{ title: 'Wescolite (Dillon, Mont) 1949-2009, October 07, 2001, Page 7, Image 7', download_links: [ { link: 'http://www.loc.gov/rss/ndnp/ndnp.xml', label: 'application/rss+xml', meta: 'News about Chronicling America - RSS Feed', }, { link: '/lccn/Wescolite/2001-10-07/ed-1/seq-7.png', label: 'image/png', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/Wescolite/2001-10-07/ed-1/seq-7.pdf', label: 'application/pdf', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/Wescolite/2001-10-07/ed-1/seq-7/ocr.xml', label: 'application/xml', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/Wescolite/2001-10-07/ed-1/seq-7/ocr.txt', label: 'text/plain', meta: '', }, ] }
About Wescolite (Dillon, Mont) 1949-2009 | View This Issue
Wescolite (Dillon, Mont), 07 Oct. 2001, located at <http://montananewspapers.org/lccn/Wescolite/2001-10-07/ed-1/seq-7/>, image provided by MONTANA NEWSPAPERS, Montana Historical Society, Helena, Montana.
Cows or Geese--Which is the better prize? by Tim Viano When I was fifteen years old, I went to Eureka, Montana, for the Fourth of July. Eu reka is a small town; small enought that you can walk to any store in town. My grandpar ents lived on the outskirts of town and owned a cow pasture that had the Tobacco River running through it. This would be a good time to introduce my cousin Colter. Colter is a ten-year-old boy weighing in at ninety-five pounds. Colter is the type of kid that likes blood and guts, and is always getting into trouble. I’m sorry to say that if he doesn’t find trouble, your can bet it will find him. Andrew, my other cousin, is amild-man- nered kid and only a year younger than Colter, but was just as big. Andrew is the type of kid that likes to have fun but be safe at the same time. He learned at a young that he gets hurt easily. Andrew is smarter than Colter, but not tougher. Anyway, back to the story. It’s the Fourth, and Andrew and Colter wanted some fireworks. It was hot and we did not want to walk. I was the oldest, so I asked if one of the adults would take us to get fire works. Even though I was polite,mo one I asked responded; it was kind of like talking, to a bloated, drunken old man. So we pooled our money and started walking. Since it was so hot, Andrew suggested that we take a shortcut through the pasture. What was a bigger bonus about taking the shortcut was that we could jump in the river. Appar ently a drunken river floater was also thinking it would be nice to float the river on such a nice day. he sat in a black inner tube with a metal cooler tied to his foot. Colter, always wanting to go first, ran up to the bridge and jumped. Andrew and I waited for a splash, but all we heard was a thud, we ran to the edge and looked over; there was the floater cussing and yelling that “that young boy just dented his Gol-dem cooler!” When the man put the lid down on the cooler, I saw a sticker that said “Will Log For Food’’with the imprint of Colter’s face right in the center. We looked at Colter, and to our surprise, he had a smile on his face! He asked, “What did I hit?” That’s when we knew he was okay. Andrew and I jumped in, and we eventually headed for the fireworks stand. We were about out of the pasture when the three of us looked at each other, asking, “Who farted?” No one claimed it. Still arguing about whos it was, we came upon a dead cow. Andrew and Colter both agreed that it was, in fact, a big, bloated, dead cow. Since Andrew was the competitive one, he challenged Colter to a contest--a contest to see who could get closest to the cow before having to turn around. Colter’s turn started well; that is, until his foot became entangled in some loose barbed wire. He ended up tripping and landing face-first in the cow. When Colter finally got up from the cow, he was sick for a really long time. He tried running to me, but I didn’t want anything to do with him. I can’t remember who told him to run back to the river, but he did. While Colter was in the river, Andrew and I went to get the fireworks. We ended up getting in trouble for leaving Colter. from Hunt, page 6 shot across the field from them. The climb was steep and very tiring. When we got to the edge o f the clearing, the elk had moved farther into the timber and it was not quite light enough to take that long a shot. So we headed back to the truck to rethink our strategy. My dad and I were going to creep through the timber while Bud and Glen sat in the truck and hoped that we would chase the elk out to them. As we started through the thick lodge-poles, our eyes were peeled in hopes o f seeing the big one. Both o f us had cow tags and were planning on filling them before the day was done, the walk was quiet and the light snow on the ground made it easy to track the elk. It was easy to tell that we were coming up on the elk because of their definite stench; they smell like a wet dog covered in urine. I noticed some movement on the field above us, so I crouched down and waited to see what was coming my way. Five elk came running down the hill. I could have gotten a shot off, but the sight got my heart racing. I kept on sneaking through the woods. When I reached the end of the trail, I met up with my dad in the field above and started down, to the truck. We were about halfway down when my dad heard some thing running through the trees, the elk came pouring out of the trees into a saddle that we were walking next to. I hopped the fence, got down and took aim. The elk were running bunched up so I had to wait for a lone cow to come out of the timber. My dad was up above me waiting for me to shoot before he fired. Finally a lone cow stumbled out of the woods, across the fence. Shaking, I took aim and fired. I saw it fall and get back up, but this time she was moving a little slower; it seemed as though she was missing a leg. I shot again; this time it was a direct hit. She spun around and fell to the ground. I heard a shot above me and I figured my dad got himself an elk as well. I went down and tagged my elk, gutted it and went to find my dad. Sure enough, he was gutting his elk. Glen and Bud were now on their way to help us pick up the elk. An elk can be very hard to load into a truck if you’re doing it by yourself, so it was pretty nice having four guys to help. Both elk were by the road, so we didn’t have to drag them; that was a definite plus. After loading the truck with two big cows we went looking for Bud and Glen’s elk. Before the end of the day, they had both gotten good-sized elk. We had to put two elk in our truck and two in Glen’s. They didn’t fit very well. After filling our tags and loading the elk we headed for home. That was the end of that hunting season. Everybody filled their tags that day. It .couldn’t have been a more successful hunt.
