlife trust lands, federal public lands like Book Cliffs in Utah, state lands like Custer State Park in South Dakota, and places like the American Prairie Reserve in Montana and Southern Plains Land Trust in southern Colorado.

Nearly every species on the Plains evolved with bison and in some ways relied on them. Bison created large landscape variations perfect for grassland birds. They distributed seeds from plants and kept encroaching trees at bay. The plants and flowers then supported pollinators. Prairie dogs and bison needed one another, and black-footed ferrets relied on prairie dogs.

“Bison are the best gardeners to put out on the grasslands and build healthy soils,” said David Carter with the National Bison Association. “North American grasslands are like the North American rainforest. The grasslands are an incredibly effective carbon sink and … are a more resilient carbon trap than forests.”

Which is why private groups like the American Prairie Reserve are buying up land and reestablishing wild herds.

The APR, as it’s often called, started in June 2001 as a response to a late ’90s report highlighting the need for conserving critical areas of the Great Plains, especially one portion of northeastern Montana.

“Our main focus is to purchase and permanently hold title to private lands that glue together a vast mosaic of existing public lands so that the region is managed thoughtfully and collaboratively with state and federal agencies for wildlife conservation and public access,” according to organizational story.

The organization’s ultimate goal is to pull together 3 million acres of public and private lands because that’s about how much biologists say it would take to create a fully functioning ecosystem Above: Bison hunting scene depicted on Newspaper Rock, near Canyonlands National Park, Utah. Photo: istock.com/ crbellette

in the prairie with migration corridors.

It has, according to its online reports, acquired almost 105,000 acres of private land that works together with more than 315,000 acres of public land.

For Carlson, the APR concept is a dream come true.

But local communities aren’t so sure.

“I see them coming in with big money, buying up ranches and walking over the top of the people who are already here,” said Montana ranch owner Conni French in a 2019 interview with National Public Radio.

“For them to be successful in their goals, we can’t be here, and that’s not OK with us.”

Steaks and Burgers Of the half a million bison in the United States, about 440,000 of them are living on private bison ranches.

You’ve likely seen them off Interstate 25 in northern Colorado, near Gillette, Wyoming, or around Jackson Hole. Like cattle, ranchers have herds as small as 10 or as big as 50,000.

Most average about 75, said Carter.

Bison ranching is a relatively new phenomenon. Carter started in 2003, after 25 years with the Farmer’s Union and two years as executive director of the Bison Association.

The first thing he’ll tell you when you ask about raising bison is that they are not “beefalo.”

“Our code of ethics prohibit any cross breeding, but when people hear there’s cattle genetics with bison, they think there’s a black angus hidden behind the barn to mate with females,” Carter said. “When you measure it today, most of the bison out there have less than 1.5 percent of their genetic makeup as cattle.”

Likely about 150 years ago, when bison were nearly gone, a few cattle ranchers lost their cows to a brutal winter storm and noticed the bison had survived. Perhaps, they figured, they could breed the two and have an animal with the temperament of a domestic cow and the hardiness of a bison. Instead, they got the opposite, Graphic: DOI Bison Conservation Initiative

SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 13

Carter said.

Ranchers quickly abandoned the idea, and bison haven’t been crossed widely with cattle in well over a century. But because so few bison remained in the country at the turn of the 20th century, some of the bison now have trace amounts of cattle genes.

“A lot of people say, ‘look, they look like bison, they taste like bison, they’re doing what bison do, let’s not worry about it,’” Hartway said. “I think, let’s acknowledge it’s there, but not make it worse.”

Bison ranchers generally don’t castrate their bulls, use growth hormones, cut horns or brand their herd, and the National Bison Association has a memorandum of understanding with the Intertribal Buffalo Council and works with the Wildlife Conservation Society.

While bison ranching is important to overall numbers, Hartway cautions that pure strains of bison can also be domesticated as ranchers or even wildlife refuge managers may select for more passive traits since bull bison have a tendency to fight – sometimes to the death.

“That’s an outstanding question now: How can we manage bison in a way that minimizes the artificial selection? It comes down to the bottom line: why have a bunch of males busting your equipment and hurting each other?” Hartway said. “It’s a delicate dance and an open question of how can we thread that needle.”

Fears of Competition, Disease and the Unknown Plenty of ranchers in Montana raise bison, but the concept of restoration of wild bison on public lands is a bit more of a touchy subject.

For more than a decade, the state of Montana worked on a bison restoration plan to bring bison back to the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge and public land near the Blackfeet Indian Reservation that would allow U.S. bison to connect to Canada. The plan was championed by conservation icons like the late Jim Posewitz but was also feared by some local ranchers. In April, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte decided to end the state’s bison management plan.

Fears over buffalo are often twofold: worries over a loss of forage and grazing opportunities for cattle and worry about the spread of disease, particularly brucellosis.

Bison in Yellowstone National Park can carry brucellosis, a bacteria that causes cows to abort their first fetus. While the loss of calves is bad enough, the biggest concern is the regulatory hurdles that come after someone’s cow herd tests positive. If the disease can’t be cleared through culling and testing, sometimes an entire herd must be sold. Federal assistance helps but rarely covers the cost of losing every cow.

Elk also carry brucellosis, which is how it typically spreads.

Montana has been adamant that bison heading north out of Yellowstone be shot or removed. Bison captured out of Yellowstone for relocation are tested and quarantined. Then mature bulls are tested for an additional year and up to 2.5 years for young females.

The bison located on the Blackfeet and Fort Peck reservations are far removed from their kin in the park that could carry the disease. Brucellosis transmission from bison to cattle has been documented in the laboratory, but never in the greater Yellowstone area – the only place in the country where bison carry brucellosis, according to the Centers for Disease Control, which is “probably because of ongoing rigorous management actions to keep cattle and bison spatially and temporally separated,” the CDC stated.

Then come fears about places like the American Prairie Reserve buying up land that used to be cattle ranches to create the American Serengeti. The dissent against an out-of-state organization funded by out-of-state money turning former cattle leases into prairie grew so strong that billboards dot Montana highways with the words: “Save the Cowboy, Stop the American Photo: NPS/Neal Herbert

“ALL THROUGH AMERICAN HISTORY, IT’S BEEN THE SPORTSMAN HUNTER THAT HAS CARRIED THE CONSERVATION ETHIC FORWARD AND RESTORED WILDLIFE TO AN ENTIRE CONTINENT.” -JIM POSEWITZ.

Photo: Bison along Rose Creek in Lamar Valley, Yellowstone National Park, NPS/Neal Herbert

Prairie Reserve.”

A Montana lawmaker even proposed a bill in in early 2021 aimed at prohibiting “certain nonprofit corporations from purchasing agricultural land,” the bill read.

The bill died, but the sentiment remains.

Leah Latray, a Lewistown-area rancher, told the Billings Gazette that the American Prairie Reserve is “not my idea of the American dream.”

The Remaining Piece of the Plains Few sportsmen championed the restoration of wild bison as a huntable species more than Posewitz.

In a 2014 video, he called restoring wild bison to portions of the Plains, specifically the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, “a moral responsibility. This was the most abused animal on the continent, and we have a chance to correct that.”

It’s a sentiment his son, Andrew Posewitz, echoes.

“I would tell you, and this extends from my dad, the one undone piece from the North American Wildlife Recovery Model is bison,” he said.

Wild bison means restoration of the last huntable species on the plains. It means another opportunity for sportsmen and women, one that has been gone for well over a century.

Andrew Posewitz understands concerns from local ranching communities, but said instead of being afraid of the losses, because we don’t know what they will be, “we should find smart ways to mitigate the risk, so the landowner isn’t paying the full cost.”

States have predation accounts for species like wolves and grizzly bears that help offset losses in certain areas. Bison could be no different.

For many in the conservation community, including on the American Prairie Reserve, the ultimate goal is to have enough bison to hunt. That’s the compensatory management part of restoration.

But exactly what restoration means depends on who you ask. The National Bison Association has a goal of returning 1 million bison to the U.S., either in wild herds or on ranches. Carlson was reluctant to state a specific number as a goal; it will depend on the amount of habitat available.

Whatever the number, Carlson has no doubt buffalo will be restored, eventually.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced plans recently to “engage Tribes and stakeholders on the topics of bison and bighorn sheep reintroductions,” into those areas of Montana where some ranchers and legislators hope to keep them out, according to the Associated Press. Native American lawmakers, including Montana Rep. Tyson Running Wolf, a Blackfeet member from Browning, asked the Biden administration to work on the plan. Running Wolf also urged the administration to look at bison in the Glacier area.

Advocates like the late Jim Posewitz believe that sportsmen and women should lead the charge.

“All through American history, it’s been the sportsman hunter that has carried the conservation ethic forward and restored wildlife to an entire continent,” said Jim Posewitz. “Wildlife conservation began in America when Theodore Roosevelt set us on that course, and it’s going to be up to the sportsmen to get behind it to bring that last animal back to where it belongs on this landscape.”

Christine Peterson has written about outdoor recreation and the environment for the past decade from her home in Wyoming. When she’s not chasing trout or trapping grizzly bears and bighorn sheep, she’s wandering the West’s public lands with her daughter, husband and Labrador. She was the 2020 recipient of BHA’s Ted Trueblood Award.

RANDY NEWBERG

PUBLIC LAND OWNER & ADVOCATE

EXCLUSIVELY AVAILABLE ON &

PODCAST 18 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SUMMER 2021

FORUM

WWW.RANDYNEWBERG.COM

HEADQUARTERS NEWS

RECOVERING AMERICA’S WILDLIFE ACT INTRODUCED A bipartisan effort to secure funding for state and tribal efforts to conserve at-risk species was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) and Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE). The Recovering America’s Wildlife Act would make $1.4 billion in annual funding available to state and tribal wildlife management agencies, supporting critical conservation work, enhancing fish and wildlife habitat and boosting America’s outdoor recreation economy.

Hunters and anglers, including BHA members, have been vocal proponents of the need for targeted investments in species recovery. The Recovering America’s Wildlife Act is the product of decades of hard work and dedicated collaboration by sportsmen and women, conservationists and business leaders.

“Last Congress, we were able to enact the Great American Outdoors Act and provide $900 million annually in permanent funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund,” said BHA President and CEO Land Tawney.

“Now we have the opportunity to complement this victory through the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act, which focuses on habitat enhancement through restoration, invasive species removal, research, watershed management, collaboration management of species across state lines, tribal lands and more.”

State wildlife agencies have demonstrated the ability to successfully restore habitat for multiple game species, including Tule elk in California, harlequin ducks in Montana, northern pintails in Kansas and many others. While not all at-risk species are game species, they share the same habitat with critical game animals like mallards, mule deer, pronghorn and wild trout. Improving habitat for one species benefits all of them, including wild game.

The bill’s introduction in the 117th Congress resulted from hard work by a broad coalition of stakeholders, the Alliance for America’s Fish and Wildlife, to address at-risk species while also improving hunting and fishing opportunities. Comprised of outdoor industry leaders, state and tribal fish and wildlife agencies, conservation groups, business interests, and hunters and anglers, the coalition is committed to achieving comprehensive conservation funding legislation in the United States.

20 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SUMMER 2021

A sign on Idaho’s Middle Fork of the Salmon River aims to protect ESA-listed chinook salmon spawning redds. Photo: Zack Williams

COLUMBIA BASIN INITIATIVE In February, Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID) introduced The Columbia Basin Initiative, which would aim to restore wild salmon and steelhead populations in the Columbia and Lower Snake rivers to pre-dam numbers while making muchneeded improvements to the area’s infrastructure.

BHA supports the proposal, which, besides hopefully saving four threatened or endangered species of salmon and steelhead, would create 14,000 acres of new habitat and enhanced recreation opportunities.

BHA headquarters, along with the Idaho, Washington and Oregon chapters, have been working on several fronts to help educate and communicate effectively on the key facts of the proposal with their delegations and bring them to the table to discuss the potential solutions.

Working with our partners in conservation, we have held virtual discussions and have plans to host members of Rep. Simpson’s office at upcoming events.

For more information on The Columbia Basin Initiative, please visit BHA’s Take Action page at backcountryhunters.org.

HEADQUARTERS NEWS

LATEST FROM THE PODCAST & BLAST BHA’s Podcast & Blast, with host Hal Herring, celebrates 100 episodes and keeps right on rolling.

Episode 100: Durrell Smith Durrell Smith is a bird dog trainer, artist, podcaster and writer from Georgia.

He founded the Minority Outdoor Alliance, a pioneer in connecting minorities to their history and voice in the hunting and angling communities.

“He lives what he speaks,” as Hal says of Durrell, who is also a bobwhite quail hunting fanatic, guiding and chasing birds largely on public lands. Through his work and pursuits, he is carrying on an incredible lineage of Southern quail hunting and dog training, giving voice to the deeply enmeshed and influential role of Blacks in Southern outdoor traditions.

Listen as Hal and Durrell wander through the South, discuss Southern art and sporting culture, and consider the crucial role of diverse participants in keeping our outdoor heritage healthy and relevant.

Episode 103: Jenna Rozelle “It started with food, and it’s evolved into what most hunters have experienced … sure, the end goal is food, but there’s a million more things to enjoy about it.” Jenna Rozelle lives in southern Maine, where she teaches classes on wild foods, forages, hunts, fishes and chronicles an existence spent close to the land. For her, hunting and fishing go hand in hand with foraging and land stewardship.

A board member of the New England chapter of BHA and self described late-onset hunter, Rozelle tells Hal the story of her long and winding road to a gratifying relationship with harvesting wild creatures.

Join them as they talk wild foods and how to find them, the joys and challenges of spring gardening and squirrel hunting as an entry point to hunting. Along the way you’ll hear about an ancient book of herbal lore, the life and habits of a unique fish parasite, and the evolutionary benefits of our keenly developed and very human sense of disgust.

BHA’S FIELD TO TABLE BLOG CONTINUES TO GROW Find your wild game cooking inspiration with recipes published biweekly on BHA’s Field to Table blog (in addition to those published quarterly here in Backcountry Journal).

Recent additions to the Field to Table blog include: • Vietnamese Venison Pho • Roll Mops with Pickled Pike • Wild Turkey Pozole • Braised Groundhog • Those and more at backcountryhunters. org/field_to_table Roasted Pheasant with Peanut Sauce

by Justin Townsend

WELCOME NEW BHA HIRE! Kate Mayfield Office Manager

A native of Northern California, Kate grew up surrounded by towering redwoods, sprawling vineyards and a deep-rooted passion for exploring the valleys and rivers around her. Her earliest memories are nearly all hunting adventures with her brother, father and grandfather. After making her way to Missoula to attend the University of Montana, Kate was immersed in the world of Western big game. Navigating the intricacies of bow hunting on public lands in the Rockies sparked a fire for conservation, and she has been in pursuit of empowering hunters and anglers ever since. Kate strongly feels that anyone who wants to take on the field to table lifestyle can do so, with the right resources. BHA offered her a place for advice, tips and comradery while she navigated learning how to hunt and fish in a brand-new landscape. On days off you can find her training with her chocolate Lab, Sig, shooting her bow, catching up with her mom, and enjoying a campfire somewhere, preferably without cell service.

SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 21

JONATHAN WILKINS LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS

FACES OF BHA

Arkansas Chapter Board

YOU CAME TO HUNTING AS AN ADULT. HOW DID YOU GET STARTED? AND WHAT KEPT BRINGING YOU BACK? Before my wife and I were married, we lived in a trailer house on her family’s 15 acres in Central Arkansas. The place was fairly remote and surrounded by hundreds of acres of sparsely populated woods, which made it seem even more so. It was the first time I had lived in a place where deer crossed your driveway and it was dark enough to see more than a handful of stars at night.

A buddy and I were building a front deck on the house, and he kept commenting on the quality of the woods around us. One thing led to another and within a few weeks he had me chasing squirrels on public land and shooting a bow off the completed deck. I killed a deer that first season and was introduced to waterfowling as well. The resonance was immediate.

Hunting, fishing and the quest to become proficient became an omnipresent force in my life. It’s shaped my relationship to space, informed my identity and is influencing how my wife and I are raising our daughters. There is a capability and integrity of purpose I’ve gained from my relationship with the woods and the animals I pursue. I’m excited my daughters get to grow up with it.

WHAT BROUGHT YOU TO BHA? At its best, I think that public land is a catalyst towards potential. Personal potential, societal potential, ecological, etc. I know that my ability to hunt and fish on public land here in Arkansas has impacted every other aspect of my life. It has had repercussions in my family and in my community. I think it is vitally important to protect that capacity and potential that public land offers. BHA is a way for me to take an active and participatory role in protecting those transformative wild places.

IS THERE ANYTHING YOU ARE PARTICULARLY PASSIONATE ABOUT AS AN ARKANSAS CHAPTER BOARD MEMBER? I want folks to know, to truly feel, that these wild places are theirs to explore. I want the woods to be a democratizing place for people to be a part of these very natural and human processes in whatever respectful way

suits them. I feel passionately that the room and ability to roam, explore and challenge ourselves in natural theaters is inherently human. The more people that can experience that, the better. I want that here in Arkansas and beyond.

BLACK DUCK REVIVAL IS A GORGEOUS HUNTING LODGE IN A CHURCH YOU REMODELED AND A GUIDE SERVICE … AND IT SEEMS LIKE A WHOLE LOT MORE! CAN YOU GIVE US A GLIMPSE OF YOUR GOALS AND FUTURE PLANS? The “Revival” aspect of BDR is more than just a reference to the building’s former incarnation as a church. It also speaks to our focus on reviving the idea that people are capable of doing things themselves. Yes, that means hunting and fishing but also learning how to efficiently process and cook our quarry as well. To me, those are essential aspects of hunting. We offer full scale, holistic experiences for folks who want to get the most out of their wild excursions and be able to do so without being made to feel dumb, unwelcome or unaccomplished for not knowing. What’s really fantastic is that the model is applicable to anyone who’s willing to learn, no matter their experience level.

This past season I had some awesome days with folks who were able to get their first specklebelly goose. Believe me, that’s a special kind of rewarding. However, one of my favorite moments came with a gentleman who’s been chasing ducks and geese for as long as I’ve been alive. A month or so after

we hunted, he called to tell me that he had been cooking his goose breasts the way I showed him in the class and that it was the first time in 25 years that his wife was willing to eat any wild game that he’d brought home. Even in that small way, the narrative and experiences of that family were changed. A guy that had only breasted out birds for decades came to BDR, learned how to waxpluck a goose, properly sear up a skin on breast, make a simple pan sauce ... and it changed his wife’s relationship to wild game. That feels impactful.

Black Duck Revival is also intended to be a place that examines the history and impact that Black people in this country have had on hunting and the particular intersections of those experiences with wild food, especially here in the South.

I’m excited that this season we’re going to be offering a couple of really unique hunt experiences in conjunction with some amazing historians/authors. We’ve also got a few whole hog butchery courses in the pipeline, outside of hunting season, for folks who want to expand their working knowledge of breaking down/ processing whole animals, either farmed or hunted.

Those, in addition to the guided catfishing trips we’ve got going, are keeping me pretty busy and allowing us to use the space year round. It’s all conspiring to form a really great relationship between space, place and seasonality. I’m stoked to see what else is to come.

SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 23

24 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SUMMER 2021

Email your Backcountry Bounty submissions to williams@ backcountryhunters.org or share your photos with us by using #backcountryhuntersandanglers on social media!

BACKCOUNTRY BOUNTY

Hunter: Canyon Young, BHA member Species: elk State: New Mexico Method: bow Distance from nearest road: two miles Transportation: foot

Angler: Chris Young, BHA member Species: wild steelhead (released) State: Washington Method: spin Distance from nearest road: one mile Transportation: foot

Hunter: Mark Tonkin, BHA member Species: whitetail State: West Virginia Method: bow Distance from nearest road: three miles Transportation: Foot Hunter: Julie Mackiewicz, BHA member, Pondo, Lab Species: pheasant State: Montana Method: shotgun Distance from nearest road: one mile Transportation: foot

Hunter: Andrew Martin, BHA member Species: hog State: Georgia Method: bow Distance from nearest road: one mile Transportation: foot

Hunter: David Lien, CO chapter co-chair Species: elk State: Colorado Method: rifle Distance from nearest road: three miles Transportation: foot

Hunter: Tracy Buckner, BHA member Species: elk State: Oregon Method: rifle Distance from nearest road: one mile Transportation: foot

Hunter: Jacob Bliss, BHA member, Joey Bell, Tennessee chapter chair Species: Merriam’s turkey State: Nebraska Method: shotgun Distance from nearest road:BACKCOUNTRY two miles Transportation: foot | 25 SUMMER 2021 JOURNAL

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SUMMER

KIDS’ CORNER

SCAVENGER HUNT!

BY HARLAN GALE

FIND! A SPIDER OR INSECT A WILDFLOWER AN ANIMAL (SQUIRREL, DEER, BIRD, ETC.) (DO NOT TOUCH OR PET IT.) A CACTUS OR OTHER SPIKY/SHARP PLANT (DO NOT TOUCH IT.) 3 UNIQUE ROCKS OR STONES A NATURAL SOURCE OF WATER (LAKE, POND, RIVER, ETC.) A CAVE, NEST, OR OTHER THING THAT MIGHT HOUSE AN ANIMAL A CLOUD THAT LOOKS LIKE AN ANIMAL OR PLANT SOMETHING PURPLE SOMETHING THAT AN ANIMAL LEFT BEHIND (SCAT, TRACKS, FUR, ETC.)

COMPLETE!

Harlan Gale is a seventh grade student in a small Colorado mountain town. She enjoys skiing, hiking, mountain biking, camping, fishing, bird hunting and spending time outdoors with her parents and 2-year-old pudelpointer, Isla.

FIND A TREE AND IDENTIFY/LEARN TO IDENTIFY IT GO FOR A WALK, HIKE OR BIKE RIDE IN NATURE TAKE A PICTURE OF SOMETHING COOL THAT YOU SEE IN NATURE

BONUS!

PICK UP A PIECE OF LITTER

EXPLAIN TO SOMEONE WHY LITTER IS BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT

USE ITEMS THAT YOU FIND IN NATURE (STICKS, LEAVES, PINECONES, ETC.) TO SPELL YOUR NAME OR ANOTHER WORD

DRAW OR COLOR A PICTURE OF YOUR FAVORITE ANIMAL OR PLANT STUDY, OBSERVE OR RESEARCH AN ANIMAL OR PLANT THAT YOU SEE IN NATURE SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 27

UNFAILING GOODS 28 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SUMMER 2021

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Chapter News & Updates

ALASKA • • • •

The chapter is preparing comments on the BLM Central Yukon Resource Management Plan.

We are currently interviewing for new board positions.

Chapter Acting Chair Barry Whitehill participated in a virtual roundtable regarding legislation to protect Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Organized around and developed a response to potential federal land hunting closures in northwest Alaska, units 23 and 26A.

ALBERTA • •

•

Continued the campaign against expanded coal mining in the Eastern Slopes, sending over 3,000 emails and phone calls to elected officials.

Submitted a letter in support of the First Nations request for a federal environmental impact assessment on the Tent Mountain coal project, which straddles the BC/Alberta border and affects watersheds in both provinces and Montana.

Met with the Alberta Environment Minister’s office to express member concerns and seek areas of cooperation.

30 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SUMMER 2021

ARIZONA •

• •

The chapter worked with Arizona Game and Fish and in partnership with the O’Haco Ranch to install more appropriate fencing for wildlife. We replaced three-strand wire fence with sections making it easier for elk to jump over and pronghorn to go under. The O’Haco Ranch has been a great partner in allowing access to hunters through the years.

Installed monofilament bins on the Salt River to help improve habitat for fish and birds in the area.

In May, we will hopefully work with the Tonto National Forest to help with bullfrog removal to help facilitate recovery of native leopard frogs.

ARKANSAS •

Update on Keep Pine Tree Public: The Arkansas Senate voted 31-3 in favor of keeping Pine Tree Research Station in public hands. The Senate voted 30-5 to pass an appropriation bill that will need to be funded that encourages the U of A to transfer this property to another entity that will keep it public forever. Our chapter board continues to work across multiple fronts to make sure Pine Tree remains public forever.

CHAPTER NEWS BRITISH COLUMBIA • • •

Joined a coalition of 26 diverse conservation organizations to promote legislation to prioritize, restore and preserve fish and wildlife habitat.

Regional tables are working on becoming stakeholders on regional wildlife harvest advisory committees, hosting virtual new member pint nights and province-wide webinars, keeping members engaged.

Promoting hunting and angling lifestyle, having conversations with elected and ministry officials and writing advocacy letters on hot button issues regionally and provincially, including grasslands, resort development and water quality.

CALIFORNIA • • •

California chapter members teamed up with the Society for the Conservation of Bighorn Sheep to replace two old, damaged guzzlers in the steep and rocky Orocopia Mountains of Southern California.

The BHA Pendleton AFI club and CA chapter are fundraising to purchase and replace three guzzlers that were burned in a recent fire.

The chapter is supporting a number of proposed bills in the state legislature this year, including a wildlife connectivity initiative, a joint hunting/fishing license and other improvements to license purchases.

CAPITAL REGION • • •

The Capital chapter is co-sponsoring The Tidal Potomac Slam fishing tournament to help raise funds to save Fletcher’s Cove, a cherished natural resource found in Washington, D.C. We teamed up with Scouts BSA Troop 117, Mt. Jackson, which built fishing line recycling bins that will be donated to the U.S. Forest Service for use in the George Washington and Jefferson national forests.

Hosted a two-part virtual turkey hunting event with Mossy Oak Pro Staff Kyle Ott. We had a great turnout and received a ton of positive feedback.

COLLEGIATE PROGRAM • •

•

Welcomed three new clubs into the program: Murray State University, West Virginia University and University of Vermont.

Field to Floor, a three-part series aimed at engaging students in conservation, included a rundown on the congressional process with BHA Government Relations Manager Julia Peebles, BHA partnering with other organizations to do a deep dive into the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act and a special edition of BHA policy trivia.

The University of Wisconsin Stevens Point adopted the Dewey Marsh Wildlife Area and completed their first work day installing signs and packing out trash. This project is supported by BHA’s Public Land Owner Stewardship Fund. Fun fact: Dewey Marsh was acquired through LWCF funds (which students played a big role in helping permanently renew with the passing of the Great American Outdoors Act!

COLORADO •

• •

Colorado BHA welcomed four new Habitat Watch Volunteers: Derek Pankratz, Gunnison National Forest; Eric Lomas, Pike National Forest; Robert Benjamin, San Juan National Forest; Eric Jones, Arapaho National Forest.

Kassi Smith volunteered to serve on our Executive Leadership Team/ Board as an at-large ELT member.

Central West Slope Regional Director Craig Grother was recognized as BHA’s Member of the Month for February 2021.

GEORGIA • •

IDAHO • •

• •

The chapter made a commitment to R3 by offering an NRA Basic Rifle Shooting course for new hunters, followed by 24 small game hunting events and communication via podcasts, Crowdcasts and social media.

Florida BHA is leading an effort to oppose a proposed road through the Point Washington WMA, supported by multiple conservation organizations and three state agencies.

Volunteers removed over five tons of garbage from public land through the Florida Gobblers & Garbage initiative.

BHA and the Lemhi Regional Land Trust gathered local stakeholders in Salmon, Idaho, to discuss Rep. Simpson’s Energy and Salmon Concept with Simpson’s staff.

Idaho BHA recently submitted a letter of support to the Senate Resources and Environment Committee on House Bill 187, which would empower the Idaho Department of Fish and Game to enforce motorized use restrictions on private land where the public has access through Access Yes! or similar programs.

ILLINOIS • • • •

The chapter put out multiple legislative action alerts for proposed bills that would eliminate take of bobcats and allocate a portion of wild turkey tags to outfitters.

Hosted a very successful trivia night and raffle, which was our highest attended digital event to date.

Organized the donation of a guided crappie trip for the Winter Extravaganza.

Hosted a “Shed Fest” on Instagram and auctioned off an “Illinois Shedographic Map” – artwork from one of our board members.

INDIANA • • •

BHA members across the state wrote more than 500 letters to policymakers concerning a current state bill that would eliminate wetland protections.

A promising habitat plan for Hoosier National Forest is being litigated in court. We signed on to an amicus brief describing the benefits of the plan.

We are holding volunteer workdays on public land, and to bolster these efforts, we are seeking corporate partners to increase the chapter’s operating budget.

KANSAS •

• •

The Kansas chapter held a sporting clays event at Powder Creek Shooting Park in Lenexa, Kansas, in March. There were 35 participants at the event and 50 targets were shot by each participant. The event was sponsored by Walton’s Inc. of Wichita, Kansas.

Also on March 20, Kansas chapter volunteers improved an area of the Cheney Reservoir Wildlife Area. Volunteers cleared trees, moved brush, picked up trash and improved access to a shoreline area of the reservoir.

The chapter was very involved in the 2021 legislative session, offering written and verbal testimony regarding several bills, including landowner/tenant transferrable non-resident deer tags, the addition of 493 acres to the Byron Walker Wildlife area and e-bikes.

KENTUCKY •

FLORIDA •

The Georgia chapter submitted comments to the Georgia Dept. of Natural Resources on proposed changes to next year’s turkey season, which have the potential to negatively impact public land hunters.

We encouraged members to submit comments to the National Park Service on the creation of a new national park in Georgia. While we are in favor of the creation of a new national park, we strongly oppose reducing public land hunting and fishing access to create the park.

• • •

On Feb. 24, 12 BHA volunteers and two KDFWR employees completed the installation of archery targets at the Curtis Gates Lloyd WMA archery trail in Grant County. Trash along the trail and surrounding the parking lot was cleaned up. Additionally, invasive brush was cut back.

Three miles of boundary was marked by BHA volunteers in March at the Marion County WMA and state forest.

Kentucky BHA’s first scavenger and treasure hunt ran from March 15 through April 15, with hidden caches of treasure placed throughout the commonwealth.

Murray State University was officially established as Kentucky’s first BHA Collegiate club and hosted a public lands trivia night.

SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 31

MICHIGAN •

• •

Held a successful Women in the Woods virtual pint night with chapter board members Sarah Topp and Heather Shaw and a few other awesome women speakers. Thanks to Kylie Schumacher for running things for us!

Held a river cleanup in the Traverse City area on the Boardman River in May. Partnering with USFS in July to remove old fencing in the Huron National Forest, cleaning up our public lands. Contact michigan@ backcountryhunters.org for dates and volunteer information.

NEW ENGLAND • •

•

MINNESOTA • • •

•

Welcome to our new board members: Michael Verhoeven, Chance Adams and Mark Westphal.

In April, Minnesota public land owners cleaned up three trailer loads of trash from Vermillion River WMA. We are supporting legislation to strengthen laws pertaining to curbing CWD spread and opposing pending legislation that would negatively affect use of funds from the Reinvest in Minnesota critical habitat license plate fund.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter @bha_mn for real time updates!

NEW MEXICO • • •

MISSOURI • •

•

Thank you to everyone who participated in the Lindenlure raffle. We were able to raise $4,120 to protect stream access in MO! MDC has proposed allowing for usage of bikes and e-bikes on conservation area service roads. Our chapter is currently getting input from our members and key partners in the state. Let us know your thoughts.

As covid restrictions ease across the state and more people get vaccinated, we will begin planning more in-person events. Stay tuned for a fly-fishing outing, archery shoots and pint nights!

MONTANA • • • •

We spent the first five months of 2021 fully engaged in Montana’s biennal legislative session.

We fought hard to preserve many different conservation programs, including private land conservation easements and Habitat Montana.

We fought to preserve the independent integrity of Montana’s FWP Commission.

We fought against efforts to privatize and monetize Montana’s wildlife. We strongly believe in the Montana tradition that our wildlife is owned by all and should not be made exclusive to the ultra-wealthy.

NEBRASKA • • •

Chapter members attended and manned BHA booths at several Pheasants Forever chapter banquets. Thank you to the Republican Valley and Lower Platte PF chapters for the invites.

Chapter has been taking applications for new state board members.

Also currently taking applications for a state policy chair as well.

Virtual pint nights have continued. Topics covered include fly fishing, a turkey hunting and calling competition and kayak fishing .

• •

The chapter has been active in the state legislature this session, working with coalition partners to monitor and engage on bills that impact hunting, angling and public lands.

We worked closely with BHA headquarters to craft a national policy statement on feral horse and burro management, which will guide how all effected chapters engage on this complex issue.

The chapter policy lead has been working closely with NDOW and the legislature to develop a program to allow for the legal salvage of wildlife killed in vehicle collisions.

32 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SUMMER 2021

Our chapter endured a grueling 60-day legislative session. Unfortunately, our efforts were not enough: SB 32 was signed into law, which banned trapping on our public lands.

We hosted the Kiowa National Grasslands fencing project to improve antelope migration. This hugely important endeavor, two years in the making, was championed by board member Beau Murphy.

The chapter would like to welcome our newest board members: Brian Mileshosky, Jennifer Black, Stephanie Walton-Filipczak and Piotr Filipczak.

NEW YORK • • •

Our Virtual Learn To series continued with an ice fishing event on Feb. 25, followed by fly fishing on March 25 and turkey hunting on April 29.

“Muster in the Mountains 2021” is coming soon! Mark your calendars for July 16-18, in the Catskill Mountains at West Kill Brewing!

The NY chapter has contestants participating in this spring’s Struttin’ & Cluckin’ turkey calling contest. We wish them luck!

OKLAHOMA •

•

•

Oklahoma is fighting bad legislation again this session: SB 776 and HB 2214 both set to limit the ODWC’s ability to procure new land for public hunting and fishing and legislate private landowners. These bills would place a mandatory six-month wait period that a landowner would have to advertise property for sale before they would be allowed to sell this property to the ODWC. We have events scheduled for the July 31 deer hunting expo. Want to learn valuable tips and tactics to learn how to deer hunt? Come join BHA, NWTF and other conservation orgs and local experts as we help those who want to get into deer hunting.

Our annual chapter rendezvous is slated for a little later this year in late August/early September! Based off feedback from our members, we are changing some details this year to make this year’s event the most fun yet! Stay tuned to our Facebook page and our newsletter for more info.

OREGON •

NEVADA •

A significant amount of state-level policy work has taken place, advocating for continued protection of access and opportunity for hunters and anglers across our region.

The chapter collaborated with the NY chapter to host an informational event, provide comment on Amendment 7 to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic striped bass and circulate an action alert to members.

There have been several public land cleanups on state WMAs, from Otter Creek in Vermont to Salisbury Salt Marsh in Massachusetts.

Thanks to our awesome volunteers! Join us this summer as more of these take place.

• •

Through action alerts, letter-writing and active engagement, we have amplified the voices of thousands of public land owners on HB 3328.

Additionally, by lending support for HB 3152 and HB 3187, Oregonians can see that ODFW is better equipped to combat invasive species and zoonotic diseases and that the general public is made aware of the funding mechanisms for the North American Model and the role hunters and anglers play therein.

Oregon chapter leadership has played a pivotal role in the State Game Commission’s stakeholder workgroup refining the 2022 archery elk proposal.

The Oregon chapter is proud to announce a partnership with the North American Non-Lead Partnership to help grow voluntary adoption of nonlead projectiles for hunting and prevent future attempts to ban lead ammunition outright.

CHAPTER NEWS PENNSYLVANIA

•

•

•

•

•

Chapter leaders met with four executive directors and 16 elected members of the Senate’s and House’s Game & Fisheries committees.

The chapter wrote letters of support for three bills in the House Game & Fisheries Committee.

Chapter leaders also met personally with the executive director of the Pennsylvania Game Commission, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission and with the secretary of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

SOUTH CAROLINA •

• • •

Our chapter continued coordination with Trout Unlimited. Our chapter VP was a guest speaker at the Saluda Trout Unlimited chapter meeting. He discussed BHA’s mission, as well as ways we can work together to further the goals of both organizations within South Carolina. He also encouraged mutual membership for both organizations.

We hosted our first annual Trashy Tail small game hunt and pack out.

We picked up a full truck load of trash and managed to harvest a few squirrels for dinner in the process.

We initiated additional conversations towards our push for Sunday hunting in South Carolina. We’ve already gained traction and plan to continue the momentum as the year progresses.

Several of our members volunteered to help the USFS mark new boundary areas in the Francis Marion National Forest.

•

WEST VIRGINIA • • • •

•

•

•

We are excited to host the Total Archery Challenge afterparty on Saturday, June 26, at the Terry Peak Lodge.

Our chapter has been working with the BLM and Forest Service on potential projects, including cleanups and opening up more acres of the public land.

SOUTHEAST • •

The Southeast chapter is hosting our Gobblers and Garbage cleanup event again this year. We’re looking forward to seeing more trash removed from our public lands.

Keep an eye out for some upcoming work days on WMAs around the chapter.

TEXAS •

• •

Texas BHA volunteers traveled to South Padre Island for the 26th annual Billy Sandifer Big Shell Beach Cleanup. Hundreds of bags of trash were collected, and it was a great opportunity to connect with Texas game wardens and other conservation organizations. Special thanks to Friends of Padre Island for organizing.

Chapter Chair Grahame Jones was featured in episode 101 of BHA’s Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring, where he talked about Texas issues and shared stories from the field.

We kicked off our 2021 R3 program with Texas Wildlife Association by hosting a hog and small game hunt at Hagerman NWR in North Texas.

•

• •

Utah joined neighboring Western states in prohibiting baiting for ungulates during the 2021 Legislative Session.

The Utah chapter started a Regional Advisory Committee Liaison group to increase public land hunters’ representation at local state wildlife meetings.

The chapter launched a mentorship program to help kick-start new members’ interests in hunting and fishing.

WASHINGTON •

The Washington chapter board chose their 2021 and beyond priority conservation and policy issues. Learn more about them at backcountryhunters.org/washington

WI BHA testified in support of WI SB 166, which aims to fund dumpsters for the collection of deer carcasses in an effort to stop the spread of CWD. We participated in a public land cleanup April 10 at Tichigan Wildlife Area in Racine County and Buena Vista State Natural Area in Portage County. Volunteers filled several trash bags and removed many large trash items off the landscape.

The chapter partnered with Pheasants Forever and National Wild Turkey Federation for a virtual week of Turkey Hunting 101. And on March 21, the chapter partnered with Pheasants Forever to conduct a field day in southwest WI. Approximately 20 new hunters were taught what to look for when scouting for turkeys and shed hunting.

WYOMING •

• •

UTAH •

We added eight new board members who have hit the ground running and are already helping us track policy and organize events.

Come to a pint night in White Sulphur Springs on June 26 at Big Draft Brewing. Check our chapter’s social media channels for details.

A New River cleanup event is scheduled for August 28. More details to come.

Our new policy leads monitored the WV legislative session and reached out to our representatives on bills concerning legislating wildlife management, strengthening the Natural Resources Commission, ensuring robust license sales and federal funding and standing up against bills that aim to expand recreational OHV access on public lands.

WISCONSIN

SOUTH DAKOTA •

The Embers & Ecology program will resume this summer as we continue our work raising awareness surrounding wildfires and their increasing impacts on Western landscapes.

The chapter adopted the WDFW Ebey Island Wildlife Area access point, held a five-mile trail cleanup at the Corson Natural Wildlife Area in the Snoqualmie National Forest and conducted our annual Methow fence removal day.

We hosted two stops on the 2,000 Miles film tour: Chewelah and Ballard Elks lodge.

The Wyoming chapter raised a whopping $47,720 in 2021 through our Commissioner’s Tag and Gear Raffle. Thank you to WY Board Member Jared Oakleaf for spearheading this effort, Commissioner Gay Lynn Byrd for her generous donation and our sponsors, friends and donors for making this such a big success. One hundred percent of all profits from this raffle will be donated to Wyoming Game and Fish to expand access to the Raymond Mountain Wilderness Study Area, a 33,000-acre backcountry area with premier elk and mule deer hunting opportunities.

The WY chapter has completed multiple work projects and events in 2021, with more on tap for this summer. Please check backcountryhunters.org/wyoming_events for events and work projects near you.

The chapter also had two board members move out of state. Thank you to both Adam Brister and Ross Crandall for all the work you did for the chapter. Good luck in your new adventures!

YUKON • • •

Based on the success of our sheep hunting panel in late 2020, we decided to hold a bison hunting panel in early 2021.

The bison panel was also success, and several members have upgraded their hunting gear based on the techniques and equipment that were discussed and shown.

With the pandemic still rolling, we are pushing our Annual General Meeting to this summer, hopefully outside and near a lake with some fishing after the meeting.

Find a more detailed writeup of your chapter’s news along with events and updates by regularly visiting www.backcountryhunters.org/chapters or contacting them at [your state/province/territory/region]@backcountryhunters.org (e.g. newengland@backcountryhunters.org)

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CHAPTER NEWS

In Depth:

Defending the Public Trust

Photo: Matt Hartsky, from our 2020 Public Lands and Waters Photo Contest

BY TIM BRASS Never before have BHA chapters been so engaged at state and provincial legislatures throughout North America. While the volume and range of bills we’ve engaged on has increased dramatically, our focus has remained on advancing policy that expands public access and opportunity and on supporting measures that further the conservation of fish and wildlife habitat.

As we celebrated one of the most substantial wins for conservation and public land access that we’ve seen in decades with the passage of the Great American Outdoors Act last summer, state legislators set on turning our public wildlife into a private commodity were busy sharpening their pencils and sketching out an onslaught of bills that all shared one troubling theme: allocation of wildlife and public hunting opportunity based on private land ownership and/ or status as a licensed outfitter. While we have seen many different iterations of these bills, they generally break down as follows: •

•

Transferable landowner tags: tags allocated by state fish and wildlife agencies, outside of the public draw system, based on land ownership. Tags can be “transferred” from the landowner to another hunter through private market sale (proceeds going directly to the landowner rather than the state fish and wildlife agency).

Outfitter set aside tags: a set number or percentage of tags set aside from the public draw to be used exclusively by outfitted hunters.

BHA chapters acted in force to defend against these attacks on one of our core beliefs: that the equitable opportunity to hunt and fish should not be determined by size of your bank account,

who you know or how much land you own – and that it is our responsibility to uphold this core tenet of the public trust and the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation.

Those in favor of privatized tag allocations argue we ought to be rewarding private landowners who provide valuable – and appreciated – fish and wildlife habitat. There is little debate that we should develop and provide financial systems to support the conservation of private lands – but the pressing question we’re faced with now is how? And should this responsibility fall solely on the backs of hunters? What are the long-term costs of a privatized tag allocation system? Should we instead focus our efforts on incentivizing public access? We must not forget that wildlife are a public resource regardless of whether they reside on public or private land.

Take, for example, the system which has taken root here in Colorado: In some trophy elk units, a Colorado resident DIY hunter must wait nine-plus years to acquire an archery tag through the public draw; meanwhile, a well-connected and well-heeled hunter from out of state can come hunt public lands in that same trophy unit EVERY YEAR … for a price ($10,000-plus could be expected for the tag). Setting aside the disparity between resident and nonresident tags and prices (which exist for good reason), the question is: are we okay allocating hunting opportunity in this way? Or, is there a better, more equitable system?

Here’s just a few highlights of how BHA’s volunteer-driven chapters have worked for fair and equal tag allocations: NEW MEXICO Perhaps more so than any other state, New Mexico’s previously implemented policies have led to widespread privatization of SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 35

1. Wildlife resources are a public trust.

2. Markets for game are eliminated.

3. Allocation of wildlife is by law.

4. Wildlife can be killed only for a legitimate purpose.

5. Wildlife is considered an international resource.

6. Science is the proper tool to discharge wildlife policy.

7. Democracy of hunting is standard.

Source: The Wildlife Society, wildlife.org

wildlife and public opportunity. This past legislative session, the New Mexico BHA chapter, the New Mexico Wildlife Federation and other groups coordinated closely on legislation (SB 312), which included a suite of much-needed policy reforms aimed at fixing a system that allocates a substantial portion of elk and other big game tags based on private land ownership or commercial outfitter status.

New Mexico has the most liberal “private land” tag system in the West, as well as the highest percentage of tags allocated to outfitter clients (10 percent). Transferable landowner tags are commonly marketed by landowners and outfitters as a way to bypass the public draw and “get your guaranteed trophy tag” for prices ranging from $5,000 to $25,000 or more.

The outfitter subsidy reduces both resident and nonresident DIY opportunity. In a state that ranks 49th in average household income in the nation, this system lets those with the economic means cut in line each year, while limiting New Mexico residents from hunting big game each year. While the needed legislative fix via SB 312 unfortunately failed this year, the chapter has been effectively working to fix this issue in other ways and remains committed to advancing policies that provide the DIY and public land hunter with more opportunity. As New Mexico BHA Policy Advisor Joel Gay put it: “For years our big game tag allocation system has failed the average New Mexico hunter and reduced nonresidents’ ability to hunt here. While this legislative session was disappointing, it was a start. The sportsmen and women of New Mexico will continue fighting for a more equitable system that no longer privatizes hunting opportunity.”

MONTANA Nowhere has the fight over future public hunting opportunity been more pronounced this year than in Helena, Montana. A range of bills put forth by legislators (HB 417, HB 505, HB 241 and SB 143) has continued to threaten Montana’s longstanding legacy of offering unparalleled public hunting opportunities for 36 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SUMMER 2021

DIY hunters, both residents and non-residents alike. Throughout the legislative session, more than 20,000 letters were delivered to legislators by hunters through BHA’s action center. Phone calls were made and testimony was provided by the Montana chapter and its members to make sure our message was crystal clear: We will not allow for the privatization and commercialization of our wildlife.

Montana chapter leaders, North American board members, corporate partners and friends of BHA, like Randy Newberg, continue to join forces to send a strong and unified message in defense of our public hunting heritage. “This bill … [is] going to create quite a few losers.” Randy Newberg said while testifying against HB 505. “This will reward a small handful of carefully selected winners.”

KANSAS Previously introduced legislation aimed at creating a mechanism for landowners to sell deer permits on the open market surfaced once again in February as HB 2331. Powerfully stated in a letter from Kansas Parks & Wildlife in opposition to this proposed transferable tag system: “The provisions of this bill could potentially undermine much of what makes Kansas deer hunting so attractive and would likely further erode resident hunter opportunities. As history demonstrated when transferrable deer permits were allowed in 1999, this method of permit distribution is both unwieldy and unpopular and, therefore, unwise.”

A failed attempt at a transferable tag system was axed by the state legislature in 2007, though many remain intent on pushing such a policy through. The Kansas BHA chapter joined Kansas Parks & Wildlife, the National Deer Alliance and others in sending a clear message where hunters stand on this issue, effectively killing the bill in committee. As Kansas BHA Chair Kurt Ratzlaff put it, “This bill was an attempt to push through a system that had already failed in the past. It was a thinly veiled attempt by a few people to make themselves a pile of money off

Photo: Sean McCain, from our 2020 Public Lands and Waters Photo Contest

Principles of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation

the current fantastic Kansas deer population that is the result of hard work and support of many individuals, farmers, hunters, KDWPT and conservation groups.”

ILLINOIS Further east, the Illinois BHA chapter has been busy working to stop a bill (SB 2012) that threatens equitable access to tags by creating set aside turkey permits for outfitters. Those who wish to hunt with an outfitter can already do so through the public draw, making this legislation both unnecessary and unpopular.

As Illinois chapter board member Brandon Tate put it, “This bill both removes hunter opportunity and subsidizes outfitters by guaranteeing a portion of tags will be used through them. Wildlife privatization leads to less public access, and in turn, less people to care for and defend these resources, all of which is why the Illinois chapter has taken a firm stance in opposition to this bill.”

Hundreds of hunters joined the Illinois chapter in asking legislators that turkey hunting opportunities stay the way they are now. At the time of this writing, the bill had almost made it through the full Illinois state senate, on its way to the state house.

FINAL THOUGHTS The history of managing fish and wildlife in an egalitarian manner under the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation and the Public Trust Doctrine is relatively short

and constantly evolving, informed by the conversations and policy debates BHA leaders are helping shape from Illinois to New Mexico. Without BHA and our members at the table, this debate will be dominated by an increasingly organized and wellfunded group of private interests who stand to profit off systems where hunting opportunities are allocated based on the size of one’s bank account, land ownership or outfitting status. We’re committed to making sure that doesn’t happen.

As Shane Mahoney warned in a cautionary article about the future of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation in a 2010 issue of the The Wildlife Society’s Wildlife Professional, “The challenge is to curb these emergent (privatization and commercialization) practices while providing alternative incentives that will encourage private landowners to practice sound conservation.” Whether private land wildlife conservation incentives be provided through state/federal conservation easement programs, legislation like the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act, the farm bill, dedicated state sales taxes (see Missouri and Minnesota) or a new revenue model, there’s little debate amongst hunters and anglers that such funding programs are important and should be supported. But privatizing hunting opportunity is not and cannot be the answer.

Tim Brass is BHA’s state policy & field operations director and lives in Longmont, Colorado, with his wife Megan and their 5-year-old daughter, Linden.

SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 37

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HUNTING FOR SUSTAINABILITY

A HELPING HAND For the past six years I’ve mentored new hunters through Minnesota’s learn to hunt program. I always budget a weekend of hunting time, plus helped with range time, scouting, evening classes and gear. But, when the pandemic canceled MN DNR programming, I needed to rethink hunting plans for this past season and hatch a new plan for the Minnesota deer firearm season: the first weekend dedicated to family, the second weekend to new hunters and the third remaining open. With all our tents, guns and stands, I figured I could equip two new hunters.

Earlier that year, I was at the meat counter at Seward Co-op in Minneapolis on a cold winter evening asking for beef scrap. I explained to the guy behind the counter, Ronnell, that adding a little beef to the grind helped hold venison burgers together. He seemed interested. I asked, as I often do, if he was a hunter or had hunters in his family or circle of friends. “No, it is an interest of mine,” he said, “but I don’t know how to get started.”

I later brought back a packet with some copies of Backcountry Journal, MN DNR learn to hunt info, ideas of how to learn more and my BHA business card.

Ronnell and I planned for him to tag along on a combined squirrel hunt and deer scouting mission outside the Twin Cities in February. The squirrel hunting was a bust, but I showed him whitetail travel routes. During the summer, we went to the range.

Ronnell, who had some previous shooting experience, proved he was solid. We texted regularly about plans and gear.

The first weekend of the season, unseasonably mild, was a success for me and my wife. But several days before the mentoring weekend, the weather changed to below freezing temps with a few inches of new snow. I told Ronnell and Alex Gorman, another new hunter coming from our University of Minnesota BHA collegiate club, it was looking like a tough but good hunt.

The snow certainly made for tough going with all the gear to accommodate socially distanced camping, along with our hunting gear. After a two-mile slog with heavy packs and rifles, while pushing a cart and a sled through the snow, we set up camp and headed out hunting.

It was the start of a good weekend for Ronnell. That night and next morning, we saw deer, but without offering a shot.

We went out for the afternoon hunt with confidence and in the final minutes of legal shooting, two does and a fawn approached slowly, giving Ronnell plenty of time to ready his shot. The lead doe walked in our direction and turned slightly, offering a shot.

Ronnell had his rifle raised and didn’t waste the opportunity. The doe made a few leaps and collapsed in some brush.

Elated, we took a moment to reflect and express our gratitude.

After field dressing, we made the decision to take the deer back

Photo: Erik Jensen

BY ERIK JENSEN

to our vehicle, arriving back at camp at midnight, exhausted and sweaty. After heating up by the tent’s woodburning stove, we slept hard and long.

True to the arbitrary nature of whitetail deer hunting, Alex was having a difficult weekend, seeing no deer in a spot where my wife had seen numerous animals the previous weekend. He even stuck it out through Sunday morning while Ronnell and I slept in.

It was a great mentoring experience, from start to finish. “What an amazing experience, getting my first deer on a backcountry hunt,” Ronnell said. “I learned and saw so much, I’m excited for this next year.”

For Alex, the weekend was still a success. “Even though I didn’t get a deer, the trip gave me so much confidence,” he said. “I learned all weekend long, from how to get into a stand to field dressing. I’m so ready to get out again this coming fall.”

A fundamental lesson is that somewhere in your social circle, at work, in the neighborhood, at church or even at the meat counter, there is someone, often from a non-traditional hunting background, that wants to learn to hunt. Don’t assume that someone isn’t interested. As we fight the long battle for the future of hunting and conservation, we must reach into more and new communities, especially those with low hunting and fishing participation. If we succeed at that, we will all win.

Erik Jensen, of Minneapolis, is a 51-year-old, married dad of fraternal twin girls, one who loves to hunt and the other who loves fly fishing. Last year he was awarded BHA’s Mike Beagle-Chairman’s Award for his outstanding efforts on behalf of BHA. He served on the the Minnesota chapter board for 10 years and now serves as the chapter’s legislative committee chair.

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BY JEFFREY EDWARDS My father called my older brother and me into the room and told us to grab the blue notebook from the counter. He shakily clasped his glasses and opened the spiral revealing a list of the guns he owned. My brother and I both thought the conversation was going a completely different route, so we openly expressed: “What the hell, Dad? We thought this was going to be a serious conversation.”

“You have to keep your priorities straight,” he confidently stated.

He traced his finger across the page leading to the name of the new owners. On the top line of the list were the words “BROWNING A5” written in the distinctive all caps handwriting my dad possessed. I followed his finger across the page to see my name listed. I choked back the tears, feeling a deep sense of gratitude for 22 years of life spent with this man, learning what it means to be an ethical outdoorsman.

My entry to both the outdoors and the hunter’s ethic results from my family’s history and my father introducing me at a young age. Every hunting trip, every harvest, every wounded deer taught something new about the pursuit of wild animals and more importantly about myself and my own personal hunting ethics.

Regulations and laws are set in every state, but outdoorsmen and women are guided equally by their personal beliefs and values. My father’s teachings now guide the work I do with the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point BHA collegiate club and the wildlife ecology and management degree I pursue.

In the early stages of my hunting career, I desired seeing deer during every sit and was frustrated when I didn’t. Years afield and many conversations with my old man altered those desires significantly. My dad spoke of hunting as a therapy session, leaving the city lights and noise in the rearview mirror every weekend to escape the stress of work and the modern lifestyle – something I didn’t fully understand until years later.

He lies on the bed in front of me, I look into his eyes staring intently back at mine, tears welling. We hold our gaze for a minute or two allowing the tears to meander silently like streams between the contours on our faces. The eyes I stare into hold countless hunting and fishing stories, reminding me of the campfires we would make every night at deer camp: sitting there, beer in hand, reminiscing, pointing out different constellations and talking future aspirations.

My father was diagnosed with stage four bladder cancer last

September. He battled and beat it the first time around but recently discovered cancer had once again compromised his body and began spreading rapidly up one leg and into the other parts of his body. The pain compounded resulting in near immobility. You begin to shape new perspectives on the frailty of human existence when you see the life being sucked out of the strongest man you know.

Every visit home from college inevitably ended up with me downstairs rummaging through my father’s gun safe. One gun had always caught my eye – that old Browning A5. This stunningly beautiful piece of machinery has a deep-rooted tradition, passed through generations of hunters’ hands. My grandfather held this gun through many adventures in the swamps of central Wisconsin, before it eventually found itself within my father’s grasp on the Mississippi River during the peak waterfowl migration.

On the afternoon of October 28, I slowly unzip the tan gun case. As I unsheathe the gun from its case and grip the stock, my hand melds with it, making us one. My hands the key that unlocks the memories and stories held within. As I balance the gun in my hands, I feel my dad gripping my hand in a firm handshake as if signaling his last goodbye. I open the action and delicately place a 3-inch shell inside. I press the release button and the action closes with purpose. With an hour of shooting light left, I approach the pond with sounds of mallards and geese emanating from its dark, tranquil water.

Small sheets of ice cover the edges of the pond, where I see some mallards sitting, preening their feathers and awaiting the dusk trip back to their roosts. I silently crawl through the marsh grass, allowing my hand to sink into the wetland mud, feeling its heartbeat reverberate into every inch of my body. Time starts to slow as I close the distance. I feel my heartbeat in my throat and the adrenaline begins to slowly course through my body. I slowly lift my head above the grass and see a drake and hen swimming away, sensing imminent danger. Now or never.

I rise above the marsh grass revealing my presence and instinctively shoulder the Browning. The mallards erupt off the pond, wings beating in unison with my heart. I pull the bead left, centering on the drake and pull the trigger. The bird folds as the No. 2 shot hits its mark. The echo carries across the field adjacent, and I hope that my dad heard it from miles away. My body floods with emotion, and I instantly tear up holding the gun close to my chest. I wade into the cold water and approach the duck. I grasp his warm body and pull him from the water. I admire his beauty and thank him for this moment and allowing me to share this moment with my dad. As I make my way around the pond, the sunset catches my eye as the reflection bounces off the ice and calm water. I snap a picture capturing the beauty of this moment SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 43

and tell my dad, “This one is for you, Pops.”

At 6:15 the following morning, my father passed away.

Many moments I break down and cry. I seek solace in knowing that in 22 years we made countless memories in the outdoors, drawn closer because of these experiences. But I still struggle knowing that I will never share these experiences with him in person again. I grasp hope knowing that his spirit resides in me as I continue my journey through life. I struggle knowing that I will never hear his voice again. I struggle knowing that I can never give him a call to seek his advice or hear any more hunting stories around the campfire. Despite all of this, I feel his presence. Every sunrise and every sunset, I feel him next to me with his arm stretched around my back, squeezing my shoulder, stoically remarking, “God is a damn good painter, ain’t he?”

Photo: Jeffrey Edwards

Jeffrey Edwards is currently a junior at the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point pursuing a degree in wildlife ecology and management while performing undergraduate research and leading the BHA UWSP collegiate club. He’s a passionate hunter and angler who is always searching for the next adventure afield, away from city lights and college coursework. Jeffrey is the 2021 recipient of BHA’s Rachel Carson Emerging Leaders Award.

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FIELD TO TABLE

SMOKED TROUT PASTA WITH SWEET PEPPER CREAM SAUCE

Wood matters when it comes to smoking fish. In my experience, the delicate nature of fish and the thin coat of brine left on the skin soaks up smoky flavor and is more noticeable than smoking backstrap, for example.

I’ve tried a variety of woods, both bark on and bark off. In the past, I’ve tried Jack Daniels wood chips with pecan and cherry wood for smoking everything from brisket to salmon. But I’ve found those Jack Daniels wood chips, sometimes even hickory and mesquite with bark on, create harsh tones for fish. So I highly recommend milder woods, and if using mesquite or hickory, cut off the bark to avoid bitter smoky flavors.

Make certain to scale and, if possible, butterfly and debone the trout. Hank Shaw has great instructions on how to do so (honest-food.net/how-to-butterflyfish/). Butterflying leads to a more thorough smoke, and deboning fish makes it easier to shred (versus picking bones out). Making sure the fish is dry prior to smoking is also important. Otherwise, if fish flesh is still damp, you end up with mushy smoked fish.

46 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SUMMER 2021

Photos: Jack Hennessy

BY JACK HENNESSY

SMOKED TROUT PASTA WITH SWEET PEPPER CREAM SAUCE

BRINE INGREDIENTS: 1 gallon water 1/2 cup kosher salt 3/4 cup brown sugar 1/2 bulb fresh garlic, smashed 1/2 cup black peppercorns INGREDIENTS (2-3 SERVINGS): 2 rainbow trout, approximately 1 to 1 1/2 pounds each, scaled and butterflied 16 ounces spaghetti 1 pint heavy whipping cream 2 cups white wine (Chardonnay is a good choice)

1/2 lemon, juiced 6-8 mini sweet peppers, roasted then pureed 2 tsp. freshly minced garlic 1 tsp. each of kosher salt and ground black pepper Olive oil, mixed use Freshly minced Italian parsley and ground paprika for garnish (optional) RECOMMENDED WOOD FOR SMOKING: Cherry and/or pecan, bark removed

1.

Combine all brine ingredients and simmer on low, stirring often, until all salt and sugar dissolves. Let cool before adding scaled, butterflied trout.

2.

Allow trout to brine for 6 hours then remove, pat dry and place in fridge overnight, skin down, with plenty of room for ventilation so fish flesh can dry.

3.

Smoke the fish at anywhere from 180 to 200 degrees for a couple hours, until desired smoky color is reached.

4.

Shred flesh from trout and set aside in fridge.

5.

To make sauce, preheat oven to 400 degrees, and in a medium sauce pot, add white wine, juiced lemon, salt, pepper and freshly minced garlic. Simmer until wine reduces to half original amount.

6.

Add 1 pint of heavy whipping cream to wine in pot, continue to simmer, stirring often, until cream sauce reduces to 1/2 or 1/3 (when done, should have a thick, bubbly texture while simmering).

7.

While sauce simmers, roast mini sweet peppers in oven for 18-20 minutes, until seared on all sides. Rinse peppers and remove skin and seeds, then add to a food processor or blender and puree thoroughly.

8.

Add blended pepper mix to cream sauce and continue to simmer, still stirring often so not to burn cream.

9.

Boil pasta with ¼-cup each of olive oil and kosher salt. Cook to slightly al dente then strain.

10.

When sauce is thick, mix in trout, then serve over bed of spaghetti, garnishing with ground smoked paprika and freshly minced Italian parsley.

BHA member Jack Hennessy hails from the Midwest but started hunting and fishing seriously when he attended graduate school in Spokane, Washington, over 10 years ago. He has worked professionally as a cook, both in and outside restaurants, for over half his life, and his recipes have appeared with Outdoor Life, Petersen’s Hunting, Project Upland and Gun Dog Magazine, among others. Find him on Instagram: @WildGameJack

SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 47

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INSTRUCTIONAL

SIGHTFISHING FOR TROUT

Crouched amongst the tall grass, your movements slow down, and every motion is purposeful and thought out. All the while your eyes remain on the target. Blended and concealed with your surroundings, you planned and efficiently maneuvered into position for the shot. You watched and learned the animal’s behavior, which guided your decisions. You know the more in tune you are the better the chance of being successful. Yet, rather than holding a bow, there is a fly rod in your hand.

GEAR Possibly the most important piece of gear for sight fishing is a good pair of polarized sunglasses. Consider them as critical as a pair of binoculars to hunting. They will cut through much of the surface glare and reveal trout not seen by the naked eye. As for clothing, you do not necessarily need to wear camo, but matching the natural surroundings is important.

With fly fishing gear, two pieces to focus on are the leader and fly patterns. Typically, a longer leader is required for sight fishing, as it will keep the fly line further away from the trout’s eyes and aid in getting drag free drifts. Plan on bumping your leader up to twelve or fifteen feet. For fly patterns, the best thing is to head to the river and see what insects are around. Do your best to match size, shape and color with the prevailing hatches. And have a variety of fly patterns on hand, since most trout caught will require multiple fly changes before they are finally fooled.

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Sight fishing with a fly rod can be one of the most intimate and challenging ways to land a trout. And for those familiar with bowhunting, the crossover between the two is evident: requiring finely tuned spotting and stalking skills. Casting dry flies to rising trout or nymphing a productive run are great ways to enjoy your time on the river. However, pursuing a single trout can truly test and push your personal skills, and it might reward you with a most memorable catch. Below are a few tips to either help you start getting into sight fishing or to hone the tactics and techniques you are already using.

SPOTTING It can be tough adjusting your eyes to spotting fish. If elevated ground is available, start there because it cuts down some of the surface glare and will help you scan the river more efficiently.

Once scanning, look for a trout’s shadow. Their bodies blend seamlessly with the river bottom, but their shadows can contrast sharply and give away their position.

Beyond shadows, the next thing to key onto is the tail. A trout might hold steadily in one spot, but there is always some small movement from their tail; look for anything swaying in the current. Don’t be fooled into thinking underwater vegetation is a trout’s tail, but keep searching for the same clues and eventually you will spot a trout. Lastly, if you are upstream of suspected fish, check for their white mouths opening and closing. A brief white flash is typically the trout taking food below the surface, and it can stand out amongst the darker colors in the water.

Photos: John Zordell

BY MARC FRYT

STALKING Luckily, a trout will not be covering miles of open terrain while you pursue it on foot. At most, it will move a few feet to feed and then return to the same holding spot. When stalking a trout, patience is key.

Watch how the trout is feeding. Is it grabbing things off the bottom? Or is it holding mid-column and darting side to side? Or nabbing insects off the surface? All of this information can clue you in on fly selection and presentation: weighted or unweighted nymphs, a dry fly or a dry/dropper combination.

When getting into position, attempt to stay downstream of the trout and maintain a low profile. Work slowly into your planned spot and try to keep vegetation between you and the trout for concealment. Be sure to keep an eye on the trout; if it seems to quiet down or stop feeding, slow down because you might be giving yourself away.

ONLY NOCK AN ARROW WHEN YOU’RE READY TO SHOOT It has taken time to spot the trout, watch its behavior and stealthily move into position. The last thing you want to do is bust your chances by slinging a cast without a little prep work.

First, plan your cast to land the fly a few feet upstream of the trout. And try to make a cast that will land the leader diagonally to the fish, so it will not float over them (called lining the fish).

Second, estimate the distance of the cast and then strip off a predetermined length of fly line from your reel. You do not want to try to strip that line off your reel while you are making false cast after false cast. The fewer false casts the better, as it will keep from spooking the trout.

Lastly, check your back cast. So often is this overlooked in the moment, and right before you deliver the fly it snags tight to the single branch behind you.

Put in the preparation and do it right, and you might be rewarded with an experience that replays over and over in your mind for years to come.

Marc Fryt is a proud BHA member, fly angler, fly tyer, outdoor writer and photographer currently living in Columbus, Ohio. When not in the Midwest, he is back in the Pacific Northwest fishing and climbing in the backcountry of the Cascade Mountains.

SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 51

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INSTRUCTIONAL

A Guide to Backcountry Float Tubing

Photo: Jordan Wolf

BY JORDAN WOLF It began in my in-laws’ garage; I found a pile of old float tubes that hadn’t been touched in years. Surely these things didn’t still float, right? All three of them did. Thanks to the float tubes, my summer turned into long hikes, bug bites and exploring backcountry water like I had never experienced before.

The maiden voyage was the St. Louis River near Duluth, Minnesota, which winds 192 miles south before becoming a freshwater estuary at the western tip of Lake Superior. The river, along with its steep 100-foot red clay cliffs and rolling valleys, was formed by receding glaciers dating back 12,000 years. Today, the estuary holds myriad fish, including smallmouth and rock bass, walleye, black crappie, perch, northern pike, lake sturgeon and muskellunge.

We hit the trail on a summer morning in June. Our group of three woke up at 4 a.m. to hike along a narrow fisherman’s path on the southern side of the river for two miles. Our backpacks were prepped for a quality day trip: full of food, fishing equipment and float tubes. We eagerly hiked upstream, motivated to fish the morning bite, navigating by the light of our headlamps across fallen logs, mud and thick undergrowth.

Finally arriving at our destination, we found a flat portion of shoreline, unloaded our gear and set up our rods. A small hand pump, attached to the Boston valve, inflated the float tubes in a few short minutes.

I donned chest waders and eased into the river. Clumsily attaching my fins in the dark, I strapped in, pushed away from the bank and into the cold morning water. The shallow bottom quickly gave way to deeper depths. I unhooked my fly from the

rod and shot the first cast through the cool morning air. The white Murdich Minnow landed neatly on the surface and I began stripping the line back in. Cast, strip, strip. The rhythm became hypnotic as I waited for that inevitable tug.

As the first beams of sunlight crested the horizon and began warming the valley, the river ecosystem came alive. The bluewinged helicopter damselfly hatch was in full swing – hundreds of jeweled insects swooped above our heads. One tenacious insect even deemed my rod as a worthy landing spot. Another kick of my fins displaced a patch of disgruntled water striders. As I worked my way downstream, I started to notice patterns in the river. Small breaks in the topwater signaled fish surfacing, while slack water and eddies made submerged structure obvious.

Cast, strip, strip … tug! Immediately the trance of the morning was broken. The first fish of the day was on. My float tube jerked forward as the line went taut. I felt a surge of adrenaline and yelled out, “Net, net!” to my partner a dozen yards away, who madly motored his fins in my direction. With each headshake, the float tube was tugged left, then right, then left again. I kept playing the fish by keeping side pressure and letting it pull line as needed. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the shoreline was moving. The fish was towing me all over the river!

Finally, it crested the surface. Dark vertical lines revealed a quality smallmouth bass. At nearly eye level with the water, the final tug to land the smallmouth was almost directly into my face.

With one swoop of the net, the smallie was landed.

We snapped a photo, followed by a quick release. The cantankerous bass splashed water on my face as it returned to the depths. I let out a deep breath. My first fish in a float tube; I hadn’t felt such a rush landing a fish since my first fish as a kid.

SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 53

A few hundred yards away, we noticed a promising side pool on the opposite bank. We motored our way across the river and into the pool. Large boulders and overhanging trees provided great structure, and some sections were shallow enough to stand up in while still in the float tube.

I took the opportunity for a sip of water and heard the faint hum of a motor in the distance. A small V-hull boat was attempting to get into this same stretch of river. Because the inlet was so shallow, however, the only things we heard in the distance were the sounds of a scraping bottom and a few colorful remarks. Disheartened, he backed up his boat and returned to the main channel.

I chuckled, tied on a size eight Clouser Minnow and began casting into the pool. Before we knew it, the three of us were getting strikes with every other cast. This time, standing in shallow water, I wasn’t dragged around by the fish. I made quick work reeling in another feisty creature. Red eyes and rows of lateral dark dots revealed a sizable rock bass, with my companions catching several others. A few more enjoyable hours ticked by on the river.

The fishing finally slowed in the heat of the midday sun and we continued onward.

Eventually the gravel road from which we started our journey came back into view, and we kicked our fins towards shore. The first experience getting out of the float tube was a little challenging as I made the transition from water back to land. But with a little balance and practice, taking off the fins and getting out of the tube became an easy task. A quick release of the Boston valves and the float tubes shrank back to their original backpacker-friendly size, ready for their next voyage.

If float tube fishing sounds like the adventure for you, here’s a brief guide on how to get started.

Gear • • • • • •

Float tube: popular styles are U-boats or O-boats Float tube fins Personal flotation device Fishing equipment Chest-high waders (not always necessary in warm water conditions) Inflatable hand pump (optional)

•

The Best Water for Float Tubing •

•

Getting Around •

•

•

Getting into the float tube can be tricky at first but gets easier with practice. It is best to launch from a gradual bank. Start by stepping into the tube in 1-2 feet of water, then putting on your fins. Be careful; slippery conditions require good balance to prevent falling into the water (learned through experience).

Start paddling with your fins. Note: As you paddle, you will be propelling yourself backwards (i.e., your back will be facing the direction you are moving in). It takes some getting used to but gets more comfortable with practice. Use a right or left sideways sweeping motion with your fins to guide your float tube’s direction.

When it is shallow enough, you can stand up and wade around in the float tube. It’s best to walk backwards because

54 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SUMMER 2021

the fronts of the fins won’t catch on the bottom and less mud will be stirred up.

Getting out of your float tube can also be a challenge. It’s best to go to the shoreline and stand up in 1-2 feet of water.

Unbuckle yourself from the float tube and take your fins off.

Then, stand up and dismount.

Float tubing is a great way to access hard-to-reach waters.

This includes lakes that require significant foot travel to reach, areas with poor shore-casting options and locations with no boat launch or portage. They can be taken just about anywhere.

Float tubes should only be used in slow moving or standstill water, such as calm rivers and lakes. Use common sense; with fins on your feet as the engine, ensure that you’re always able to stay in control of your float tube. It is not advised to float tube in most rivers because strong currents can overpower you. Similarly, use caution in poor weather conditions, such as strong winds and thunderstorms.

Benefits of Float Tubing •

•

Portability: A float tube setup is light (most weigh less than 15 pounds) and can be packed into a backpack and trekked into remote lakes. Once you reach your destination, float tubes can be inflated onsite in a few minutes by either inflating the tube by mouth or with a portable hand pump.

Accessibility: A float tube can go places where most watercraft can’t. It allows you to explore remote waters deep into the backcountry that are rarely touched by others, where the only access is a small deer trail and the only equipment needed can be carried on your back.

Photos: Jordan Wolf

•

•

•

Natural: Float tubing can offer a more intimate fishing experience. It is a minimal impact way to fish, as there’s no outboard motor noise or wakes, which allows the angler to have increased stealth and a more natural presence when chasing easily spooked fish.

Inexpensive: If you don’t want to spend the money on a boat, outboard motors, canoes, kayaks, etc., but want increased water access and fishing options, float tubing is an excellent alternative. Good quality float tubes start around $150, but there is a robust used market if you really want your dollar to go the extra mile.

Great exercise: This self-propelled watercraft is a great ab and leg workout.

Our float tubes have given us a reason to venture far off the beaten trail and have fueled countless wilderness adventures, from the Saint Louis River to the many lakes in Minnesota’s Superior National Forest and Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

They’ve motivated me to hike further and go deeper into our public lands. It’s one thing to hike into wilderness lakes to shore fish; accessing them from the water is a game-changer. Float tubing is a truly different fishing experience. The thrill of landing a fish in a float tube is magnified. It turns catching regular fish into an intense and adrenaline-fueled experience. As an added bonus, the summer I spent float tubing greatly increased my proficiency at studying aquatic insect life, topwater strikes and surface structure.

If you’ve never tried it, study some topo maps and find a backcountry lake or slow-moving river, grab a float tube and a pair of fins, and hit the trail. The potential for adventure with a float tube is nearly limitless.

Jordan Wolf is a BHA Minnesota chapter board member. In her free time, she enjoys backpacking, grouse hunting and fly fishing.

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SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 55

One of the largest organisms on Earth started from just one seed.

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The aspen can regenerate from its own roots. Similar to the grove in this photograph, at 107 acres and 47,000 trees, the Pando Aspen Grove, in Fishlake National Forest, Utah, is considered one of the largest living organisms on the planet.

Photo: Kjos Outdoors

Our shared land. Our responsibility.

Project Aspen It’s up to you to make sure places remain where you can barely be seen.

Contribute to Backcountry Hunters & Anglers’ Project Aspen to form the regenerative root structure supporting public lands, water, wildlife and hunting and angling in the future: backcountryhunters.org/projectaspen

Project Aspen Our Shared Land. Our Responsibility.

But what makes the aspen particularly successful is that Learning from the aspen, BHA develops a fundraising it has another very effective way to reproduce. The aspen also strategy – and asks for your help – to defend our public reproduces from within by sending up shoots directly from its lands, waters and wildlife, no matter what the future holds. own roots, allowing it to colonize large swaths of land from one

BY RACHEL SCHMIDT What is public land worth to you? Lately at BHA, we’ve been thinking about aspens – in particular, their remarkable ability to grow, survive, reproduce and thrive throughout long lives buffeted by challenges over which they have no control: drought, fire, disease and development.

Aspens can reproduce in the same way so many trees do – with blossoms, seeds and help from many other players: the pollinators necessary for reproduction, birds and other animals that depend upon and disperse the seeds, wind and rain, and, of course, some luck.

58 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SUMMER 2021

shared root system.

Taken together, the aspen’s strategy utilizes both community and self-reliance. It is a diversified strategy for sustainable growth.

And it works. There’s a reason that one of the largest single organisms on Earth isn’t a single towering sequoia but an aspen.

In Fishlake National Forest, Utah, a 107-acre grove, affectionately called Pando – numbering approximately 47,000 visible trees – came from just one seed.

Why is the aspen so successful? It’s because the aspen is a tree that’s not taking any chances. We can learn a lot from trees.

Just like the aspen constantly battles to survive and grow in the face of unpredictable events, our work to conserve public lands and waters and fish and wildlife … to sustain and expand public

Photo: Near Cody, Wyomin, Kjos Outdoors

access opportunities … and to uphold our fair chase hunting and fishing traditions … is a challenge that never ends. The details of those challenges may change, but so do we: growing, adapting and getting stronger so we can carry on the legacy that was gifted to us.

That is why BHA is launching a bold new campaign, “Project Aspen.” It’s our own diversified strategy, one that will ensure that no matter what the world throws at us, we can and will grow, thrive and expand from within.

The goal of Project Aspen is to raise $1 million dollars in support of our work to conserve our public lands, waters and wildlife. It’s a big challenge, but the payoff will be immeasurable.

Every dollar raised will be used to create an investment portfolio that includes an endowment and board discretionary fund. The initial investment of $1 million, combined with newly established perpetual deposits for growth, will be a key resource, allowing us to take advantage of opportunities, weather the storm in years

like the past one, and sustain the work already being done by our amazing boots-on-the-ground members. We all saw just how disruptive an unexpected emergency like the covid pandemic can be. Thanks to some deft footwork, BHA survived in good shape.

But we know there will be more unexpected challenges and crises in the future years. We need to continue to think ahead so BHA is always prepared to defend our public lands, waters and wildlife, no matter what the future throws at us.

As various funding streams fluctuate, this expanded investment fund and endowment will allow for continual support and growth of our chapters and expanded opportunities for more work on behalf of BHA’s most important resource and source of power: our incredible volunteer member leaders and membership base.

Project Aspen aims to make sure that our leaders and members have the resources they need to do their work advocating and acting for wild public lands, waters and wildlife for generations to come.

SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 59

The Work to Be Done Due to the tens of thousands of hours and immeasurable energy BHA members and staff bring on behalf of our wild public lands, waters, wildlife, access and heritage of hunting and angling, we, as a collective organization of individuals, have grown to be one of the most respected conservation organizations in North America. We are known for tackling the hard, uncomfortable work. Much like one hidden aspen tree that grows to be a giant grove, often the results of our work will not be seen for years. It takes tremendous willpower to work for what is not instantly tangible.

As a result, when we began voicing our intentions to broaden and diversify our funding, support came quickly. We are proud to announce that we’ve received a matching fund grant of $350,000 to seed Project Aspen. For this we are humbled and grateful. Now the hard work of Project Aspen begins.

This is a matching-funds grant. Simply put, we have 18 months to match those funds with our own fundraising efforts or we do not receive the money. We are asking you to join us to make certain we do. As BHA members, we’ve all proven we have something to give to our wild public lands, waters and wildlife: Time. Treasure. Talent. We already have what we need to get this job done. If you can give cash or investment donations now or can plan to give over the next 12 months, thank you!

If you know fellow lovers of the outdoors who have the resources to give, let us ask them together for their financial support. If you have the time to devote to hosting events, let us work together to earn donations.

These individual actions add up quickly, but it’s going to take all of us to get the job done.

60 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SUMMER 2021

Photo: Lower Kenai River, Alaska, Kjos Outdoors

Photo: Migrating snow geese on the tundra, Kjos Outdoors

The Future The best part of Project Aspen is that we only need to fill this cup once. When we reach our goal of $1 million, we can move on to our next priorities, knowing that we will have the resources to grow our own destiny, capitalize on any opportunities that come our way and thrive in the face of unforeseen challenges. A plan already is in place to restore all funds spent under the Project Aspen banner. This is a permanent funding source that will help us, together, accomplish great things for years to come.

We will see Project Aspen thrive – one dollar at a time. We’ll do it together, and we will help ensure our children and grandchildren have the resources and support they will need to continue the stewardship of our wild public lands, waters and wildlife. We will plant this seed, see it regenerate and grow to sustain our work. We’re thriving and growing, and when we’re working together, nothing can stop us. Join BHA and our North American board in making this investment today. We stand on the shoulders of giants, and now it is our turn to carry the torch. We share the land, and we share the responsibility for its future stewardship.

TAKE ACTION AND LEARN MORE at backcountryhunters.org/projectaspen.

Questions? Contact Rachel Schmidt at 406-261-4039 or schmidt@backcountryhunters.org.

SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 61

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CRUCIFIED

BY KRIS MILLGATE There’s blood, pearls, power lines and beams. I slow, park, stare.

It’s a cross. No church, just a cross. An artist’s sacrificial offering to thee unholy. No blessings come with this ceremony on the side of the road.

The blood is red paint. It’s dripping from rusty nails staked in a salmon’s front gill and the base of its tail. The salmon isn’t real. It’s made of metal. The pearls, cheap party beads, dangle out of the salmon at its belly line. They represent fish eggs, spawn spilling down the post. The power lines are black cords draped over a horizontal wood beam that is nailed to a vertical trunk of tree milled in the shape of a power pole. It’s a crucifix.

It’s salmon sacrificed for power. I confess, I never thought I’d see this, not in all 850 miles of the Snake River salmon’s migration route. But if I’m going to see it, I’m going to see it in Idaho.

The salmon situation seems more dire in Idaho than it does in Oregon. Can you imagine this cross ending up on Beacon Rock in the Gorge? That would unravel a lot of people. If Oregon starts feeling the angst Idaho feels, we’re really seeing the last of salmon.

Idaho is the fringe for these fish. It’s the heart of salmon migration, their crib and their grave, but it’s also the far reaches.

When wild animals start blinking out, the fringe is the first place to lose their presence. Idaho is losing salmon. Fishing seasons are 64 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SUMMER 2021

shortened or closed altogether in the Gem State. Too few fish to be handled or hooked. Historically, more than 3,000 chinook returned to central Idaho’s Yankee Fork of the Salmon River. In 2020, only 37 made it. The loss is apparent in the fish I don’t see and the people I do see. They cry during interviews.

Crying on camera is a personal reveal deserving respect. When it’s sincere, it’s sacred. I don’t zoom in for a tighter shot on a tear.

I don’t prod for more emotion. I don’t move when someone is moved. If a question triggers sadness during an interview, I let that person gather themselves however they can and continue. I’ll stop rolling if they ask me to, but most often they don’t. Truth is in their anguish and sometimes it comes with tears.

When Lytle Denny talks about learning to spearfish salmon with his dad in the 1980s, he cries. He’s a member of the ShoshoneBannock. His tribe is known as the Agaidika – the salmon eaters.

As what they eat disappears, so does his tribe’s identity.

“It’s tough to hear extinction and salmon. I don’t want to be part of that,” Lytle says. “That’s sad that we’re even getting into that realm.”

We’ve talked about his heritage by phone. I’m interviewing him in person on the Yankee Fork soon. I’m following the salmon migration 850 miles from the ocean to Idaho. The journey includes three states: Oregon, Washington and Idaho. And four rivers within those states: Columbia, Snake, Salmon and Yankee Fork. The fish have to clear eight dams and thousands of predators Above: Salmon, Idaho, named after the animal that used to migrate through town by the thousands, has a crucified fish on its outskirts. Photo: Kris Millgate

too. It’s an unbearable and unbelievable journey.

Chinook salmon born in Idaho leave their home water as fingerlings and migrate to the Pacific Ocean to grow. They return when they’re longer than your arm. They’re designed to make it back so they can lay eggs then die, turning their crib into their grave. Thousands leave. Only a few dozen return. Wild predators, domestic fishers, warm water and walls in the water (dams) make reaching the finish line, mile 850 in central Idaho wilderness, nearly impossible. Most fish die in unexpected ways in unintended graves long before reaching Idaho’s Salmon River.

The Yankee Fork is a tributary of the Salmon River. I’m on the Salmon today, around mile 700 of 850. I’ll be on the Yank tomorrow, meeting with Lytle. He’s a fish biologist, and he updates me via text as chinook salmon arrive at the Yankee Fork so I know I’m on track. What’s arriving now left Idaho about three years ago. They grew up in the saltwater of the Pacific Ocean where food supply is better, nutrients richer. They’re returning to Idaho as adults to lay eggs, ensuring future fish. They swam past the crucifix I’m staring at.

A flatbed farm truck appears behind my fish-wrapped film truck while I’m shooting footage of the crucified. A bearded man gets out of the driver’s side and approaches. When he’s within six feet of me, I stop rolling and step back. Beards terrified me when I was little. I thought hairy faces had something to hide. I know better now. Beards are no indication of character, but I still step back. I’m on the road solo. We’re in pandemic times. I’m not used to having a stranger in my personal space. Plus, I’m unmasked because I was alone.

Beard is unmasked too, but he is often. He’s not worried about a virus he doesn’t think is real, but he’s interested in my truck/ camper combo. A lot of people drive trucks in rural Idaho so it’s a common conversation starter. I tell him how my rig performs in the backcountry around the valley he lives in and why it’s wrapped in fins, marking me as the journalist following salmon migration from the ocean to Idaho.

He’s aware of the angst over anadromous fish – fish born in freshwater and raised in saltwater like salmon are. It’s nearly impossible to live in Salmon, Idaho, and not be aware of the

angst. Plus, he frequents the highway, so he’s seen the crucifix before, but he hasn’t seen me. That’s why he stopped.

I’m approachable. I have to be if I want strangers to tell me their secrets during interviews. I also have to listen even when I don’t like what you’re saying and I can tell I’m not going to like what I’m about to hear. He’s cordial enough. He knows my work, asks where I’m going, how it’s going. I’m not the boasting type, but my elevator speech lasts several floors if you really want to know what it’s like to do my job most often as the lone woman in the woods with beards, sharing the wild’s story with those unable to work outside for a living.

Someone once told my husband, “That’s a lot to be married to.”

The “that” was me. Whenever one of us is too over the top about something that’s the ease-up line between us, and that’s exactly what this guy is thinking: I’m a lot to be married to.

When his questions run out, he scratches his beard. I switch from video camera to photo camera during the scratch, hoping we’re done. We’re not. He takes off his ballcap with his right hand, ruffles his sandy-colored hair with the same hand, puts the cap back on. I remove my lens cap, wondering why he hasn’t gone back to his own truck to leave since I’m not talking anymore. I’m working. I verbally nudge him away with, “Thanks for stopping.

You have a nice day.”

He’s done being cordial, but he doesn’t give me his back. He wants the last word.

“This wouldn’t work for anybody else,” he says shoving his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and extending his belly like male sage grouse do. He’s strutting in a rude way. “You’ve only made it this far because you’re pretty.”

He puts extra pressure on the P, popping it with so much force, spit sprays from his lips. I step back again. No one should be sharing spit during a pandemic. I’m uncomfortable, but I’m smiling. That’s my confusion tactic. Makes the attacker think I’m OK with what he’s saying so he’s listening when I tell him I’m not OK with what he’s saying. I raise my right index finger and tap the right side of my head between my hat and my brow, gesturing brains rather than beauty.

“Mister, you’re mistaken,” I say. “I’ve only made it this far Lower Monumental Lock and Dam is near Kahlotus, Washington. It’s one of four major dams on the Lower Snake River. Photo: Kris Millgate

SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 65

because I’m pretty ambitious.”

I’m not one of the 37 fish, but I will be witness to the return of the 37 no matter how difficult the journey is. No matter how slim my odds of success, pretty or not, are. Like salmon, my motivation runs so deep it’s innate. We both have no desire to quit regardless of what’s in our way. Eight dams and thousands of predators aside, go against the current until there is no more go and not one insult sooner.

Now everyone loitering around the cross has confessed. Seeing salmon crucified brings out the bold in all of us.

Outdoor journalist Kris Millgate is based in Idaho where she runs trail and chases trout. Sometimes she even catches them when she doesn’t have a camera or a kid on her back. Her first book, “My Place Among Men,” is available now. Crucified inspired a chapter in her second book, “My Place Among Fish,” available summer 2021. Her film Ocean to Idaho also premieres summer 2021. See more of her work at www.tightlinemedia. com. She was the 2018 recipient of BHA’s Ted Trueblood Award.

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Top: The Salmon River ribbons through 425 undammed miles in Idaho. It is one of the longest wild rivers in the lower 48.

Left: Outdoor journalist Kris Millgate followed salmon migration during the summer of pandemic 2020. She lived and worked solo out of a truck/ camper combo traveling 4,686 miles by road while the fish moved 850 miles by river. Her film, Ocean to Idaho, premieres summer 2021.

Right: Shoshone-Bannock Tribes fish biologist Lytle Denny studies an adult chinook salmon returning to the Yankee Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho.

All Photos: Kris Millgate

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Photo: Lisa Ballard

68 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SUMMER 2021

Into Thin Air

BY LISA BALLARD The four-day foray into Colorado’s high country had its ups – twice to elevations over 14,000 feet on Handies Peak and Humboldt Peak – and downs, and not simply descending from lofty mountaintops. Luckily, no one died, though I contemplated that unsavory prospect more than once.

Climbing 14-ers was in partnership with another goal: catching cutthroat trout in Sloan Lake on a shoulder of Handies Peak and in the South Colony Lakes in the depression separating Humboldt Peak from Crestone Needle and Crestone Peak.

Our party started with four: me, my husband Jack and two friends, Bill and Alex. Bill, an avid peak-bagger and outdoorsman, came up with the combined climbing/fishing trip. A flatlander from Missouri, once each year he used the Centennial State’s 14-ers as a way to acclimatize for even bigger climbs, lately to summit of Chimborazo (20,702 feet), the highest mountain in Ecuador, which had thrice eluded him. Though international travel was impossible due to the pandemic, he put the Colorado trip together anyway. What better way to avoid covid than to be outside in wild country!

What’s more, we would have the opportunity to catch two subspecies of cutthroat trout: Colorado River cutthroat in Sloan Lake and greenback cutthroat – well, in appearance anyway – in the South Colony Lakes. (Most greenbacks have hybridized with Colorado River cutthroat throughout their range, though they still look like greenbacks. Only a DNA test can tell the purebreds from the hybrids.)

Regardless of their precise pedigree, with the introduction of nonnative fish, particularly rainbow trout that readily hybridize

with cutthroat trout, and brook trout and brown trout that feast on cutthroat fry and outcompete with cutthroat, most remaining cutthroat populations survive in isolated mountain lakes and streams, which means one needs to work for them.

Hiking into Sloan Lake, below Handies Peak (14,058 feet), sounded easy enough, a 1.3-mile walk up a well-trodden path at the end of a popular two-track for ATV-ing near Lake City.

It would be a short but slow trek up the trail, which started at 11,300 feet. On the bright side, the views dropped the jaw from the get-go and just got bigger as we climbed into a massive alpine expanse known as American Basin.

A carpet of wildflowers added to the eye-candy and slowed our already metered pace. I spied a checkerspot butterfly on an alpine sunflower. Indian paintbrush, Colorado columbine and larkspur bloomed in abundance. I chuckled at the clumps of elephanthead lousewort, which did, indeed, look like dozens of pink elephant heads stacked on top of each other. When bluebells appeared beside a chilly creek that tumbled from the direction of Sloan Lake, we knew we were getting close.

The lake lay like an aquamarine set into a ring of rock. Talus spilled down the steep slopes on the far side of the lake, where the inlet gurgled from under a shelf of snow. Rings of a different sort, the kind left by feeding trout, randomly marred the glassy surface of this alpine gem, then disappeared. We quickly set up our tents, in case an afternoon storm should blow through, then strung our rods.

Alex was the first to hook a fish. After a brief tussle, he brought a fat 15-inch cutthroat to net, which could have been mistaken for a tropical fish – its normally white belly gleamed intensely scarlet. The color bled up its sides, adding a touch of crimson to SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 69

Photos: Lisa Ballard

its dark green back. The slash marks under its jaw were such a deep red they seemed to pop off the fish’s chin. Its gill plate gushed dark cranberry as if the trout blushed from the embarrassment of getting caught.

Though it was mid-July, the fish in the lake were colored up for spawning. Cutthroat trout are spring spawners, but spring is not tied to the calendar at such high elevations; it depends on ice out. Then, as the chilly water inches up a few degrees, it triggers reproduction.

Our plan was to fish the afternoon, sleep by the lake, then bag the peak the next morning, another mile up the trail. That was, until I woke up. I slept fitfully, chalking it up to the elevation.

(Sloan Lake lies just below 13,000 feet.) By sunrise, my head pounded, and waves of nausea crippled my ability to even boil water – classic symptoms of Acute Mountain Sickness.

“This can’t be happening,” I thought. I’d had AMS once before, at age 13, on a ski trip in Switzerland. That was over 40 years ago when I lived near sea level. Now, my home is a mile high in Montana’s Beartooth Mountains. I’m fit. I’ve spent much of my life in the alpine zone, and I’ve climbed much higher than Sloan Lake many times without incident. However, even the strongest, most determined mountaineers, who’ve stood atop Everest a halfdozen times, can succumb to AMS the next time.

AMS strikes when person is fatigued, dehydrated and at elevations a low as 8,000 feet. I was tired, not from the hike but from life leading up to it, and I was 7,500 feet higher than home, but the kicker was dehydration. Staying hydrated at elevation, where simply breathing releases more water into the drier air, is a challenge. I should have paid closer attention. My camelback was only half-drained, and my two Nalgenes were still full. I had had 70 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SUMMER 2021

perhaps a liter of water in 24 hours.

“Jack, I need to get lower,” I said urgently, knowing AMS can progress rapidly, turning into a deadly pulmonary or cerebral edema.

Jack packed up our tent and fly rods, shouldering both his load and mine. Bill and Alex were ready to go, too, but first to the top of Handies Peaks, figuring they would be up and down in less time than I could make it back to the trailhead.

It was all I could do to put one foot ahead of the other. Dizziness now compounded my nausea and headache. I watched with envy as Bill and Alex departed for the summit. It looked so close. I hobbled downward, wetting my mouth every few steps. Halfway out, I felt better but wondered how I would do on Humboldt, a more demanding ascent.

Humboldt Peak, near Westcliff, is only 12 feet higher than Handies Peak, but a much bigger commitment – four miles to the South Colony Lakes and seven miles to the summit. The day after my run-in with AMS, Jack, Bill and I arrived at the trailhead at the end of another eroded two-track. (Alex only joined us for the Handies Peak part of our adventure.) We had only a one-day window based on the weather forecast. Given the distance and over 4,000 feet of vertical gain, we would either fish or go for the summit, not both.

The route was easy enough at first, up a dirt road for a couple of miles, now closed to all but foot and horse traffic. The road ended at a junction, where an elaborate sign described the Sangre de Cristo Wilderness, which we had entered, and explained that Humboldt Peak was named for Alexander von Humboldt (17691859), a German explorer and naturalist whom Charles Darwin considered “the greatest scientific traveler ever lived.”

Humboldt, the man, was known most for his landmark journey to South America, where he mapped the land, cataloged flora and fauna, observed native cultures and documented early evidence of climate change. His work in meteorology, geology, botany and geography laid the foundation for these areas of study as we know them today. A penguin, lily, orchid, oak tree, skunk and dolphin are among the many species that bear his name.

The Humboldt squid lives in the Humboldt current off the west coast of South America. There’s also a bay and state park in California; a river, lake, mountain range and sink (dry lake) in Nevada; and a glacier in Greenland – to name a few of the geologic formations called Humboldt. The list goes on, including towns, parks, schools and universities, forts, historic sites, even asteroids.

Humboldt Peak in Colorado is but one of the mountains or mountain ranges named for the scientist. Others are in Venezuela, New Caledonia, Antarctica and New Zealand.

Interestingly, Humboldt never climbed any of his namesake peaks, but he did climb mountains. For 30 years, he held the world record for the highest elevation reached by a human, 19,286 feet on Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador, 1,000 feet shy of the summit.

“I can relate,” deadpanned Bill upon learning about Humboldt’s failure to reach the summit of Chimborazo.

The left path went to Crestone Peak and Crestone Needle. We took the right path toward Humboldt, reaching the South Colony Lakes an hour later.

But instead of stringing our fly rods, we stashed them in a crevice between two boulders. White caps tussled the emerald water. Casting would be tough in the steady wind, so we turned our attention to the summit.

The trail wound through low willows, which quickly petered out as we hiked higher. Marmots paused to watch us, while pikas busied themselves among the rocks and wildflowers. At one point I spied a Colorado thistle, a stout subalpine plant with a drooping large yellow flower ball. A hummingbird daintily placed its long beak into one of the flowers, adroitly avoiding the plant’s knifelike thorns. (There’s a hummingbird named for Humboldt, too, though not one native to Colorado.)

While ascending several long switchbacks, Bill, Jack and I spread out, each hiking at our own pace. The switchbacks ended at the steep west ridge of the mountain. I was alone when I came to the crux of the climb, an unstable, nearly vertical talus Photos: Lisa Ballard

slope. The talus exhausted me both physically and mentally. For 1,000 feet, I had to carefully assess each step to avoid serious bodily harm.

When I finally scaled the maze of rocks, I could see the summit just a quarter mile farther, across a grassy meadow. I felt tipsy from the thin air but thankfully without nausea or a headache.

The meadow fell away steeply to my right. Unfriendly cliffs disappeared into a void to my left.

The howling wind threatened to knock me over. A misstep would not end well, and I suppressed a welling anxiety.

When I finally crawled into the nest of weathered stones at the summit, the clouds swirling around me started spitting rain. I wanted to linger, but I had no delusions about an easy descent. The rocks would be slicker when wet, and I was still dangerously exposed if a thunderstorm should roll in.

Instead of AMS, hypothermia or a severe injury from a long tumble were real possibilities.

When Jack, Bill and I finally reunited back at the lake, I was wet and tired, but relieved and enormously happy to have reached the top of my first Colorado 14-er.

Heading into the high country is never something to take casually.

Lady Luck can show her nasty side, as my bout with AMS on Handies Peak or the wind that foiled our fishing on the South Colony Lakes proved. Yet those colored up cutthroat were among the most memorable fish I’ve ever caught and standing atop Humboldt Peak gave me a shot of self-confidence when I really needed it. The top of Handies Peak and those uncaught fish in the South Colony Lakes will be there next time.

BHA member Lisa Ballard is the past-president of the Outdoor Writers Association of America. She is happiest on the summit of a mountain, reeling in a fish or bagging a bird. To see her awardwinning words and photos, go to www.LisaBallardOutdoors.com.

SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 71

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YOUR LINK TO THE FOOD CHAIN 72 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SUMMER 2021

HOLY GROUND

Photo: courtesy T. Edward Nickens

BY T. EDWARD NICKENS We awoke in the dark to pack the truck and head out. Driving north, through country less settled by the mile, he went over the rules. Again.

“You can’t tell anyone anything about any detail of where we’re going,” he reminded me. “Not the nearest town. Not the name of the creek. No posting on social media. No photos that show horizons or even cliff faces. Close-ups of fish, maybe. But be careful.

“I’m not trying to be a hard-ass about this,” he said. “It’s just that …”

He never finished his thought. He didn’t have to.

It was a two-hour drive to the trailhead, if you could call it that, and then we hiked with backpacks and fly rods along a series of old roads, foot trails and game trails. We crawled over downed timber. We bashed through thickets of alder. All the while, my friend knew exactly where he was going. I could have been on the face of the moon. Once, at a large muddy wallow in an aspen grove, he waited for me to catch up.

“Step in my tracks so it doesn’t look like a couple of guys are hiking in here,” he said. The expression on his face was a mix of

conspiratorial frown and sheepishness. “I know it sounds crazy.

But trust me. A few more miles and you’ll understand.”

And in a few more miles, I did.

My buddy’s secret spot turned out to be not a spot at all, but an entire valley, a hidden world revealed – after one last sketchy goattrack climb over exposed rock and burnt timber. A creek winked through a broad basin in braided, sinuous sweeps of water clear enough for sight-casting to trout 60 feet away. In years of fishing the creek, my buddy said he’d seen evidence of just a handful of humans. He’d come across even fewer in recent years. Honestly, he said, this creek might not have been fished since he was here a year ago. I let my eyes roam up the stream and past the bends, all still a mile or more away like some lost corner of Middle Earth – a half-real and half-imagined realm of undisturbed wilds. Until I started casting, and there was nothing imaginary about the fish.

After ditching the backpacks, we first hiked past long, sexy runs without rigging a rod. “We’re not interested in medium-size trout cruising these runs, like party-goers sampling the bruschetta,” my buddy said. Over the years, he’d keyed in on the precise makeup of water that held the largest cutthroat trout – how much timber was just enough and how much wood was too much, how much gravel, how much gradient. “There’s typically one really big fish in SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 73

each pool,” he told me. “And he’s in exactly the right place, and the chromosomal level. You’re not really the same as you were you’ll recognize it and put a cast down the middle, and he’ll knock before.

The next night, after another brush-bashing backpack return to the hell out of it, or we’ll keep hiking because the next one will.”

And we knocked hell for miles and hiked for more miles, the truck, I took stock of my knees and grinned that I’d cheated my orthopedic surgeon out of a beach fishing hard for aggressive native cutthroats that slammed garish Chubby Chernobyl “THIS IS MY CHURCH,” HE house again. I tried to parse my sense of near euphoria. It wasn’t that I caught the patterns in great toilet-flush rises. I know SAID. “THIS IS THE PLACE largest cutthroat I’d ever seen. It wasn’t that I landed the three largest cutthroat trout of THAT CHANGED ME. THE I proved myself tough enough to get into my life, and I’m sure the longest went 21 inches – but I cannot say for sure. Taping a ONLY PEOPLE I BRING HERE a rough place and fish well and get back fish here seemed a sacrilege.

ARE THE ONES I THINK WILL out again, even if I limped that last mile to the truck. It was that my friend found me That night, we camped under the stars UNDERSTAND.” worthy of his spot and trustworthy of his on a gravel bar, drinking gin nosed with secret. He was willing to take the chance spring water from old enamelware cups with battered metal rims that clinked against our teeth. A fire and take me there and know that I would walk out and speak burned in a small stone ring, where bits of charred wood marked little of the details of that valley, and bury the memory of the trail deep and burn the shovel. Forget the photos and the fish tales. He my friend’s fire from 12 months past.

“This is my church,” he said. “This is the place that changed me. knew I’d never forget what was most worth remembering: That a The only people I bring here are the ones I think will understand.” place like that still exists.

The conundrum about a secret spot is that it’s something that should be shared – but with the implicit understanding that it T. Edward Nickens is secretary of the BHA North American board isn’t to be shared further. It’s a gift given with a breath half held and editor-at-large of Field & Stream. This story was excerpted from because it is wrapped in trust that can be shredded as easily as The Last Wild Road, Lyons Press, May 2021 – a collection of his best cheap ribbon. When someone else shows you their secret place – features, columns and essays from nearly 20 years on the road for Field their hard-won, years-in-the-figuring-out trout or duck or buck & Stream. Autographed copies of the book are available by contacting nirvana – something should happen deep inside you, almost on him at lastwildroad@tedwardnickens.com.

BY ALLEN CRATER “Here’s to fishing the PM – and parts unknown.”

It was while manning the BHA booth at a Fly Fishing Film Tour stop that I first met Jon Osborn and purchased his latest book, Flyfisher’s Guide to Michigan, in which he inscribed those simple words. Little did I know, those words would foreshadow a moment that would substantiate my deep-rooted compulsion to explore what’s around the next bend in unsung, wild places but also excavate those buried wild pieces of myself I feared forgotten.

Since that first meeting, Jon and I developed a friendship, realizing a common passion not only for fly fishing but for fine words laid down on paper and fine bourbon laid down neat. But we had yet to wet a line together. On a warm, partly clouded June morning that finally changed, and we set out to chase parts unknown – at least to me. Better still, we were joined by a mutual friend who spends his days teaching high school history, his evenings building custom bamboo fly rods and the time in between with prose in hard cover and spirits in brown form. Even if we never moved a fish, the day was destined to be a good one.

At this point I feel compelled (for sake of context) to confess to being someone who values solitude, and I often fish alone. Since we’re confessing, I’ll further admit to, at times, being a creature of habit. There’s something comforting in fishing proven waters where the river bottom is as familiar as an old flannel and the fish holds are as known as a faithful lucky hat.

But I’m also a restless soul, constantly seduced by the lure of the undiscovered. And, with some new-found time on my hands, I’ve dedicated myself to exploring new water with a smattering of friends with whom I haven’t, for one excuse or another, spent much time lately. It’s my season for atonement. To move beyond the comfort of the old flannel. It’s time to again feel the pull of new water and the draw of conversations with someone other than myself.

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We traveled north, slowly shedding the claustrophobia of the city and the suffocation of the self-induced busyness of the season.

Like taking off your boots at the end of a long day on the trail or removing a hat that fits too tightly, the release was welcome and sweet.

Oars dipped quietly into tea-colored water that pulled us ever forward into the unknown, the calmness of its surface belying the powerful turbulence below. The stillness was so complete that for a time we merely glided along with the current, afraid that even the quiet whisper of our fly line would offend the moment. We had the river to ourselves, save for an eagle that we gently bumped from perch to perch as we worked down the winding waterway in the coolness of the morning.

Occasionally, we would stop to switch spots, or take a break and talk or grab a bite. Our conversations were as fluid as the river and as rewarding as the fishing.

There, on the river, my worries washed downstream like sediment after a hard rain.

Left only with the sounds and smells of the woods and the water, the flora and fauna, my tangled-in-a-tag-alder-mind gradually untangled itself. In the quiet I could finally hear my own thoughts clearly.

Parts unknown. Undiscovered. Wild lands.

Not a luxury, but a necessity of the human spirit as Abbey, Muir, Thoreau and Leopold strain to remind us. Often lost. But still, with effort, able to be found.

Found chasing blue lines and contours on a weathered map.

Found easing oars into new water as the sun burns off the morning. Found lacing up boots and tightening packs to explore what’s over the next rise and the next and the next after that.

Found by a fall campfire, listening to the hiss and pop of the wood and feeling the radiant warmth on the skin. Found cutting tracks in the snow leading deeper into the mysterious uncharted. Found by gently laying down a fly on slick, smooth water and waiting for

Photos: Allen Crater

PARTS UNKNOWN

LEFT ONLY WITH THE SOUNDS AND SMELLS OF THE WOODS AND THE WATER, THE FLORA AND FAUNA, MY TANGLED-IN-A-TAG-ALDERMIND GRADUALLY UNTANGLED ITSELF. IN THE QUIET I COULD FINALLY HEAR MY OWN THOUGHTS CLEARLY. SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 77

Photos: Allen Crater

the quiet sip. Found in the rich aroma of bacon and coffee prepared outdoors. Found in the rough bark of logs and the smooth handle of an axe and in blisters and callouses.

Found in the cedar-tinged newness of a spring morning or the damp, humid close to a summer night. Found in spaces so big and so empty our thoughts have room to breathe.

Found in the solitude that can still be gained among friends who understand.

We’d lost track of time. Our eight-hour float pushing to 12. But what we gained was a connection that had been unwittingly growing faint. A part of ourselves that we feared forgotten.

Only then did I fully realize that parts unknown were actually hidden pieces of myself, discovered that day on a new ribbon of water with friends. Discovered in the places and the moments that caused me to see things differently, maybe for the first time, because I was finally paying attention. In those moments my expectations were altered, my views expanded, my senses awakened.

Once again, I felt connected to all things living. The eagle and the trout. The trees and the grass. I had gazed into the dark water and seen myself reflected back. Differently. And I was reminded that it’s good to have parts that are still unknown, undiscovered and left to the imagination.

Allen Crater is the former co-chair of the Michigan BHA chapter. He is a husband, father of two boys, avid hunter, angler and backpacker and host of allenoutside.com.

78 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SUMMER 2021

FROM OXBOWS TO BLUE LINES

BY JOSH PARKS My father taught me to fish in the oxbow lakes of the north Mississippi Delta 30-some-odd years ago. We had a small jon boat, 14 feet long and just wide enough for a man and boy to stand and fish. Dad perched 25 ponies on the back and added a wooden floor and casting deck to complete our redneck bass rig.

He dressed the boat with green outdoor carpeting that gave it the look of a two-tiered mini-golf hole, complete with a trolling motor prop where the windmill should be. The cheap trolling motor was a sign of luxury and, I assume, a source of jealousy among the other rednecks we fished with.

We spent every summer weekend in that boat growing tan while loading a cooler with largemouth bass pulled from muddy waters.

We’d ride to the lake saying little to one another. I ate fried fruit pies with my feet dangling off the edge of the bench seat of our single cab Chevy while we listened to classic rock piped in from Memphis. We couldn’t afford a tape player, and Clarksdale was too poor for a proper radio station.

One morning, we launched the boat amid a fog of mosquitos.

Dad tossed a plug into a small slough and worked it back to the boat. After another cast or two, he set the hook and muttered something about another damn gar tearing up his crankbaits when five pounds of striped bass shattered through the smooth 80 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SUMMER 2021

surface, shaking its head in primitive fury. That’s a helluva striper in the Delta, and we spent hours casting silicone-skirted lures into that boggy backwater.

These days I might spend my time fly fishing blue lines for trout, but that swampy morning would eventually mean everything to me. Even if I couldn’t have known it at the time.

On Feb. 16, 2015, my daughter Campbell was born. Snow choked the trees. Ice carpeted the roads. Five days later, my father fell and slid down my steep driveway. He staggered through the garage, blood soaking through his clothes. Gory handprints streaked the door.

He’d contracted hepatitis C as a young man, and after decades on a transplant list, I think he just hoped he’d get a new liver in time to see a grandkid or two. Within a week of his fall, doctors installed a new liver, and Dad spent the next month in a hospital bed growing gaunt and frail, shriveling to a corpse. Mom sent me regular updates, but the medical jargon was way over my head.

One thing, however, was painfully clear: things were not going well.

I wanted to be there for my father, but I had a newborn baby to care for. Campbell couldn’t travel that far, and I couldn’t bring myself to leave her. My dad was struggling for his life, and I sat

Photos: Josh Parks

hundreds of miles away playing with the granddaughter he might never see again. I felt like an asshole. A real prodigal prick who wouldn’t come back home until it was too late.

When my grandmother told me it might be time to say goodbye, I packed up my new family and left for Memphis within hours. I dropped them off at the hotel and drove straight to the hospital with my guts knotted up like a bird’s nest of fishing line.

just happened to be in the room.

The doctors said he’d live, but there was no telling how flatlining for 20 minutes would affect his brain. He might wake up any moment, or he could spend the rest of his life in a coma. He’d simply been dead too long to know for sure.

We’d waited 20 years on this liver, and now the goddamn thing was trying to kill him.

I’d drifted away in the last several years. After finishing at Ole Miss, I moved to Chattanooga for graduate school. I’d quit fishing, and Dad had moved from our redneck casting deck into the clubhouse of the local golf course. In 2008, the economic recession started squeezing the whole country. I struggled to establish myself as a functional adult while working multiple jobs.

I taught part time. I waited tables. I fell out of touch.

Now, I sat in a hospital room with my mother and brother, waiting on the doctors, staring at the television, making small talk, masking our nerves. We were sitting on a cheap vinyl couch when the doctors came in.

They said they didn’t understand. His heart simply stopped when they put him under anesthesia.

I was robbed of a father for most of my childhood. Dad worked second shift, so he went to work an hour before school let out and came home well after bedtime. On Fridays, I sat in his chair trying to wait up for him. If I made it, we played chess. He usually carried me to bed.

Bass fishing was the one thing we did together, and when a child only gets a few hours a week alone with his father, every minute counts. Even though he only managed a few hours of sleep, we’d wake up at five and hitch the trailer in the dark. It might have been a struggle for him, but for me, it was the only thing that mattered.

Sometimes we’d bait a dozen yo-yos with live minnows and camp out at Old River, a small lake behind a big levee. One evening, we set up camp and hung our yoyos despite the increasing odds of a thunderstorm. We took advantage of that pre-storm bite and spent the night fanning a spotlight over the water like night watchmen, checking for the alligators that came out at night.

That was the night I learned why you shouldn’t lip a catfish.

Dad shut the motor off, and we drifted the last dozen yards into

My father was in a coma, but he was alive.

It was a matter of luck. The only two doctors in the hospital with enough stamina for 20 minutes of CPR and defibrillations

SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 81

Photo: Josh Parks

the low hanging trees. I squatted on the bow and reached out to snag the knuckle of a cypress branch, palming the rough bark and bracing the boat. Dad shined the light in an oblong arc around the boat, checking for the gold-green eyes of a snake or an alligator. After a brief survey, he flashed the yoyo.

It danced as the branch bent under the weight of a strong fish swimming in truculent circles below.

I grasped the nylon strand connecting fish to snare, wrapped it around my hand and pulled.

The mud-colored specter of a flathead appeared. I lipped and hauled the fish into the boat.

Then the son of a bitch bit me.

Teeth like coarse sandpaper ground into my young thumb, and I dropped the whiskery bastard.

It flopped around on the deck for a minute before I kicked its ass overboard.

The storm blew in. We tied our tent to the nearest tree so we wouldn’t wake up shrouded by turbid nylon. For a young boy, that night felt dangerous and exhilarating. It was a damn adventure.

None of this crossed my mind in the hospital.

While in intensive care, my father looked dead as his glazed-over eyes stared at a vacant spot somewhere near the ceiling. We sat with him, holding his hand and talking to him as family slowly filled the room.

But the only sign of life was the beeping heartrate monitor in the background. Before I drove my family back to Chattanooga, Dad was coming out of his coma but could only blink and squeeze our hands in return.

When I said goodbye, I told him I had to take his granddaughter home. She was too young to spend any more time in a hotel room.

He just stared at me with blank, fearful eyes. He knew it was me, but nothing else registered.

Afterwards, he struggled with his appetite and couldn’t regain the weight he lost in the hospital. My father, once the tall navigator the Mississippi River, became a waif and needed a walker just to get a glass of water.

I stayed home with the baby that summer and couldn’t be there to help him recover. I still felt like shit for not trying. So, while the baby napped, I sat in my garage and stared at kayaks and rod tubes and stacks of fly boxes, remembering all that took place on the small lakes of the Mississippi Delta. I went trout fishing in the mountains and threw flashy, white Clousers for spotted bass in the Tennessee River when I could. But in the back of my mind, I wondered if I could ever share these places with him the way he shared his with me. I wanted to show him the rivers that I’ve come to love, places I’d never have seen without him.

A few months after his transplant, we went fishing. Dad was still weak, so we fished the golf-course ponds near his house. We rode from pond to pond with light spinning gear and picked up a 82 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SUMMER 2021

handful of bass over 18 holes.

Dad was still weak, so he caddied for the round. We waved at his golf cronies bent over their putters as we cruised down the fairway. When we reached each pond, Dad parked in the shade and watched as I tried to tease bass out of the weeds. I cast small spinners along the grass lines and pockets in the mucky pond slime. Every now and then, I’d snag a low-hanging branch, and he’d call out, telling me I wouldn’t catch any fish with my lure in the trees.

My feet don’t dangle over the seat anymore, but the feeling was the same: Dad and I were bass fishing just like when I was a boy.

But as I walked back from the last pond, I watched my father mop the sweat from his brow. He wouldn’t admit it, but he was worn out. The day felt familiar, like slipping into an old sleeping bag, but I knew things were different. He’d get his strength back, but we’ve swapped seats in the boat. He sits in the stern and lets me handle the trolling motor now.

As an adult living in north Georgia, I’ve made the transition from gear to flies, from oxbows to blue lines. But I’ll lean on my father’s influence as I teach my daughter, now four, to fish. When she was only a few months old, a friend and I took Campbell to a local lake. My buddy and I took turns casting small woolly buggers to an eager bed of bream holding close to the bank. The sun sank and I gave up the long rod to sit against a tree. I held Campbell in my lap and watched the sun set the landscape on fire until we were alone with the water.

Josh Parks is a BHA chapter board member and writer who lives in north Georgia with his wife and two daughters.

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SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 85

BEYOND FAIR CHASE

BY TODD TANNER I grew up hunting and fishing.

One of my earliest memories is of following my father through the autumn woods, the forest floor littered with a carpet of yellow, scarlet and burnt orange leaves. I walked as quietly as a 5-year-old boy in a heavy coat and boots could manage, doing my best to avoid the twigs and branches that always seemed underfoot.

We ended up climbing onto a low, lichen-covered boulder where my dad, gun in hand, faced one way and I another. I was entrusted with the responsibility of watching my share of the surrounding forest for a deer that, as luck would have it, never did arrive.

You wouldn’t think that a walk through the woods with my father – or watching my grandfather cleaning his shotgun at his kitchen table, or dunking worms in the brook that ran by my folks’ house – would prove so compelling that the memories would survive the decades that followed. Yet now, more than 50 years later, those formative images remain.

It was a different era, of course, and we lived closer to the land back then. I was fishing on my own, and exploring the surrounding woods and waters, by the time I was 7. My dad showed me how to run a trap line when I was 10. I started bird hunting and deer hunting as soon as I reached the legal age, and I wasn’t the only one. Fishing and hunting fit seamlessly alongside schoolwork and sports for a fair number of my friends. It was even a local tradition to skip class on the first day of deer season.

And in retrospect, the fact that my family had only one phone – an old rotary model attached to the kitchen wall – proved more of a blessing than a curse.

Looking back, I’m convinced that our early years shape our lives in ways we never actually realize at the time. That’s particu-

larly true with regard to ethics and morality. As hunters and anglers, we have to decide if we’re willing to abide by society’s ethical constraints. My parents spent a fair amount of time explaining the difference between right and wrong. So did the pages of Field & Stream, Outdoor Life and Sports Afield; I used to stay up late and read all three magazines under the covers with a flashlight – and I like to think that my moral and ethical foundation has served me well over the intervening decades.

Of course, most of us view hunting and angling ethics from an individual perspective. We ask ourselves if we’re following the regulations when we’re afield, or if we’re abiding by the principles of fair chase, or whether we’re treating our landscapes and waters with the respect they deserve. Hopefully we can all feel good about the person staring back from the mirror.

There’s another way to look at ethics, though, and that’s from a broader perspective. Can we follow the letter of the law and yet still fall short as hunters and anglers?

Take public lands. Is it enough to wander our lands with some measure of reverence and respect, leaving the landscape as we found it? Or do we also have a moral responsibility to stand up for those lands and ensure that they’re well managed, well cared for and neither sold off nor given away to someone who would turn around and lock us out?

Or take climate change. We’ve all heard the phrase “climate change” countless times, yet we each view it through our own unique lens. Some of us take the science seriously and raise our voices about the existential threat it poses to our hunting and fishing. Others claim it’s a natural phenomenon that we’ll never be able to control. Still others dismiss climate change as a hoax, or as an attempt to curtail our freedoms, and are offended that anyone would raise the issue in outdoor magazines or social media posts.

How do we wrap our heads around the ethics, as well as the

Photo: istock.com/bradscottphotos

CHANGE IS IN THE AIR

moral fabric, of an issue like climate? Not only do our opinions differ widely, but our concerns are less about the actions of one person and more about whether hunting and angling will still exist for future generations. Will we eventually agree on climate, or is the subject simply too big, and too complicated, for us to forge a consensus?

From where I sit, climate is perhaps less an ethical matter than a moral one. My web dictionary states that “morals refer mainly to guiding principles, and ethics refer to specific rules and actions, or behaviors.” Put another way, ethics focus on whether I follow the rules – perhaps even the spirit of the rules – while morality is a matter of right and wrong.

As a longtime hunter and angler, as well as an outdoor writer, my moral compass tells me that I have to take threats to our landscapes and waters, and to our fish and game populations, seriously. It would be wrong for me to dismiss a warning from our scientists without first learning enough to form an educated opinion.

Furthermore, I believe we have an obligation to ensure our kids and grandkids can experience the same incredible outdoor opportunities that we’ve all enjoyed. If my 16-year-old son chooses to follow in my footsteps, he should have the option of fishing the cold, clean waters of the Henrys Fork, or tracking a late-season bull elk through knee-deep snow, or thrilling to a flush amidst a sea of native prairie grass.

In my mind, it’s our responsibility to act as stewards and caretakers and to make sure that future generations can trace our footsteps in much the same way I followed my dad through the hardwoods all those years ago. I simply can’t accept a philosophy that trashes the Golden Rule or that says, “Sorry, I got mine. You’re on your own.”

This is why I’ve put a huge amount of time – thousands of hours – into researching climate change. I wanted to know what the scientific experts were saying, whether the science matched what I was seeing on the landscape near my Montana home and whether the prognosis was really as dire as I’d been led to believe.

More than anything else, I wanted to know whether the threat warranted my concern and my actions.

It turns out that it does.

My goal, though, is not to convince you that I’m right and others are wrong. I could cite scientific studies until the cows come home, or wield facts and logic like a cudgel, or belittle those who disagree with me. Yet we’ve all armored ourselves against those approaches, and I’m not likely to sway many people with science or facts or logic. That’s not how it works.

Instead, I’ll simply point out that anyone who spends time outdoors is seeing the damage whether they realize it or not.

I’ll close with a few heartfelt words: I believe that anglers and hunters should aspire to stewardship. We should commit to protecting America’s landscapes and waters for our kids and grandkids, and for future generations. To my mind, it’s a moral imperative for everyone who loves the outdoors.

Todd Tanner is a lifelong hunter and angler, an outdoor writer, head of the School of Trout and president of Conservation Hawks. His essays and stories have been published by a number of media outlets, including Sporting Classics, Field & Stream, Sports Afield, Hatch, Fly Fisherman, Forbes, Newsweek, Men’s Journal and the NY Times.

Todd also helped create the short Conservation Hawks films Cold Waters, Chrome, Convergence and In The Heart Of The Rockies.

This department is brought to you by Orion - The Hunter’s Institute, a nonprofit and BHA partner dedicated to advancing hunting ethics and wildlife conservation.

SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 87

SHORT

SCOUTING

FOR NEXT SEASON Like so many, I was furloughed in March, 2020. In April, I realized I would be able to hunt the entire week of spring turkey season, instead of the usual day I get most years.

At least a part of turkey hunting for me is scouting for next fall’s archery deer season. So when I kicked up a couple deer walking into the nearest wildlife management area from my house, I knew I was in the right spot. As long as I had opportunity for some more nature watching, I’d be happy with my outing. But, boy, was I ever on the turkeys. I watched them cross a field too far away.

I watched them cross the field right by where my blind was the day before. I set up near a roost tree and watched a couple jakes land, right where I thought they would, and then walk in the wrong direction. I had a tom walk five feet behind me. He showed no indication of knowing I was there, except for staying on the wrong side of a property line. I loved every minute of it.

But, during the quiet times in between being made a fool by those awful dinosaurs, I had a quiet nagging thought: I might be dying. Six months prior I’d started to see some blood in my stool.

The internet research I did should have told me it was cancer. It always tells you it’s cancer. But the multiple websites I looked at told me not to worry. It should clear up in a couple weeks – internal hemorrhoids, no big deal. It did go away, and I decided I was fine.

The blood returned in February. Just in time for my 44th birthday. I again spent countless hours looking at those same medical websites for clues. Was the blood dark or bright? Color identification is not my strong suit. Was I fatigued? No, I’m tired.

My job is demanding and my hours are tough. Did I get dizzy?

Only if I stood up too fast or hadn’t eaten enough. It should go away again in a few weeks. Let’s not forget the pandemic. I’m sure the doctor doesn’t want to see me for something so silly. But then it was April, and the bleeding hadn’t stopped.

I started making deals with myself. If I see blood tomorrow, I’ll call the doctor after turkey season. Ok, there’s blood but less than yesterday. If I see blood tomorrow, I’ll definitely call after turkey season. By day five of the hunt it got to be too much. Midmorning the nagging doubt had me packed up early and headed home to make a phone call.

The pandemic was just ramping up in Minnesota. So the first thing I said when I called the doctor’s office was that I wasn’t sure if I needed an appointment. I told a receptionist about my symptoms. Then a nurse called me, and I told him about my symptoms. Probably not a big deal he told me, but a doctor will call you tomorrow. So I told a doctor about my symptoms.

Probably not a big deal, but a GI doctor will call you tomorrow.

So I told him my symptoms. Probably not a big deal, he said, but let’s get you in for a scope.

May 5, and I was about to get my first colonoscopy. I went 88 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SUMMER 2021

Photo: John Fallon

BY TONY DIGATONO

over my symptoms again and was again told it’s probably not a big deal. Shortly after waking up, my wife walked into the recovery room. We both knew something was off. We had been told that because of covid she should wait in the car, and they would walk me out when done. We didn’t have to wait long. The doctor walked in and said they found a mass; it’s cancer.

Two days after surgery to remove about a foot of my colon, we learned there was evidence of cancer on a lymph node that was removed. I was going to need chemo, too.

I would do six rounds. My last round would start in the middle of September. Now I had a goal: I wanted to recover from chemo in time to get back to that WMA by October and get a few archery deer hunts in. The previous winter I’d bought myself a tree saddle system I’d learned about at the Minnesota chapter rendezvous the year prior. I’d already found a tree I thought would be perfect, close to a well-traveled intersection of trails.

Chemo broke me, hard, and over and over again. But it didn’t matter as long as I could get up every other Monday and into the car for the next dose. Through it all, there were some good days, too. Calm, peaceful days when I would watch the bees and other critters in my wife’s pollinator garden. When the action would slow, I’d drift off to the future, imagining myself in that tree. I’d watch that old doe walk in. Maybe a young buck wouldn’t be paying enough attention. Just starting to think about the rut, he’d pause for a drink at the pond – a chip shot away with my bow.

I made it back to the WMA in October. Once or twice a week I was able to get to the tree just before legal light. I was anything but smooth and quiet. The first day, especially, I had to sit for 20 minutes before even thinking about setting up the ladder sticks.

But the new saddle system was fantastic. I didn’t see any deer during those bowhunts, but I saw plenty of wildlife and heard a few gobbles.

Eventually, I got my deer. On the far corner of a friend’s farm during rifle season, I was able to spend 20 minutes sizing up a pair of mature does coming my way while hoping a buck was pushing them. At the now or never moment, I saw they weren’t being pushed by a buck but a rafter of wild turkeys.

BHA member Tony Digatono’s favorite public land is the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. He lives in Minneapolis with his perfect wife and three belligerent cats.

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Souvenirs

There’s a pack bridge that crosses the upper reaches of the Lochsa River from Idaho’s Highway 12. When the trail hits the far bank, it ascends steeply for several miles before reaching the SelwayBitterroot Wilderness. The bridge is nothing too unique – one of several like it – and the trail seldom traveled. The ascent is dry and rugged and the trail heads nowhere extraordinary, lacking significant numbers of both game and fish.

Just upstream from the bridge, there’s a little gravel two-track that leaves the highway and ends in a grassy roundabout next to the river. After leaving Michigan and heading west, my Lab, Pate, and I spent our first night camped alone there, under a starry, cold October night. I doubt we even noticed the pack bridge as we continued our drive downriver, shadowing the path of Lewis & Clark until meeting the Clearwater, where we’d camp and chase steelhead for that entire fall.

Several years later, my soon-to-be wife had a job opportunity in a little town nearby. Crossing from Montana to Idaho at Lolo Pass again, we drove west on 12 during an abnormally warm February day, the banks of the lower Clearwater already lush, green and gorgeous. She took the job, and by May the Clearwater/Lochsa country would become home. I’d pick her up from work on Friday afternoons, and we’d camp in the pullout near the bridge on the Lochsa or explore another corner of the country every weekend.

By fall, I’d be getting a crash course in guiding the steelhead of the Clearwater.

The first time I crossed over the pack bridge was with a flyrod in hand. Pate followed me upriver from the bridge over bear-sized boulders, skirting a sizeable rapid, hopping from one to the next. A hundred yards upstream, above the rapid, the river deepens into a gentle, emerald-green pool, filled with more sizable rocks. A small spring enters straight out of a dark, cedar-covered north-facing hillside, pumping ice-cold water into the Lochsa through the dog days of August. The first memorable hour I spent below the spring saw me land at least a dozen larger than average cutthroat on dry flies, watching them slowly rise from the green depths to inspect and eat my offering.

The next time Pate and I returned, just a year later, his vision

was rapidly failing him. We crossed the pack bridge and began our traverse of the boulders. He was the toughest dog I’d ever known.

This was the first and last time I’d hear my best friend whine.

Unable to see his footing, we turned around and returned to the bridge without making a cast. I sat there with him underneath the planks, along the tumbling water, and wept.

My wife knows the pack bridge well. We’ve fished it, read books in its shade and ran out of water on the dusty trail above.

She knows how it’s my wish for my ashes, along with Pate’s, to be spread below the bridge. I like to think about our ashes, as they float down the Lochsa past Fish Creek, one of the principle spawning tributaries for wild steelhead, being joined by little parr headed downriver to the Pacific. Past the confluence with the Selway they’ll flow, joined by water from the wildest country in the Lower 48. Through the length of the Clearwater they’ll travel, into the Snake, where they’ll hit a dam, Lower Granite, 14 miles from our last home. Their pace will slow. They’ll swirl among turbines. Many of the parr they were joined by will perish.

Then they’ll hit three more dams. My ashes will float through, but many more parr will die with each one. A few will prevail.

Maybe, if I live long enough, and we do our part, when I close my eyes for the last time, it will be to a different thought: my ashes spreading below the pack bridge and flowing free, down the Lochsa, joined by wild parr from Fish Creek, past adult spring chinook going the opposite direction to ascend the Selway, into the Clearwater and the Snake, free all the way to the Columbia and then on to the Pacific.

About a month ago, my wife and I stopped along the Lochsa at Fish Creek, downstream of the pack bridge. We dipped our baby girl’s feet in the water. While my wife fed her next to the river, I wandered downriver, attempting to spot a wild steelhead ascending to spawn. Instead, I found, tucked among a log jam, an old bridge plank, partially burned from one of the frequent wildfires of the Lochsa country. It’s easy for me to imagine the plank is from my pack bridge, so I brought it home.

-Zack Williams, editor SUMMER 2021 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 91