Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever expected to have experienced the fierceness of Mother Nature’s forest fire firsthand, but in August of 2000, my family, friends and neighbors gathered as a force to help protect each others property, cattle, equipment, buildings and houses.  We won some battles and lost others.

On August 15, 2000 fire officials began working to suppress a small wildfire in the Six Mile area southeast of Townsend about 15 miles.  The fire was about 15 acres in size started from an overheated bearing on a neighbor’s combine. The southerly edge of our ranch was less than a mile from the fire started in a wheat field.

This fire would become know as the Maudlow-Toston fire.  It raged for many days engulfing some 80,000 acres between August 15 and September 30 before it burned out.  The summers hot temperatures were in the 90’s with winds of 10 to 15 miles per hour.  It raced across drought-stricken ranchland and into forested areas.  That include 70,000 acres of private ranch land and 11,000 acres of National Forest land near Townsend..

Our ranch was in the clear for the first 4 days until the wind switched from the North to the Southwest. When the wind switched in its path:  our wheat crop worth over $100,000, all of our cattle summer range, fences and some outbuildings were in harms way.  Fortunately, our home was not in the path of this fire.

Realizing that the wind had switched, we had to move all of our cattle from their summer pasture.  The fire came so quickly that it burned the 500- acre wheat crop in a matter of a minutes.  Just prior to the wheat being engulfed in flames, we started to gather the cattle from the highest mountain pasture moving them to our lower-lying pasture.  Many miles of fences, boundary and internal, as well as all of our summer pasture were completely lost.  Another loss was a mile of powerline poles which supplied power for our cattle-watering systems.

Late in the afternoon on the fourth day of the fire it became very evident that we going to lose a lot of land to the fire.  Starting about 10:00 pm we began trailing our black cattle to our corrals a distance of four miles with the help of friends and neighbors,   This process was all happening in total darkness with the fire right behind us all the way.  We had people walking in the dark moving cattle forward only by sound.

As the fire crested the ridge about one-half mile south of our corrals, a neighbor brought his tractor and disk to our corrals to till some soil on the outside of the corrals to prevent the fire from burning our corrals and cattle at this point.  Another neighbor showed up with a semi to move our cattle completely out of harms way to a feedlot area.  We later hauled the livestock to Meagher county for the reminder of the summer grazing season.

While people were loading the semi, several of us returned to the  roundup site to find eight pairs lying within 100 yards of the fire.  Several of us on foot gathered the cattle and started down the county road.  As we were moving the cattle, juniper trees with branches hanging over the road burst into flames.  We would get the cattle running before we approached the trees forcing them by the danger.

Only by the grace of God and all the help from our family, friends and neighbors, we were able to save all our cattle.

My next post will talk about the rehabilitation of the land.

For me and my family, October is very busy with cattle work. I have done all aspects when it comes to weaning. This year I continue our tradition of weaning about one month prior to taking our calves to market.  We wean, vaccinate and put on fall pasture until our calves weigh about 700+ pounds.  Market prices this year are some the best we have seen in years, and it is always gratifying for me to watch our calves in the pasture for the 30 days after weaning.

We wean the calves at our upper corrals and return the cows to a different pasture for the fall and early winter season. The calves are hauled to our lower corral where they will be fed hay and watched closely for about a week. We then move them to a lower pasture where they will prosper on our great fall grass.

When determining the pasture that our cattle graze, I am a huge advocate for leaving about 50% of the grass to maintain a health root system for the winter and next summer. This practice maintains extremely great pasture from year to year.

Along with weaning, harvesting and fall irrigating, deer and elk hunting has begun. So far this year the elk numbers a low on our place due to the lack of snow up high and the abundance of grass from the great summer rains.

We did have a herd this summer grazing the dryland alfalfa. However, in the summer herd, we noticed that the calf numbers were down from previous years.  I hope that our elk herd doesn’t go by the way side like the Gardiner herd.  The wolves are taking a heavy toll on a valuable and treasured Montana resource, ELK HUNTING. We need the Montana wildlife to use as a tool to get our young teens and adults hooked on hunting rather than hooked on Main Street, USA.

Why is this so important? When the hay is fed in the wintertime, the leaves are still attached to the stems as they were when the alfalfa was windrowed. You minimize the amount of leaf loss (the protein) during the baling process when it is baled with moisture on the hay. The ultimate gain is the hay has a higher RFV (relative food value) thus providing higher protein level to the livestock. The quality product is well worth the loss of a little sleep. Farmers across the Missouri River valley have created different tools to help monitor the moisture levels. One neighbor created a moisture detector that is attached to an alarm clock. This allows them to sleep until the alarm goes off versus getting out of bed every few hours to feel the moisture levels. So the next time you are passing by an alfalfa field at night and see the tractor lights circling the field, you will now know why.