Seahawkfan
New member
- Joined
- Jun 10, 2025
- Messages
- 22
Spent 8 days total, 2 long weekends in southwest Montana, probably my favorite yearly trip of the year. Been taking my kids with me since I could strap them to my back. 20 years later kids are mostly grown and its seems that they are busy doing life. Was lucky to get my oldest boy to come along this year. I call it hiking with a gun because a bear would really have to be something unique, different color and size wise to get the rifle out. Not so much for my kids, just like me at that age any legal bear is in trouble. love Montana and all the opportunity, open places to explore, and beauty it holds. always sucks driving back to the city knowing the work, traffic, everyday life etc etc are to follow. Nothing like being in the middle of a canyon on a glassing knob, looking in every direction and all you see is mountains makes you feel pretty small.
Couple observations over the years. Holy cow has spring bear hunting gotten popular! Years ago, you could go a whole week and maybe see a couple Montana residents out mostly just for a ride with a bear tag in their pocket. Usually thinking us out of state people were crazy for paying nonresident prices to come to hunt bears. Now a days it's more like the opener of the Utah general season deer hunt. atvs,utvs,motorcyles zooming down every road legal and not legal place they can find. Can't really be to upset with it, i was once those guys with the excitement of going to Montana on a bear hunt at one time. Pulling up to one of the old reliable trailheads where a bear sighting was almost guaranteed and there's 5-10 trucks already there is a little bit of a bummer. Just makes you find new areas to explore i guess, just kind of crazy looking back on what it used to be.
Second observation, southwest Montana has a grizzly bear problem. hopefully soon the states will be able to put their own management plans into place and hopefully they thin the population down. It's been getting worse and worse every year for the 20 years I've been going but to the extent that there's multiple grizzly's in almost every drainage. I am not a biologist nor do i claim to be but, in my opinion, they could at least use a hunt to put some sort of fear in the bears so human contact wasn't so frequent. last three years keeping track its almost 2/1 ratio I'm seeing grizzly bears to Black bears. Again, no biologist and maybe that's the ratio they were going for, personally I'd rather have it the other way around.
Still a great couple of weekends spent in a place I'm envious some people call home, if i ever hit the lotto! Hope everyone had a good safe spring that made it out this year.
Couple observations over the years. Holy cow has spring bear hunting gotten popular! Years ago, you could go a whole week and maybe see a couple Montana residents out mostly just for a ride with a bear tag in their pocket. Usually thinking us out of state people were crazy for paying nonresident prices to come to hunt bears. Now a days it's more like the opener of the Utah general season deer hunt. atvs,utvs,motorcyles zooming down every road legal and not legal place they can find. Can't really be to upset with it, i was once those guys with the excitement of going to Montana on a bear hunt at one time. Pulling up to one of the old reliable trailheads where a bear sighting was almost guaranteed and there's 5-10 trucks already there is a little bit of a bummer. Just makes you find new areas to explore i guess, just kind of crazy looking back on what it used to be.
Second observation, southwest Montana has a grizzly bear problem. hopefully soon the states will be able to put their own management plans into place and hopefully they thin the population down. It's been getting worse and worse every year for the 20 years I've been going but to the extent that there's multiple grizzly's in almost every drainage. I am not a biologist nor do i claim to be but, in my opinion, they could at least use a hunt to put some sort of fear in the bears so human contact wasn't so frequent. last three years keeping track its almost 2/1 ratio I'm seeing grizzly bears to Black bears. Again, no biologist and maybe that's the ratio they were going for, personally I'd rather have it the other way around.
Still a great couple of weekends spent in a place I'm envious some people call home, if i ever hit the lotto! Hope everyone had a good safe spring that made it out this year.
