Memorial Day in Montana

Memorial Day weekend is always hit or miss in Montana.  Well this year it was a big ole swing and a miss.  If there was one good thing about the crappy weather though it was the fact that we were forced to stay home and glue our butts in front of the computer and do some long awaited editing.  Two eight hour days and I’m glad to say were finished with our first short fishing film of the year.  We should have that up here later this week so be checking back and we’ll also be releasing our 4th and final installment of hunting episodes from 2011.

Montana bear hunting, Montana Wild, bowhunting, videos, fly fishing, brown trout, black bear, public land, DIY, Nikon
Almost in the clouds

Well by Monday we had the itch to get back after it and we geared up for a long day doing something in the great outdoors of Montana.  We drove up into the mountains and headed off on a gated logging road in search of bears.  We were in new country and sort of looking for sign and hoping the area was a good one.  We ended up making it up to the snow line which probably wasn’t the best hunting strategy following a snow storm in the mountains.  I think the weather had pushed everything down towards the valley but I wanted to check out a new area.  We found some sign and a pretty solid area that we’ll definitely go back to as soon as the weather warms up and the bears start moving up to higher country.

Montana bear hunting, Montana Wild, bowhunting, videos, fly fishing, brown trout, black bear, public land, DIY, Nikon
The turning point

We headed back to the truck and figured we’d kill the afternoon with some fly fishing.  The water is still high and off colored and even the creeks are tough fishing but soon enough there was some tug in the line and a little fishy in the net.  I led things off with a solid string of whitefish and couldn’t seem to trick the old trout but Travis finally warmed up and landed a few nice browns.

Montana bear hunting, Montana Wild, bowhunting, videos, fly fishing, brown trout, black bear, public land, DIY, Nikon
If it’s brown it’s down, oh ya that’s hunting

We ventured back to the truck and got back into hunt mode to finish off the holiday.  We once again found a gated road and headed off on the bikes.  This spring weather makes for some on and off showers that come and go like a ____________ (insert your own lolz here).  It made for some beautiful scenery or some very gay bears in the area.

Montana bear hunting, Montana Wild, bowhunting, videos, fly fishing, brown trout, black bear, public land, DIY, Nikon
Dub rainbow

The video below was basically how we felt about it.

 

After that we kept hiking for another mile and a half but didn’t see much other than a lone cow elk.  We cruised back and got to the bikes and loaded up.  Of course it was all downhill and when your on a bike you can cruise pretty fast.  Well just our luck about two minutes into biking back down the mountain we round a bend at about 20mph and there’s a cinnamon black bear feeding up the road.  He saw us and went scorching back into the woods.  We tried tricking him into making a second appearance with the distress call but he was a little too smart for that trickery.  Of course we had the pleasure of seeing another rainbow right afterwards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSNhk5ICTI
Only a single

We figured it would be pretty unreal if we were to find a bear at the end of the rainbow.  Like all such dreams we didn’t find a bear at the end and had to call it a day.

-Zack