Grant Winn, of Missoula, took this bear on Saturday, May 18th.  It was close to 20 years-old and came from the Five-mile pack.

Nice job, Grant!

Are you in the market for a new truck, but you don’t want to lose any beefiness?  Well, according to the following article, written by Justin Houston, Chevies are where you should start!

See how Houston believes you can keep your ride macho without losing functionality:

What we drive is as much of an extension of our personalities as the clothes we wear, the politicians we vote for and the stores we shop in. And, let’s face it, guys: We care more than our wives and kids do about what our cars say about us.

Here are a few Man Vehicles, starting with the a couple from the 2013 Chevy lineup, that can double as a taxi for the kids yet still be macho rides.

2013 Chevrolet Silverado K15 4WD — It gets 18 mpg on the highway, which for a four-wheel drive truck, is pretty decent. It has four doors, so there is plenty of room for the kids in the back. If you add a cap on the back, your camping gear won’t get wet in the rain. Remove the cap and your kid taxi transforms into a work truck with enough space to haul employees around.

2013 Chevrolet Express 1500 2WD Passenger — This is more for the father who needs to haul around tools or tow a boat or camper, but it still has plenty of room for the kids. While it gets the poorest gas mileage of everything on the list at 13 mpg on the highway, it is highly versatile and comfortable. Remove the last row of seats when you need to haul things other than people.

2013 Ford F150 Raptor Pickup 4WD — Ford’s Baja crusher isn’t great on gas, at 16 mpg highway, but it is cool. Its aggressive stance, big tires and sophisticated suspension make is as good off-road as it is on. Available with four doors, it can also haul the kids around.

2013 GMC Sierra 15 Hybrid 4WD — The Sierra beats out both Chevy and Ford for fuel mileage, getting 23 mpg on the highway. This is also a great double-duty truck, with plenty of room for the kids in the four-door model, and plenty of get-up-and-go for towing or work.

2013 Honda Ridgeline Truck 4WD — Honda’s pickup straddles the line of toughness and functionality. It gets 21 mpg on the highway in four-wheel drive. This truck also has four doors, making it super easy to add car seats or to use it for work, towing or other heavy-duty “dad stuff,” even though the bed is a bit shorter than the domestics.

2013 Nissan Titan 4WD — At only 17 mpg on the highway, the Titan is down at the bottom end with Ford as far as fuel mileage. But with its four doors and decent size bed, it makes a great truck for towing, working and as a kid taxi.

2013 Lexus RX 450h — The luxury SUV beats out most others on this list, but it is a hybrid and is not four-wheel drive. That doesn’t mean it’s not versatile, though. At 28 mpg, you can go far, fit the kids in the back and have room in the rear of this SUV to haul fishing gear, camping gear or tools.

2013 Ford Explorer AWD FFV — The Explorer is perfect for those families who insist on a flex fuel vehicle. While running on regular fuel, the Ford Explorer gets 23 mpg on the highway; however, if you use E85, the fuel mileage drops to 17 mpg on the highway. With plenty of room in the back for the family, this all-wheel-drive vehicle will take you anywhere you need to go.

2013 Mazda 5 — The crossover gets an impressive 28 mpg on the highway and is perfect for hauling kids to school functions or for taking the entire family on a long trip. Dads also have space in the rear to store camping gear, fishing gear or tools if they need to use the vehicle for work.

*all MPG stats are courtesy of www.fueleconomy.gov.

Sign up time is here for the popular Open Fields for Game Bird Hunters program.

Open Fields for Game Bird Hunters is a voluntary program that pays landowners an add-on payment for lands enrolled in the federal Conservation Reserve Program. Open Fields is aimed at conserving Montana’s productive game bird habitats enrolled in CRP—and at providing additional public hunting access for upland game bird hunting.

Counties eligible for program participation are: Cascade, Chouteau, Daniels, Dawson, Fallon, Fergus, Glacier, McCone, Pondera, Prairie, Richland, Roosevelt, Sheridan, Teton, Toole, Valley, and Wibaux. The program is available for new or existing CRP-enrolled lands that have a minimum of three years left on the contract.

“Open Fields clearly has helped producers with their decision to enroll their land in CRP,” said Jeff Hagener, director of Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks in Helena.

For contract terms five years and greater, the CRP acres may incur one haying or grazing event. Scheduled maintenance or an emergency provision is considered one event. CRP acres enrolled for three and four years are not eligible for any haying or grazing events.

In return, participating landowners receive $5-per-acre each year the land is enrolled in the program. Enrolled lands must be clearly posted for walk-in game bird hunting. Because this program is intended to expand areas open to the public for game bird hunting, lands that are already enrolled in FWP’s Block Management Program or the Upland Game Bird Enhancement Program do not qualify.

Applications for Open Fields for Game Bird Hunters may be submitted May 20 through June 14. For more information and an application, visit FWP online at fwp.mt.gov; then click “For Fish & Wildlife Information.”

Send applications to: Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks – Wildlife Division; Attention: Upland Game Bird Habitat Enhancement Program; P.O. Box 200701; Helena, MT 59620.

For details, contact FWP at: 406-444-2612, or by e-mail: fwpwld@mt.gov.

The Onyx Type III Flotation Jacket, in particular, is a heavy-duty jacket that has a built-in personal flotation device that is Coast Guard approved!  According to sportsmansguide.com, these jackets provide better hypothermia protection than a traditional life vest and are comfortable for all-day wear.

The coolest thing about these is that a lot of people don’t wear life jackets while they are boating, but they have life jackets in the boat.  With a flotation jacket, you are protected as long as you’re wearing your jacket!

The price tag on this particular PFD jacket is somewhere around $100.00.  I am pretty sure I will be adding one of these to my hunting/trapping/fishing wardrobe collection.

Attention Montana Bear Hunters:

This is Joe from the Yellowstone Country Bear Hunters Association with your weekly bear hunting tip.

Utilization of a predator call can be a very effective way to hunt mid/late spring black bears. As spring progresses so does a bears appetite. In mid to late may bears, especially boars are covering a lot of ground looking for food other than grass and clover. Find an area with good sign and bear habitats. The ideal situation for calling is to spot a bear and then begin calling. Be patient and continue calling the entire sit. Bears have a short attention span, so if one is headed your way DON’T STOP CALLING.

Stay tuned next week for another calling tip!

For more bear hunting tips and tricks visit our website at www.ycbha.org or follow us on Facebook & Twitter.

The Ravalli County Fish & Wildlife Association is hosting  an elk summit presentation by Montana FWP on Tuesday, May 21st, 6:30 p.m. at the Bitterroot River Inn in Hamilton.

Topics covered will be the spring elk flight survey, updates on the elk research program in the upper Bitterroot and data from the newly completed Bitterroot mountain lion study.

This presentation is free of charge and open to the public.

For all hunters that are interested in your elk B, deer B and antelope licenses, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks reminds you that the deadline to apply is June 1st.

FWP encourages hunters to apply early and online, at fwp.mt.gov, for special big game hunting licenses.

Good luck!

The Montana’s Fish, Wildlife & Parks Commission is seeking public comment on changes for the 2013-14 wolf hunting and trapping seasons.

For the upcoming seasons, archery only hunting would run from Sept. 7 through Sept. 14. The general hunting season would follow and run Sept. 15 through March 31, 2014. The trapping season would run Dec. 15 through Feb. 28, 2014 and those new to wolf trapping would have to complete an education course to participate.

Hunting and trapping of wolves is provided for in Montana’s wolf conservation and management plan. Over the course of Montana’s 2012-13 wolf seasons, hunters harvested 128 wolves and trappers took 97 wolves.

The overall bag limit for the upcoming seasons would be five wolves per person in any combination of wolves taken by hunting or trapping.

Wolf quotas would be maintained in areas near national parks, with a quota of seven wolves in an expanded Wolf Management Unit 316 near Yellowstone National Park and a quota of two wolves in WMU 110 near Glacier National Park.

Also proposed for the 2013-14 seasons is a regulation that would allow hunters to take a wolf over bait placed for trapping and a requirement that trappers in most of Montana would be required to set pan tensions to 10 pounds to minimize the unintentional trapping of lynx, wolverines and other nontargeted species.

The complete wolf hunting and trapping season proposals, and opportunities to comment and submit public comments, are available on the FWP website. To comment, and to find more details on the proposed changes beginning May 13, visit FWP’s website at fwp.mt.gov. Click “Hunting.” Comments are due by June 24 at 5 PM. Comments can be mailed to FWP – Wildlife Bureau, Attn: Public Comment; P.O. Box 200701; Helena, MT 59620-0701.

In Montana, officials estimate that at least 625 wolves, in 147 verified packs, and 37 breeding pairs inhabited the state at the end of 2012.

Delisting allows Montana to manage wolves in a manner similar to how bears, mountain lions and other wildlife species are managed, guided completely by state management plans and laws.

Graphic billboards are now up targeting unsuspecting tourists near Yellowstone Park.

The roads in Yellowstone are nearly 100 percent open and the estimated 3.5 million visitors this year are being targeted by an animal rights movement against wolf management.

The movement called Project Wolf, have funded billboards located in or near entrances to Yellowstone Park including Cody, Wyoming; the Montana cities of Bozeman and Red Lodge; and Rexburg, Idaho.

It seems clear that the organization behind the billboards intends to evoke emotion and raise controversy over wolf management practices and are using graphic images to lure tourists to their cause.

Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has stepped forward and addressed the regional advertiser that displayed the billboards. Here is a paragraph pulled from Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation President & CEO David Allen’s letter addressed to manager of Palmer Outdoor Advertising an advertising company that claims they have no choice but to display the disturbing images:

The billboard in question references an organization called projectwolf.org; a group of organizations who lost the discussion/debate on wolf management in the laboratories, the legal court rooms, and the court of public opinion in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. These organizations pretend to stand for conservation and science-based management of wildlife, yet they contribute nothing to wildlife conservation. Instead, they seek financial donations and put nothing forth to truly conserve and manage our wildlife.

Read David Allen’s full letter on RMEF blog here. To weigh in on the issue, go to the On Your Own Adventures Hunt Talk forum.

Montana is rattlesnake country, whether we’ve actually seen one or not.

There are kits that you can buy in case you are ever bitten by a rattler, and one of those venom extractor kits actually saved an Alabama hunter’s life! It might be a good idea for all Montana hunters to carry one of these kits in their packs.

Check out this story from WSFA.com:

It happened Sunday morning in the woods near the Farmington subdivision on Old Carter Hill Road.

“I was turkey hunting. I got a good look at the snake. He was about 6 foot long,” Montgomery resident Chad Cross said.

Cross says a timber rattlesnake; a venomous pit viper bit him in the lower leg.

“[The] Best way I can describe it as someone taking a full swing with a baseball bat and hitting me in my calf,” Cross said.

The bite marks are still visible through his hunting boots. Cross was alone.

“I was so nervous and scared. I knew I had to calm down and get my heart rate down because the faster my heart was pumping, the faster my heart was pumping I knew the faster that venom was going through my system,” Cross said.

Cross know he had to take action, so he pulled out his bite and sting venom extraction kit.

“I had to read the directions first because I never opened it up. I’ve carried it with me in my turkey hunting equipment for years. The process takes a total of 15 minutes and then it says to get someone with anti-venom,” Cross said.

Cross demonstrated how he used the kit.

“This is the actual cup that I used. You got different sizes depending on your bite that you are treating. But you just insert it in. You pull the plunger out and you put it over the individual wound/hole and as you push the plunger in, it creates a suction you can see it pulls a little bit of skin up in, but that’s what pulled it all out and I think saved my life,” Cross said.

And when he got to the hospital, the doctor agreed.

“He said, if you got a full dose of venom in you. You would have died before you ever made it back to your truck if you hadn’t had that kit with you,” Cross said.

Cross says turkey season ends next Tuesday and his goal is to get in a few more hunting trips before then. By the way, Cross says those bite kits cost about $10. You can find them online or at local outdoor stores.

Cross says was in the hospital for two days. He received a tetanus shot, antibiotics and pain medicine. He says so far, no nerve or tissue damage has been discovered. Cross says he says a follow-up visit next week. Cross says doctors at Baptist East say they see an average of 6 snake bites per year.