Illustration by Gary Palmer
Hunting, fishing, or otherwise recreating outdoors this time of year requires getting up well before dawn. I love it.
Rising at 4 a.m. in late summer, I feel like I’ve got a jump on the world, two extra hours of the best time of day tucked in my back pocket.
Midweek, it’s just me and the construction crews and other early workers out in the darkness. Occasionally I see another grouse hunter or trout angler and we give each other a nod. In the 1930s, the great outdoor writer Gordon MacQuarrie expressed that feeling of pre-dawn camaraderie as he left Milwaukee and headed to northern Wisconsin to hunt ducks and ruffed grouse: “On the highway I had eyes only for my own brethren of the varnished stock, the dead-grass skiff, the far-going boots. Cars with hunting-capped men and cars with dimly outlined retrievers in the back seats flashed by me.”
After driving an hour I gas up and buy provisions at a convenience store, crowded with beefy guys in chartreuse T-shirts standing in line with their energy drinks and cinnamon rolls. A clerk asks one of the fellows in line, “How’s that baby girl of yours, Trevor? She must be, what, three months old now?” The guy grins and holds up a picture on his phone.
The door chimes and a fellow comes in and asks to exchange his propane tank. The manager asks if he’s still planning to smoke a brisket for the weekend. “Yep, and maybe some ribs for the in-laws coming from Spokane.”
With shopping malls closed down and public parks littered with tents and tarps, it seems that convenience stores in early morning are about all we have left for community centers.
Outside at the pumps, the dawn light barely glows over the eastern horizon. As I wash my buggy windshield, a shiny pickup with Oklahoma plates drives in pulling an eight-door dog trailer and carrying four guys, all laughing at something one of them did at the motel earlier that morning. I want to give them and all the other nonresident bird hunters the stink eye for vacuuming up all my birds with their hard-running English pointers and Weimaraners, but I remember when I first came to Montana to hunt from out of state. What goes around comes around.
Besides, that’s not how I was raised. “How you guys doing?” I say. “Have a good hunt. Watch out for snakes and snares.”
Now I’m out on the highway. Sunrise in central Montana this time of year is around 6:45 a.m., and I need to be well on my way by then to hit the water or grass while it’s still cool enough for the trout to be active and the rattlesnakes sluggish. By 10 a.m. the fish will have stopped feeding but the snakes will be moving.
At noon this day it’s too hot for me and my griffs to do anything but sit in the shade of a buffaloberry and pant. I share my sandwiches with them and we all take a nap.
On the drive home, I stop for sunflower seeds and a soda and to scrape grasshoppers off the windshield. A fishing guide drives in towing a boat dripping with water from the Missouri. He’s on the phone talking to tomorrow’s clients. I’d heard the fishing has been good recently, so maybe he’s got a $100 bill in his front shirt pocket from today’s customers. Behind him a vacationing couple in their rental SUV pulls in, both looking a bit stunned to be in Montana and surrounded by so much space. They’re smiling, too.
Everyone, residents and visitors alike, is happy to be out on the road this time of year.
Once home, I feed the dogs, make dinner for me and my wife, and am in bed by 9. I need my rest. It’s September in Montana, and I’ve got another early day tomorrow.
— Tom Dickson, previous editor of Montana Outdoors
