Harvesting Larch Cones, with a bang!

I'll be the first to admit my blogging lately has been lacking. In the summer we try and cram as much as possible into every day and finally fall exhausted into bed late every night. I will though, try and get back into it, since I do enjoy sharing with you and hearing your feedback on our experiences and posts. Soon, I'll get back to news about the bees, the garden crops, and I'll tell you all about our adventure of introducing the young hens into the big flock, but tonight I wanted to tell you about one day harvesting larch cones with rifles!

Western Larch (Larrix occidentalis) is one of our native trees here in Western MT and is one of my favorite all around trees for several reasons. Chiefly, it is beautiful. With a growth form similar to conifers (pines, firs and such) the larch is special because it shows off every fall by turning from green to yellow and finally golden before loosing it's needles for the winter. Secondly, the larch is a wonderful timber tree and produces tight grained, high quality wood that has been sought after by builders for generations. It is an important wildlife tree, and finally the dead dry larch is some of the best firewood available in the Rocky Mountain region.   

One aspect of Whitney's job with the Forest Service, is reforestation, which includes collecting cones for seed, that will be sown and grown at the nursery in Coeur 'de Alene, ID. The seeds from Whit's trees wind up getting planted all over the region reforesting areas that were burned, logged or deforested by beetles. In most cases cone collection is done by tree climbers who ascend the tree via rope. But the larch is different. Since the branches are too brittle to support a person's weight, the tree mush be felled to access the cones. But you have to be sure the cones are good before you fell the tree. So, how do you do that when the cones are 70 - 100' up? With firepower!

Whit takes aim at a larch branch with her 6.5x55 Swede

One Saturday this summer, Whit needed to go out and check the cone crop in a stand of larch to see if there were enough seeds in the cones to make cone collection viable. Since it was a Saturday and I wasn't busy, I went along for the fun.  Often the job of shooting down branches is left to the Law Enforcement Ranger, but in this case we got the okay to do it ourselves.


She got this beauty with two shots!

We headed up the mountain and arrived at the stand just as the afternoon winds kicked up (I had forgotten there was a Red-Flag warning for high winds that day!). Undaunted, Whit got out her trusty Swedish Mauser and with just 2 shots dropped a branch loaded with cones!
On the next branch, she nearly dropped it with 2 shots again, but let me hit it a few times since I was starting to feel left out. ;-)

cutting the cones to look for seeds.

Once we had a good sample of cones to work with, Whit cut them open to inspect the seeds. In this case the seeds were too few and of too poor quality to warrant dropping any trees. Larch like all fruit bearing trees have good years and lean years, it just turns out this was a lean year for the trees in that stand. So in the end, no trees were dropped to find out the seeds were poor, and we had a heck of a good time getting the job done!
Until next time, thanks for reading.
KJ

Hunt 2011

It's been a great hunting season!

 Early on in the season, we enjoyed a really fun camping trip with friends, and I took some rides looking for elk. While these outings didn't turn up any game, they were both very worthwhile hunting trips. Hunting is about a lot more than bagging a trophy. A big part of the experience is spending time with great people in the places that we love. This season we were really excited to have Whitney's Dad here for a couple of weekends.

We've had a great time with Gary revisiting some old favorite hunting places and trying out some new ones. We took long hikes, at times not seeing anything. Other times we saw many deer, and even a herd of cow elk. One day Gary and I saw nothing but some mountain lion and really large wolf tracks.

 Eventually, Whitney and I were both successful filling our buck tags, each taking nice mule deer. We got to share the experience with Gary which made it even more enjoyable.  We've both shot deer with larger racks in years past, but we are meat hunters first and foremost, and these will be good eating. These two deer will keep us well fed for the next year, I'm really looking forward to the tenderloins! We'll let them hang for a week and then the work starts. Until then we still have some time left to look for elk, and I'm looking forward to hunting with  a good buddy next weekend.

No matter what the outcome, when you spend time in the hills with great people it's a great season!

Whitney's First Buck

Whitney's First Buck!





Whitney bagged her first buck this fall, a beautiful mule deer 4 by 4. Whitney did a great job hunting this buck and made a very good single shot. We are both very greatful for this successful hunt and I am looking forward to the rest of the hunting season.
I hope you are all well and happy, and of course, Go Griz!
Kyle

Antelope Country

Whitney and I took our second trip to antelope country this year, here are a few pictures from our adventure.

This picture shows some of the area we were hunting. Anyone who says central Montana is flat has never hiked it!

This is a bunch of antelope we watched quite a bit. There was some very nice bucks in that herd, but of course they never came anywhere near the property we could hunt.

After a lot of hiking, we found a bunch that we could hunt. We managed to belly crawl within 130 yards, and each made a goot shot. This is the view from where the shot was taken looking at me standing where the animals are.

Whit's first animal wasn't the big buck she was hoping for, but she made a good clean shot and can certainly be proud to have filled her antelope tag.

The dogs were very excited to come with us to retrieve the game, wearing orange of course!

I loaded both critters on the game cart, and we made our way back to the truck, about 1.5 miles.
It was a great trip, and fun to see some country new to us. Now both of these animals are cut and wrapped in the freezer, and we are looking forward to the general season opener on sunday!

That's all for now - Kyle