There was more than a storm that came through on the evening of June 14th, up Ambrose Creek in the foothills of the Sapphire Mountain range. While the cows grazed under the stormy skies, a band of wolves lurked along the tree line. The lead wolf gave chase with the pack following, causing the herd to stampede, destroying a fence, breaking off posts and flattening it for several yards as they ran downhill back towards the safety of the ranch. In the aftermath, a lone cow and calf were found laying dead.

This is not a fictional story line, it’s an actual event that happened during the evening hours of Monday, June 14th. Early Monday morning, a rancher who grazes this cattle in the summer on the Bolin Ranch saddled up and he and his crew pushed his cows up into the mountains of the Bolin Ranch northeast of Stevensville. Both cattle and rancher happy for the summer months when they get to spend their time grazing. Or that’s the way it’s always been over the past decades. Not so true these days!

Tuesday morning, Don at the Bolin Ranch called the rancher and told him that the cows were back down on the foothills. So he loaded up his fencing equipment and headed back to the mountains to see where they had gotten through and mend the fence. He thought it shouldn’t take more then a couple hours, right? Wrong!

Arriving they were amazed at the devastation that lay in front of them, an entire section of fence down with posts broken off at the ground. Wondering what would have caused the herd to stampede, they got busy fixing fence. Walking back up the hill after they finished, they looked towards the old homestead on the place and spotted what appeared to be a cow, arriving at the scene, he not only found a dead cow, but also a dead calf. It appeared that they had been run straight into the outside walls of the old barn, and half eaten remains of the two were left laying.

The Fish and Game were contacted immediately and arriving the next afternoon they investigated the remains and determined that it was indeed a wolf pack kill. They got in touch with Fish, Wildlife & Parks wolf team, who took action by flying the area and locating the alpha female in the Three Mile Game Range. They said they would continue to monitor the pack. Supposedly there are 8 wolves in this pack plus the alpha female and her 5 pups.

Since Thursday, June 17th they continue flying over the area between Burnt Fork and the Three Mile Game Range a couple of times a day. They’ve been able to keep track of the alpha female who wears a chip and has been spotted on both ends of the area, including one sighting where they spotted her approximately 300 yards from where the rancher and Don were fixing fence on the foothills within earshot of the Bolin Ranch. An eerie feeling, to say the least!

Other ranchers in Ambrose and the Three Mile Creek areas have also been concerned about their herds and have started regular patrols of their mountain pastures. It was rumored that there was another cow found half eaten, but this has not been confirmed as of yet.

Over the past couple of months, a neighbor to the south of the Bolin Ranch has acknowledged several sightings of wolves from their home, which is nestled along the tree line. On one sighting the wolves had one of their goats in their mouth, they yelled at it and the wolf dropped the goat and ran off. Being new to the area they did not realize they should have reported the incident to FWP.

Most current sighting: June 27th, my cousin who lives farther up Ambrose then our ranch, let her kids sleep outside in their yard. At about 1:30 a.m. the kids came in very frightened saying that there were a bunch of dogs or something outside chasing their neighbors’ horses. My dogs were barking too, but I did think to get up and investigate. This morning the neighbor’s mule was found dead very close to my cousin’s house.

Questions that come to my mind even more then wondering just how many ranchers in this area does it take to lose before drastic action will be taken? Like so many other Montana regions livestock is their primary income.

How much longer will it be before they’re attacking our children as they campout in the backyard?

Is it safe to hike in the mountains any longer?

How does the rancher get reimbursed for the materials to repair their fences?

How does the rancher get reimbursed for the fuel costs to patrol their lands?

How does the rancher get help to pay the extra help for 24 hour patrol? And if he can’t get help and has to patrol himself, who’s going to be the one tending to the irrigation water, hay crops and thousands of other things that need tending to on a farm or ranch?

I’m a native of the Bitterroot Valley and it’s disheartening to me to think that my grandchildren cannot enjoy the same mountains the way I did as a child. Riding horses or motorcycles to the mountains was something we did regularly, without a parent or a gun. You wouldn’t catch me up there these days without a gun or means to protect myself.

Letters to the Editor

Results of free market economics

Dear Editor,

Want less government? Gotta love that oil spill!

Yep! That’s right! Here’s how it works.

The big oil companies spent untold millions on lobbyists to oppose government-mandated BOPs (blow out preventers) on their deep water rigs. They lost. The BOPs cost around $50 million, maybe 10 or 15 minutes’ worth of net profits.

The gov’t regulations also mandated a testing schedule and required maintenance – it’s designed as a triple redundancy, fail safe device. The BOP on BP’s Deep Water Horizon rig in the gulf was shown, during tests, to have a dead back up battery and to be leaking hydraulic fluid – both conditions are mandated to require immediate service. There is also evidence that during a scheduled test, part of the BOP was severely damaged.

The Deep Water Horizon was already way behind schedule. In an effort to cut costs, not only were these conditions ignored, other actions, universally proven to be very risky, were employed. The result was a runaway blowout.

In totally ignoring gov’t mandates and regulations, BP acted as if there were none – essentially, the much-touted free market, unencumbered by gov’t regulation, at work.

Hope all you folks who want less government are happy.

Not only has this attitude put thousands more folks out of work and destroyed their lifestyles, it’s destroyed a very valuable part of the world’s ecosystem. No matter what your politics or religion, we only have ONE earth – but that’s another subject.

You want less government in your life? Here are 3 easy steps:

1. If you’re on Medicare or Medicaid or if you have children or grandchildren in the CHIPS program, you need to immediately drop out of those programs, negotiate your own health care and pay full price for any meds prescribed by your new doctors.

2. If you’re receiving Social Security benefits or any form of disability payments, you need to immediately opt out of those programs. In fact, you should repay every penny – with interest!

3. You need to pack up and head to Louisiana. There you can volunteer to clean the beaches and estuaries or take care of seniors or provide day care for children. Or you can clean houses or help feed all the folks out of work thanks to the BP spill. Or just pay their mortgages, utility bills, insurance and groceries. Without government assistance, these folks have NOTHING! And it’s up to other folks – you and me – to pick up the slack.

You want less government in your life and want to let free market economics run its course? This is the reality.

You might think about that when you go to the polls in November.

Have a nice day! You can bet the folks in the gulf aren’t!

Mark Van Loon
Hamilton

Homage to good intentions

Dear Editor,

Robert Redford and his leftist friends will at some point be paying final respects to the great Cuban tyrant Fidel Castro. It can be said that Mr. Castro was monumentally successful at destroying his enemies, achieving absolute power and impoverishing the Cuban people.

For the Left here in America, having good intentions seems to justify almost anything political, even to supporting a tyrannical regime brutalizing its people for decades.

What is also monumental is the hypocrisy of Robert Redford and friends, well known for their love of Castro, Che Guevara and the Cuban system. They would gladly imprison any citizen of the United States having done one ten-thousandth of what the Castro Regime has done for nearly fifty years: the incarceration, torture and killing of dissidents, including homosexuals.

Would the Left, and its “human rights” industry here in America, describe these atrocities against homosexuals and others as hate-crimes? Can they be considered, in the jargon of the Left, as anything other than hate crimes?

Apparently these crimes can somehow, with typical leftist moral-relativistic magic, be justified in the context of Mr. Castro’s ‘unique’ situation in Cuba, the need to make socialism work at any price.

The Left sensationalized Matthew Shepard’s horrific ordeal (homosexual, murdered in Wyoming, 1998) ostensibly for human rights purposes. But in reality, Matthew’s death became the gift that keeps on giving, providing the Left’s sagging victim industry with new life. This all presents a stark contrast to the Cuban situation, a stunning example of American leftist hypocrisy.

When people with absolute power have good intentions, anything, it seems, no matter how horrible, outrageous or destructive is possible, probable and justified. And in this country, our righteous leftist community led by anti-heroes like Robert Redford wallow in agenda-driven excrement.

Pete MacLachlan
Hamilton

Government is not free

Dear Editor,

The TEA (taxed enough already) Party movement and the various conservative groups that have formed over the past few years are but a reflection of the frustrations that many people are feeling toward the government. Some elected individuals seem determined to convert our country into something that would not be recognizable to our founding fathers. The conversion has been so gradual and relentless that many people did not realize the direction that we were headed until it was almost too late. The TEA party and other groups are predominately made up of the old “silent majority” that simply kept their heads down and went to work to try to make a better life for their children than the one they had. Many worked two jobs, did without everything but necessities in order to accomplish that goal. Government was there to keep us safe from our enemies, maintain some degree of order and assist with our infrastructure to allow for easier transportation of our commodities and improved communication.

As our population continued to demand more and more services, the government continued to grow. Over the past 100 years we have evolved from a nation that was fiercely independent and believing that we only wanted defense and orderly commerce and opportunity. Now we are demanding more government programs and regulations that ultimately take away the freedoms that our founders fought and died for. As the demands from government increase so does the costs of running the government. That results in the need for increased taxes. The result of the increased demands and larger government is that we now are affecting the growth of our economy because of the tax load that has been placed on our businesses and our citizens. Besides the increased tax load we have also saddled business with an overload of regulations and mandates that again increase the cost of operation. All of those additional costs prevent businesses from paying higher wages, purchasing new equipment or offering a lower price on their finished product. Unfortunately, a business that is unprofitable will cease to exist. A business that is not open does not employ people. People who are unemployed do not pay taxes and then look to the government for assistance. The cost of losing a job then becomes a double loss, they take from the revenue pot instead of adding into it.

This never-ending spiral of increased costs slows our economy and if allowed to continue, will bring our entire nation to its knees. Montana is no different, every mandate, every increased service, every increased state employee and every increased cost of running the government, adds to the load that taxpayers must carry. Left unchecked, government growth will eventually consume not only all available funds but the pioneer spirit that has been the driving force of our great nation.

The change from the strongly independent, self-reliant individual who believed in personal responsibility and self worth into a person who expects government to be the guardian of their every waking moment, has been gradual but relentless. Reversing the trend will also take time and must be every bit as committed. It will take a sincere and dedicated effort to bring Montana back. It will be painful at times, but tough love always is. The main thing, it all has to begin with us as individuals. We need to deal with our own issues and not expect a law to be passed that eliminates the need to make a hard, unpopular decision. The greatest change of all will be the acceptance of personal responsibility. We must go back to what we learned in kindergarten: if you break it, fix it, if you open it, close it, and if you make it dirty, clean it up. The list can go on and on but you get the message.

The next few years are going to be the telling time in our history. We are either going to begin the process of turning the direction of our country and state around or we are bound to see taxes increase, regulations multiply and more freedoms lost.

Rep. Bob Lake
Hamilton

Trailhead project not an improvement

Dear Editor,

We recently became aware that the Forest Service has some extra money to put somewhere, so they have decided to change the layout of the Charles Waters equine trailhead, referred to as Larry Creek. They apparently have not consulted with people who are horse and trailer savvy. We were told by the forester that they would design it so that they could squeeze more horse trailers in, but that there wouldn't be room to tie the livestock to the trailers. They will have hitching rails available instead. It will be designed like the one at Blue Mountain on Big Flats Road in Missoula. That trailhead has made a lot of unhappy horse people.

Speaking from a horse woman's point of view, and echoing the views of many other horsemen, this presents not only a very challenging physical problem for many riders, but also a hazardous situation for both horses and riders.

This Forest Service layout would require an individual to carry large saddles, saddle blankets, bridles, saddle bags, and any other items they would be taking, to a hitching rail, not near the trailers. Then to tie a horse with other strange horses who would possibly bite, kick, or rear, would endanger both horse and rider.

We trail horse enthusiasts feel that the Forest Service is not considering the horses and riders, but is being extravagant, spending a lot of money on the Larry Creek Trailhead, when there are other trailheads more in need of making them horse trailer accessible. Also, when they plan these parking areas, they need to consult with knowledgeable horsemen. Those that we have talked to are not happy with this planned layout or the one that they did at Blue Mountain in Missoula.

Horse people are more important to the economics here then many people realize. Those dependent on horses bringing in money are tack and feed stores, western clothing, big truck and trailer dealers, hay and feed producers, gas station, saddle shops, arenas, clinicians, fertilizers, outfitters for both hunting and fishing in the back country, veterinarians, corral and stock builders, pharmaceuticals, fencing companies, real estate companies selling "horse property", just to name a few.

Then we have the horsemen. Rodeo club, 4H, team penners, cutters, working cowhorse, Tennessee Walker shows, AQHA shows, rodeos, backcountry horsemen, trail riders such as the Saddle Tramps, cowboy mounted shooters, Horse and Rider publications, and just plain lovers of horses.

This is Montana, we don't require perfectly groomed trails and paved parking lots, just a few minor improvements on the trailheads to make them more trailer accessible and rider friendly. I think the horsemen here deserve to be heard and the Forest Service and county and state governments need to listen to them.

K. Gervais
Corvallis

What is the GOP about these days?

Dear Editor,

I do not think Republicans are dim-witted. Some of my good friends identify as Republicans. So when I went to see what the Montana GOP Platform is this year, I was astounded. I like some of the planks, especially the ones dealing with Agriculture. I was hoping there would be more in support of the small farmer or something dealing with companies like Monsanto who seem to be focused on co-opting the way the farmers get their seed supply. Oh, yes, and the genetic modifications and those toxic chemicals. I don't think the GOP is up to dealing with a corporation that big and powerful.

What astounded me was the GOP has the plank (under “Crime”) which states: “We support the clear will of the people of Montana expressed by legislation to keep homosexual acts illegal.” Do they really want to criminalize “homosexual acts?” The Montana and Federal Supreme Courts have already ruled that kind of legislation as unconstitutional. As a founding member of PFLAG (Parents & Friends of Lesbians & Gays) in Hamilton I find this kind of attitude a bit disturbing. Do the framers of this platform understand the damage they are doing with this kind of rhetoric? I cannot imagine any parent or friend of gay and lesbian folk wanting to put them in jail just for being who they are. What about all the gay men and women to whom you are saying such things?

There are some people of certain religious persuasions that would find this attitude acceptable. Their standard line is something like, “Oh, it is OK to be gay as long as you don't express it with people you love.” That is disingenuous at best. Like saying you can love your partner but are not allowed the human sexual expression of that love. You cannot have the same rights and respect the rest of us enjoy.

What are you saying to our children about American justice? Tolerance! It smacks of a Taliban mentality. Of course they like to repress (kill?) women and other human beings they find unacceptable. We live under a secular constitution. What about Life, Liberty & Happiness for All?

As a matter of historical fact, America entered into the Treaty of Tripoli in 1797 which included in part the following statement: "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." The drafting of this treaty began during George Washington's presidency. The final draft was read in full in the Senate where it was approved unanimously and then signed by Washington's successor, President John Adams. The full text of the treaty was also published in three American newspapers in Philadelphia and New York. The American diplomat who authored this treaty was a close friend of Jefferson.

So, my GOP neighbors, when are you going to stop messing around in the bedrooms of the folks? Stop raising the level of intolerance and bigotry?

Roger Williams
Hamilton

Condition and circumstance

Dear Editor,

So what might we make now of the world condition,

of claiming “free rights” – free biz and pushing insurrection,

parading around and shaking our fists,

our pie-holes smeared with the vittles we fix,

pining for profits and freedom,

devoid of common interests?

The material agenda is only for them;

claiming their faith,

turning away from democracy,

while coughing up hatred and rights to be racist,

like so much phlegm.

While crying out for justice upon the LAW of the land,

for better government and true liberty,

denying the plain Truth,

that’s dismissed out of hand.

And as much for what has come up to haunt us,

supported by facts on the record

and from data collected,

their choice is to scoff, to crowd up and taunt us.

Truth is not welcome

if it means dropping tradition,

a formidable outcry...

accompanies their calls for sedition.

Lee Kierig
Hamilton

Don’t underestimate power of river

Dear Editor,

On a recent hot, sunny, balmy evening, a couple of days after the summer solstice, I and our handsome bird dog Grover, a one-and-a-half-year-old Griffon, took a walk down to the Bitterroot River in Stevensville. I was in high anticipation of actually getting him into the river, an event I had been looking forward to all year. Turning into the dirt roadway leading to the river from the Cutoff footpath, I saw a white cross which has been recently placed there. I was too excited and eager to really think about what that symbol meant. We trotted down the bank, I unleashed Grover, and watched his glee as he waded in.

Then I made a fatal mistake of throwing a rock into the rushing water, no very far, but far enough for him to dive after it. I did not event think how fast the current was actually moving. In the blink of an eye, he was being swept away before me. The horrible scene was as a nightmare, only it was reality. I ran along the bank screaming, but was helpless to save him. After only two or three minutes he was gone from my sight, as I couldn’t keep up. I went into a sort of shock, I believe. I called him over and over, but felt as if he had vanished under the water forever. It was dusk by this time. After searching for him for nearly three hours in the near-full moon night, I gave up and walked back to town, devastated, sobbing, grieving. I prayed to God to please let Grover be okay and somehow reunite us against all odds. I also made a few promises to Him. While I felt a deep hopelessness, I also knew the only thing I could do right then was pray.

I turned into my walkway, about two miles from the river, opened the door, and there was Grover, wet and swamp-smelling but alive. The miracle of his survival is something I will never forget. He somehow got out of the river and found his way home. What a dog! But deep down, I knew God had saved him.

I wanted to write this, not only to tell about the actual miracle that happened, but also to warn people to not let their dogs swim in our area rivers until the flows lesson. What a stupid, foolish thing I did. Grover almost died because of my poor judgment and my lack of respect for the power of the river.

I will drive past that white cross nearly every day and remember, and give thanks.

Nena C. Williams
Stevensville

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