"BONUS POINTS" AKA WHY I HAD TO GET GOATS

As near as I can tell, Montana FWP's "Bonus Point" hunting tag drawing system is based upon this tried-and-true Federal Agency model.

 

WHY GOATS?

          A few people have asked what possessed me to get goats. The rationale behind the decision requires a column of its own and a rant about one my favorite pet peeves; Montana Fish, Wildlife & Park’s “system” for drawing Special Tags, i.e. moose, mountain goat, and bighorn sheep.

Hunting the high country would be a dream come true. So every spring I am afflicted, thankfully for increasingly briefer periods each passing year, with this insane, wild-eyed delusion that I might actually, finally, somehow, at long last draw a Montana bighorn sheep or mountain goat hunting tag. If I were to ever do so, such a hunt would require considerable preparation.

Historically, this has not been much of a problem. I’ve been putting in the drawings for Montana special hunting tags (goat, sheep, moose and now bison) since 1994 and thus far I’ve drawn exactly zero, zilch, nada, nothing.

I’ve also been putting in every year for the Super-Secret Choco-Fudgie “Bonus Points” ever since FWP initiated that system. In theory, by accumulating bonus points, you increase your future chances of drawing a special tag. In practice, they have proven about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.

Alas, it does not work like Wyoming Fish & Game’s system of Preference Points. In Wyoming, you eventually accumulate enough of these points that you WILL draw a tag. If you started applying at a young enough age, you WILL get a tag for the district you actually WANT to hunt.

Montana’s Bonus Point System, on the other had, appears to have been based on the quintessential federal government program model such is its uselessness and sheer dysfunctionality.

As an example, let’s say you’re trying to draw a tag to hunt bighorn sheep in the Missouri Breaks. Ordinarily, your chance of success is something like 0.00013 percent or one-in-a-hillion jillion (I’ve greatly increased the actual odds for the sake of example). With each Bonus Point accumulated, however, you now get an additional 0.00013% shot to be unsuccessful in the drawing. They don’t actually increase the odds in your favor, they just give you additional one-in-a-hillion jillion chances.

If this were not bad enough, since every other hunter in the state is simultaneously accumulating the exact same number of Bonus Points as you are, the net effect in the real world is that the system increases your odds of a successful drawing from “No Way In Hell” to the “When Pigs Fly” level, which is hardly a marked improvement.

How it worked for me goes like this. Trying to draw a special tag for ten years before the Bonus Point system was introduced resulted in actually drawing…jack shit. By comparison, attempting to draw a special tag for an additional decade while steadily accumulating Bonus Points resulted in…jack shit and higher blood pressure. So you can really see the benefits of the system right from the get-go.

Toss in the wolf re-introduction and how they’ve decimated moose populations, and I’ll bet my odds for that tag now, even with all my “Bonus” Points, are statistically less than they were when I started the ordeal twenty odd years ago.

Whenever I feel bad that I’ve struck out every single time I’ve gone to bat for the last 21 years, I just go over and visit my neighbor Bill, who was born and raised here and has been striking out on special tags for 29 years straight. Of course he’s also been accumulating those handy Bonus Points ever since the system started and of course they’ve done him as much good as they’ve done me.

As a result of all his perseverance, though, Bill’s finally going bighorn hunting this year. Unfortunately, it’s not in his home state of Montana. He got disgusted with the whole thing, sold his very nice life-long collection of elk shed horns, and purchased a guided sheep hunt in Alaska.

Meanwhile, it seems like every time I go to the shooting range or the sporting goods store I run into some (expletive deleted) who’s drawn every special tag for every species multiple times over the years, both with and without Bonus Points. Some guys seem to draw a bighorn ram tag every seven years like clockwork (if you succeed in drawing a special tag for that species, you have to wait seven years to even enter the drawing again).

A young guy in his early 20’s I used to work with in the Forest Circus drew a moose, bighorn and bison tag his first three years as a Montana resident which, by my calculations, is statistically impossible. For all I know he may have drawn a mountain goat tag his 4^th year. I had to quit asking him if he drew any special tags and he quit answering because my fingers were grasped so tightly around his throat after the third year.

Then there was the woman I once met who drew a moose, bighorn sheep and Missouri Breaks elk tag her first five years in the state but who didn’t even go on the sheep hunt because it snowed!!! ARRRGGHHHH!!!!

So apparently the entire system all boils down to pure dumb luck. When it comes to that, I’m right up there with the stub-tailed, 3-legged, one-eyed dog named Lucky. I have all kinds of “luck”, but nothing you could call “fortune”, with one very big exception; meeting my wife. Olivia’s such a peach sometimes I suspect I used up my entire lifetime supply of fortune in finding her.

Come to think of it, though, perhaps more than just random chance is involved in drawing Special Tags. After all, when I accused that guy I worked with who drew all those special tags in a row of having photographs of the FWP Director in bed with a Girl Scout, a nun and a goat, he just laughed…but he didn’t actually deny it.

By my calculations, if I keep entering the drawings and accumulating bonus points, I should be able to hunt the Montana high country myself somewhere between the ages of 197 and 324. Considering how gimpy I am now, I don’t think that’ll work out too well.

Anyway, twenty plus years of this has led me to think that if I’m ever going to be able to at least hunt a bighorn sheep in Montana once in my lifetime, I’m gonna have to break down and do one of the unlimited hunting districts down by Yellowstone National Park.

I’m not all that thrilled with the idea. The Boulder River country especially is wild and desolate and steep and rocky; the entire landscape is essentially one giant rock pile about three degrees shy of vertical. There are actually Forest Circus trails in that country where you skin your nose by simply walking uphill. It kicked my ass twenty years ago before I got all busted up. Nowadays, I have to take a handful of Ibuprofen and a couple of Tylenol just to look at a topographical map of the area.

And if the terrain doesn’t kill you, the grizzlies might. It’s Grizzly Bear Central down there and, after four decades of federal protection, they have come to think of mankind as little more than fat, slow and easy-to-catch snack food located considerably lower on the food chain than they are.

Twenty years ago, I considered that fun; all part of the adventure and the challenge of solo back-packing the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness. Then again, I was fresh out of the service and “young & dumb & full of come.” Plus I got all my information on the terminal effects of the .44 Magnum solely from Clint Eastwood movies. I slept soundly under the stars way back then, my trusty Smith & Wesson by my side, secure in the knowledge that I was ten-foot-tall and bulletproof.

Today, just sleeping on the ground requires a recovery period lasting until early afternoon. Not that I get much sleep what with that nagging little voice in the back of my head telling me that if there’s a Griz around I won’t know it until the sonofabitch is licking my ear. Now a combination sleep apnea, damaged vertebrae, a pinched nerve that sometimes makes my left arm go numb, a hearing impairment and being legally blind in one eye (don’t forget your night vision starts to go to shit this side of forty, too) lead me to believe that maybe…just maybe…I may no longer be able to whip a big boar grizzly in hand-to-hand combat anymore.

I kinda figure the only way I can even hike that country nowadays would be if I had somebody else do all the heavy lifting for me, i.e. carry the packs. I might still be able to hunt the high country if I restrict myself to a carbine, canteen and binoculars, and I’m not too sure about the binos. Hell, with only one good eye I probably should switch to a monocular anyway.

Anyway, back to the heavy lifting, none of my buddies are dumb enough to want to hunt that country with me and even if the spirit were willing, the flesh is usually as weak (and old and gimpy) as that of yours truly. I’m not quite sure how this came to pass, or even the precise decade in which it occurred. I’m going blame it all on Global Warming rather than give any credence to my wife’s ridiculous theory about a large number of accumulated birthdays.

At any rate, the desire (desperation?) to hunt the Boulder was the convoluted stream of logic that led me to the conclusion that I should get me a string of goats for use as pack animals.

Little did I know that merely acquiring goats was only the beginning of a long adventure/ordeal and the Boulder River country doesn’t yet appear any closer from the current vantage point despite the increase in elevation from a three-inch layer of goat poop.

But, at least the chances of success appear much better than drawing a special tag.

CHICKENS BECOMING SENTIENT???

As if I didn't have enough to worry about, now I fear that our chickens are becoming sentient.

Yesterday I cleaned out the goat pen in the barn and, since it's not the most exciting job in the world, I brought my little transistor radio and listened to Rush Limbaugh while I was at it. The chickens must have been eavesdropping the whole time.

This morning when I let the chickens out, the rooster clearly squawked the president's name twice. "BARACK! BARACK!" Then one of the hens flapped her left wing. Finally, a third excreted a big glob of chickenshit.

Mere coincidence? I think not.

SOME RIGHTS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

On our last trip to Yellowstone, I took a picture of a sign on the door to the visitor center. Similar signs would have caused a nation-wide outrage. Can you imagine anyone tolerating this sign on a public building?

Or this?

Or perhaps this?

No? Then why is this perfectly acceptable?

 

Does anyone really believe this will be the result?

I say we quit pussy-footing around and just ban all of those pesky Civil Rights for the convenience of Big Brother.

THE BIG HORN GUN

 CAN YOU IDENTIFY THIS GUN?

Black powder artillery is definitely a subject I know very little about, but I’ve developed an interest in this field piece. It is known simply as the Big Horn Gun and is on display at the Gallatin History Museum in Bozeman, MT. Various authors have identified it as a “6-pounder”, a “12-pounder”, a “Napoleon” and “Napoleonic” but from what little I could learn from researching it I’m inclined to say it’s “None of the above.”

The barrel, muzzle and trunnions are all completely devoid of any kind of identifying military, inspection or maker’s marks. The smoothbore barrel is cast iron and listed as weighing 650 pounds. I put dial calipers to the bore at the muzzle and came up with a measurement of 3.286-inches. The bore has no powder chamber and measures 43-1/2 inches long while the overall barrel length with the cascabel is 51-1/4 inches. The carriage is a reproduction built in 1994.

Walter Cooper was the Bozeman gun dealer and gunsmith who twice refurbished the cannon in 1874 and again in 1881, and he believed the barrel had been cast in 1770.

The media is up to its usual accuracy standards (sub-Red Ryder MOA) when it comes to the history of this piece. A 1954 newspaper article about the cannon claimed only, “…it is believed to have been used in the Mexican War.” The same newspaper, in 1973, stated, “One fact that has been established is that the Big Horn Gun was used in the Mexican War of 1846-48!” By 1994, the latest article proudly proclaimed, “General Zachary Taylor used the cannon in 1848 while fighting in the war with Mexico.”

From the bore diameter, I would think the gun a 4-pounder; during its history there were plenty of occasions for bore erosion. Call my a cynic, but I have my doubts that Old Rough & Ready Zach Taylor actually ran around Mexico using this as his personal shootin' iron. Assuming it actually was used in some capacity in the Mexican-American War, I would imagine it more likely to have been captured from the Mexican Army. They used both iron and bronze 4-pounders, while the US Army's smallest field piece was the Model 1841 bronze 6-pounder. From what little I could find out about Mexican artillery of the era, their heaviest siege artillery was of English make but the field artillery was almost entirely Spanish in origin and dated from the 1770’s.

Just for fun, here’s a brief synopsis of the gun’s known, documented history. All sources mention the Mexican-American War; most speculate the gun made its way north over the Chihuahua and Santa Fe Trails after the war. One or two articles say it may have been used to protect construction crews on the Union Pacific Railroad in 1866-69.

 In 1870 it was in Cheyenne, WY and was taken along by a private enterprise group of gold prospectors calling themselves the Big Horn Expedition. They were originally bound for the Black Hills by way of the Big Horn Mountains, but the US Army stopped them and ordered them not to proceed to the Black Hills as that area was still ceded to the Sioux by treaty. (Army commands in the Dakota Territory were nowhere near as zealous in keeping prospectors out of the Black Hills.) Half of the expedition returned to Cheyenne while the remainder turned west and prospected down the Big Horn and up the Yellowstone Rivers until they reached Bozeman and disbanded. Now universally called the Big Horn Gun, the cannon was purchased by a group of Bozeman businessmen for use in defending the town in case of a hostile Indian attack. Since no such attack ever occurred, it was mostly used for parades, political rallies and celebrating the 4^th of July.

In February of 1874 another private venture calling itself the Yellowstone Wagon Road & Prospecting Expedition left Bozeman bound for what is now eastern Montana with the stated goals of blazing a wagon route to the head of navigation on the Yellowstone River and, of course, trying to find new gold strikes. Some believed their real purpose was to stir up a full-blown war with the Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne so that the US government would be forced to bring in the military to “pacify” the tribes, thus opening eastern Montana up to white settlement and development.

All told, the company consisted of 149 men all armed with breech-loading or repeating rifles, 22 wagons, 28 yoke of oxen, over 200 horses and mules, and two pieces of artillery. The first was a Model 1841 12-pounder bronze mountain howitzer that Montana Territorial Governor B.F. Potts had badgered the US Army garrison at Fort Ellis into “loaning” to the expedition. The other was the Big Horn Gun. Bozeman attorney William D. Cameron, a Union artillery officer during the Civil War (possibly with the 10^th New York Heavy Artillery), was appointed chief gunner. The wagons carried four months’ worth of supplies, 40,000 rounds of extra small arms ammunition, and 150 rounds for the two artillery pieces.

Standard Army-issue explosive shells and spherical case shot were obtained for the 12-pounder. Varying by source, there was either no ammunition whatsoever to be found for the Big Horn Gun or a handful of “shells” were found in Virginia City and transported to Bozeman.

William Cameron happened to be perusing the shelves in the general mercantile store in Bozeman and came across a stock of canned oysters whose tins were about eight inches long and of a perfect diameter to fit the bore of the Big Horn Gun. Cameron thought he could create some effective home-made canister rounds with the cans. The store’s majority owner, Lester S. Willson, was a former Union brevet brigadier general from New York, and he gladly donated the entire stock of oysters to the expedition.

“The boys”, as the members of the Yellowstone Wagon Road & Prospecting Expedition had come to be known, greatly enjoyed emptying the cans since oysters were a luxury item few of them could have afforded on their own. The empty tins were refilled with improvised shrapnel in the form of blacksmith scraps, nails, bolts, and even old horseshoes, chain links and broken tools cut up into small pieces, packed in sawdust. The open ends of the oyster cans had been carefully cut in a zig-zag pattern to form V-shaped tabs. The original can lids were replaced and crimped down with these tabs. Cameron also scrounged up a bolt of flue flannel cloth which he had sewn up into cylindrical bags sized to fit the Big Horn Gun’s bore and filled with pre-measured powder charges.

When test-fired, Cameron’s roll-your-own shrapnel, with its irregularly shaped bits and pieces, reportedly made strange whistling and warbling sounds as it hurtled through the air. Expedition member John “Jack” Bean later wrote, “Whenever this gun was fired every piece taken a direction of its own hollering, ‘Where is yee—where is yee—where is yee.’”

The expedition traveled approximately 600 miles along the Yellowstone, Rosebud and Little Bighorn drainages over a period of three months from February to May of 1874. In early April, the Sioux discovered the interlopers and from that point on the boys fought numerous small skirmishes and three full-blown battles with the Lakota and some Northern Cheyenne. Excellent rifle marksmanship, the two artillery pieces, and a great deal of pure dumb luck allowed the expedition to return to Bozeman having suffered only three casualties, two wounded and one dead.

Beginning during the night of April 3^rd and continuing through the morning of the 4^th, the boys fended off an attack by an estimated 600 Sioux warriors. One warrior rolled a sizeable cottonwood log up to an abandoned rifle pit on the edge of camp, dug a small firing port underneath it, and began slowly but accurately picking off the expedition’s horses and mules in the central corral one by one with a muzzle-loading rifle. Protected by the log and the foxhole, the boys were unable to silence this sniper with their own rifle fire.

An account published in 1883 said: “…Cameron was called on to take a shot at him with the big gun. He cut the fuse short on a shell and depressing the piece, fired. The Indian had put a large piece of dry wood in front of him, from which cover he had been firing in fancied security, and when the shell struck this it exploded and the Indian must have been torn into fragments, for no more bullets came from that place during the fight.”

Shortly afterwards: “When morning broke the heaviest firing came from an ash grove about one hundred and twenty-five yards distant. Cameron gave it two quick doses of canister and no more shots were fired from there.”

Jack Bean recalled, “As we examined the timber next morning we found it bullet holes from the top to the bottom.”

The expedition returned to Bozeman in early May of 1874 and the Big Horn Gun reverted to its role as Fourth of July noise-maker. The following June, however, yet another private expedition of Bozeman adventurers set out with four home-made wooden flat boats down the Yellowstone River and they too brought along the Big Horn Gun. Swollen by snow melt from the mountains, the river was roaring along with a 12 mph current, and the unwieldy boat carrying the cannon capsized in a set of rapids. A shore party of about two dozen mounted men had accompanied the boats. One of them was none other than Walter Cooper, who led the efforts that managed to recover the gun from the bottom of the river.

          Near the mouth of the Big Horn River, the men built a stockaded trading post they grandly called Fort Pease, mounting the Big Horn Gun atop one wall. A bit of a stalemate ensued. While the Sioux lacked the firepower to destroy the fort outright, the white men could hardly step outside of the stockade without being attacked. The area was still ceded to the tribes by treaty, so a column of US Army troops from Fort Ellis was ordered to evacuate the white men whether they wanted to go or not. The Big Horn Gun had to be left behind; the Sioux wasted no time burning the abandoned fort to the ground.

          Six years later, in 1881, Walter Cooper returned to the site and while poking through the ruins of the old fort he found the Big Horn Gun’s barrel intact, rusting in the weeds. He managed to get the gun freighted back to Bozeman where he again restored it at his store, the Armory & Gun Shop. The cannon was then placed on display near the front door with a placard that read:

“The ‘frontdoor’ is open

I have come home to rest

My voice will be heard again

When the iron horse approaches.”

Indeed, when the first passenger train of the Northern Pacific Railroad arrived in Bozeman on March 21, 1883, the Big Horn Gun was dusted off and fired several times in celebration from a bald hill on the east edge of town.

Cooper kept the Big Horn Gun for the rest of his life. His daughter Virginia Bunker Barnett inherited it and eventually presented it to Gallatin County in 1926. In 1936, it was placed on a concrete stand in front of the newly-completed Gallatin County Courthouse. There it resided peacefully for many years and everyone assumed the Big Horn Gun had long since fired its last shot.

On the morning of March 20, 1957, however, an explosion awoke residents, including the sheriff, on the west side of Bozeman at 12:38 AM. Upon investigation, it was found that vandals had loaded the old cannon with black powder and a tin full of rocks and scrap metal and touched it off. Shrapnel broke windows across the street in the high school and concussion cracked or broke several windows behind it in the courthouse. Shortly thereafter, the barrel of the Big Horn Gun was poured full of concrete to prevent any recurrence of the dangerous prank.

In 1994, several interested local individuals took it upon themselves to restore the Big Horn Gun to its former glory. The concrete was carefully drilled out of the bore, but bits of it still remained stuck to the metal. Hydrochloric acid was tried in an attempt to dissolve the remaining concrete, but it boiled over, scarring the top of the barrel, which had to be sanded and polished and re-browned. Western historian and author Don Weibert and his father Henry used old hand tools originally belonging to Don’s grandfather and took the better part of an entire winter to build a new carriage for the cannon. It features hand-worked iron fittings, a blond laminated cottonwood stock and tow arm and spoked, iron-rimmed white oak wagon wheels.

 Restored to its former glory and bearing a plaque in memory of the Weiberts, the Big Hole Gun now resides in the Gallatin History Museum located at 317 West Main in Bozeman, Montana.

YOU MIGHT BE A RURAL MONTANAN IF...

So, when I went into town the other day and discovered the cafe was closed because they were shipping cattle, that struck me as a perfect candidate for Jeff Foxworthy's "You might be a redneck" shtick. It got me to thinking, always a painful experience these days, about a list of similiar wisecracks that might fit under the heading of, "You might be a rural Montanan if..."

1.     The restaurant in town is closed for cattle shipping day.

2.     You tell guests coming to visit, “If we’ve had any recent rain, better put ‘er in four-wheel-drive at the bottom of the hill.”

3.     You’ve ever had an elk lick all the seed out of your bird feeder.

4.     You’ve ever swept goat poop off the porch.

5.     You know the ballistics for a 180-grain .30-06 all the way to 600 yards but can’t remember your anniversary.

6.     The subject of the ballistics for a 180-grain .30-06 actually comes up in routine, everyday conversations.

7.     Rubbing elbows with celebrities means one of the Ringling Five changed the oil in your truck.

8.     Until age 45, you always changed your own oil.

9.     You’ve ever attended a high school football game where they had to remove elk or bison dung from off the field.

10.            You laugh uproariously almost to the first commercial break before you realize the nature documentary on wolf reintroduction you're watching is not actually a brilliant satire.

11.             “Waving to the neighbors” means raising one finger of the hand on the steering wheel.

12.             You’ve ever used a clump of switch grass in lieu of toilet paper.

13.             You’ve ever removed a window screen so that you could shoot a gopher.

14.             You know that only two things can spook a horse; things that move and things that don’t.

15.             You know what burning hair smells like.

16.             You refer to the cows you see by breed.

17.             You didn’t realize you had a mirror on the passenger door of your truck until your dog died.

18.             Changing attire for a social event includes switching from an open carry .44 Magnum to a concealed carry .45 ACP.

19.             You’ve ever used duct tape to mend clothing or footwear.

20.            You’re secretly really glad cell phone coverage in your area sucks so that you never had to actually get one of those damn things.

21.             You think “Skype” is just a sound you make when you kneel on a prickly pear.

22.            You think being a vegetarian means eating only grass-fed beef.