Spring is gopher season

For the outdoors person, springtime is here and rapidly moving forward towards summer. Our regulated spring hunting seasons are rapidly closing. Spring turkey season generally closes May 31 and spring black bear season ends on June 15. As I always recommend, check Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks’ website or the printed regulations to ensure that what you want to hunt is open to sport hunting.  

For many of us, there is always some gopher shooting. Some of us just don’t feel right about going out in the wild without a gun. Shooting gophers on farmland around the Flathead Vally has some practical aspects because an expanding gopher population can severely damage a pasture or crop land. Whittling down the gopher population by spring shooting seems like the right thing to do.  

In Eastern Montana where there is a healthy population of prairie dogs on private land, shooters from all over the United States come in the springtime to shoot prairie dogs. They spend lots of money and help the local economy.   

But I must admit I do most of my gopher shooting as an excuse to get outside and explore new areas for the fall grouse and deer seasons. The fresh spring air and just getting out in our mountains is really enjoyable and relaxing, especially after a lot of time inside during winter. My nature is that I cannot simply hike for the sake of walking. I must have a destination or purpose in my walk or hike.  

Last December, after deer and elk season ended, I was out roaming the forest lands west of Kalispell looking for some good Christmas trees, when I discovered a new logging road. During my drive up that road, I spotted a flock of wild turkeys and a new, to me, a forested area with sub-irrigated forested wetland that looked primo as a place to find a good buck deer in the fall.  

This spring with a gun in my hand, I did some further exploration of this new to me habitat. My spring exploration revealed what I suspected, prime deer habitat where I will seek a big whitetail buck next fall. It is a forested lowland area that should have green forbs and grasses late into the fall hunting season. This should be a primo feeding area that will lure in does and fawns. If there are does, some bucks will be hanging around too. 

The recent logging in this area opened some previously forested areas, letting more sunlight reach the ground. There were lots of new grasses and forbs. Forbs are low herbaceous plants which have taken advantage of this new sunlight and are part of the lush new ground vegetation that usually follows logging. This new ground vegetation is attractive to gophers that feed on the new vegetation.  This creates good gopher shooting! 

I can’t say that my spring gopher shooting really reduces the overall gopher population or even that these expanded gopher population do any real environmental damage. I also don’t eat gophers, so why do I like to hunt and shoot gophers? Well, because it’s just plain fun! Is it OK to kill a wild animal just for the sake of shooting or killing for fun? That is a good question without a good answer.  

Hunters are becoming an increasingly smaller percent of our national population. Most studies indicate only 4-5% of our national population hunt. That ranges from a low of fewer than 1-2% of hunters in heavily populated states to as high as 20-25% in Western states with low populations and lots of public land open for hunting. Numerous national studies have shown strong public support for hunting when a deer, duck or grouse is harvested to help feed the hunter’s family.  

But public support for hunting drops off rapidly when the hunted prey is not used for food. So, trophy hunting for wild critters such as mountain lions and bobcats are not seen as a public good by many citizens. The anti-hunter groups tend to target (no pun intended) animals that are not eaten. Gophers are small, almost rat-like critters, so they are not overly loved by citizens. I am not aware of any “save the gopher” groups. 

The current spring snow melt or run-off from our mountains has most, if not all, of our streams running high and muddy. So, this next month will not be good stream fishing. Anglers will generally be limited to lake fishing. One of the nice aspects of spring lake fishing is the cold spring lake water is not overly conducive to swimming and water sports, so anglers have the lakes to themselves. Some spring stream fishing can be good if you fish a stream that flows out of a lake with clear water. 

So, whatever your inclination, get out and enjoy our wonderful Flathead Outdoors.  If you are in grizzly bear country, don’t forget the bear spray.