Pilot logs adventures in the sky

Few people know the skies of northwest Montana like pilot Dave Hoerner.

Whether it was tracking down bears for biologists, relocating wolves for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks or teaching others how to fly, Hoerner has been at home in the skies over the Flathead and beyond, logging more than 34,000 flight hours during his career.

Hoerner literally wrote the book on backcountry flying in Montana, titled “Advanced Mountain Flying Techniques.”

Born in Whitefish and raised in Columbia Falls, Hoerner had spent nearly a decade working as a logger just out of high school when an off the cuff decision changed his life forever.

“One day I was driving past the city airport, I was bored with life, so I decided to take a flying lesson,” he said. “It was like a drug for me. I just couldn’t get enough. It was a bit tough on the personal life, though.”

“I went through a few marriages because I was never home,” he added with a chuckle.

When his cousin bought a gold claim in Alaska in 1981 and was looking for a pilot to help haul supplies, Hoerner jumped at the chance. Though he had just a few hundred hours of flight time and no license to operate commercially, Hoerner soon became a lifeline for the miners living 150 miles from the nearest town.

As the only pilot along the creek where the claim was, Hoerner wound up spending a year flying for all of the miners, carrying anything from food to equipment and more.

“I should have died many times making those runs, but we got done what we needed to do,” he said.

WHEN HE came back from Alaska, Hoerner decided he didn’t want to carry around a chainsaw for a living anymore. When he heard about wildlife biologists looking for a pilot to help with their studies, he bought an old beat-up Super Cub and took up the challenge.

Working with such wildlife research pioneers as Diane Boyd and as many as 15 other scientists in a single season, Hoerner soon became a pioneer himself in the field of radio telemetry (tracking wild animals from an airplane) and was the first pilot to come up with the idea of affixing radio antennas to each wing to help locate radio tagged wildlife.

Elk, deer, moose, wolves, bears, wolverines, you name it, he took scientists out looking for them.

It’s a dangerous job that few pilots would undertake and one that requires skill and nerves of steel. Flying in areas so remote that rescue in case of a crash is unlikely, if not impossible, Hoerner could fly his modified Cessna 185 incredibly low to the ground at speeds slow enough to make other planes fall from the sky. Needing 300 feet or less to land, Hoerner quickly became a master of backcountry flying.

“Flying the wildlife surveys was fun because you get to know the people and you get to see the animals day in and day out. I was only getting 80 or 90 bucks an hour and I wasn’t smart enough to know then that wouldn’t pay the bills. I didn’t care, though. I was having fun,” Hoerner said. “You watch the same animal for 10 years and you really get to know them. You get to know where they like to go and what they like to do. You really get attached to them.”

Flying eight hours a day and six days a week for 20 years, Hoerner logged more than 25,000 hours chasing wildlife in his plane, and occasionally transporting them.

Hoerner recalled an incident when FWP got a call from a rancher near Island Lake saying his prize steer had been killed by wolves. The FWP wound up darting the entire pack and relocating them to Spotted Bear, using Hoerner and his plane to fly them there seven sedated wolves at a time.

“At one point, I look back and the alpha female has her head up and she is baring her teeth at me. I got that plane down as quickly as I could so the biologist could re-drug her. If we would have been forced to wait another three minutes or so, we would have been in real trouble. After that, I told myself, ‘No more animals in my plane,’” Hoerner said.

It was a promise Hoerner would be unable to keep.

“A few years later, I was flying with (FWP Bear Management Specialist) Tim Manley following a mama grizzly and her cub. We found the mama had been killed and Tim decided he was going to save the cub,” Hoerner recalled. “He darts it and we put this 300-pound cub in the plane. We are getting ready to take off and the bear growls. I stop the plane and throw open the door. By the time we get the bear out, he is already starting to get up. That really was the last time I had a wild animal in my plane.”

THE FOUNDER and long-time operator of Red Eagle Aviation in Kalispell, Hoerner came up with many other ways to keep his planes fueled and in the air. After becoming a Certified Flight Instructor in the mid-1980s, Hoerner has taught more than 300 people to fly airplanes and has also trained roughly 30 helicopter pilots.

Hoerner served as a search and rescue coordinator for the state of Montana for five years, working as the chief flight instructor and teaching winter survival.

Hoerner said he even invested in a banner towing system for his plane to help pay the bills at one point.

He recalled towing banners for Wrangler Jeans over football games to make money, but says one incident of pulling a banner above Browning’s North American Indian Days parade will stick in his memory forever.

“A person in Cut Bank called me trying to get me to tow a banner over the Browning Indian Days. I first told them that I didn’t want to fly in the high winds over there, but they kept calling each week and upping the price,” Hoerner said. “The price finally got so high that I had to say yes, but by that time they asked that I also drop ping pong balls with the name of a local bar printed on them.”

As Hoerner had predicted, the wind was howling on the day of the job.

“I get there and get the banner hooked on and I take off. The wind was so strong that I got up to 1,000 feet and looked down and the runway was still below me. I didn’t want to give up the $450 bucks they were going to pay me, so I made my way towards town,” he said.

Hoerner said the parade had not started when he reached town, so he circled around and made one more pass as the parade was in progress.

“I made it over and I was about half a mile north of town when I realized I had not dropped the ping pong balls. I popped on the door and just threw the whole trash bag full out. It exploded when it hit the wind and I just made for Kalispell,” he laughed.

Hoerner later learned from his brother, who had been on the ground at the parade, that the ping pong balls had quite an effect.

“He said it looked like a rodeo when those ping pong balls hit the parade,” Hoerner said. “There were people headed down side streets for cover and a [man] was bucked off his horse. He said nobody was happy with me. That was the last time I pulled a banner.”

These days, Hoerner can still be found in the air on a regular basis, flying for a few local companies or spending his summer transporting fishermen for a lodge in Alaska. Hoerner says he stays busy, but is starting to let things slow down a bit.

When he is not in the air, Hoerner is writing about flying. In addition to his “Advanced Mountain Flying Techniques,” his books “Surviving The Turbulence: Montana & Alaska,” “Flying Alaska Gold: Grizzlies, Gold, Gangsters” and “Sage: Frontier Justice” can be found on Amazon.

Reporter Jeremy Weber may be reached at 406-758-4446 or jweber@dailyinterlake.com.