Every fall, the folks at Missoula Firefighters Local 271 hand us a stack of raffle tickets and give us the easiest job of the year: help them sell them. This is the third year running for their raffle, and every dollar it brings in goes right back out to community charities — the unglamorous, behind-the-scenes kind of help that keeps neighbors on their feet and rarely gets a thank-you. The prize at the center of it is a three-day guided cow elk hunt for two hunters on a private ranch in eastern Montana, held in January or February, with the winning party working directly with the outfitter to lock in dates and pick up tags (Elk B tags are over the counter — $20 for Montana residents, $270 for nonresidents). What makes this one genuinely worth your attention is the math: they cap it at 260 tickets and every ticket is $50. That’s a real, believable shot at a guided hunt, not the usual long-odds daydream.
Second place is no consolation bracket — it’s a package from Montana Knife Company built around their extremely popular Elk Knife, a blade people ask about by name. Third place and several spots below that get a one-year OnX Hunt Premium membership, the kind of tool that turns a confusing season into a good one. Stack those up against a $50 entry and the odds of walking away with something are better than any raffle I’ve seen at this price. Tickets are available by scanning the QR code on the flyer below, emailing santosm@ci.missoula.mt.us, or reaching out to @missoulafirefighters on Instagram or Missoula Firefighters Local 271 on Facebook. We’d love to see this sell out fast, so grab a ticket, forward this to the hunting buddy who’s always talking about elk, and let these people see that the community they turn out for at 2 a.m. turns out for them too!!
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