We talk a lot about fair chase hunting, about our expectations. I want to be the role-model outfitter in Montana for ethical sportsmanlike conduct,” says Jack Rich, who has been accompanying and leading hunters into the Bob Marshall Wilderness for most of his 54 years. KIM BRIGGEMAN/Missoulian

By KIM BRIGGEMAN

of the Missoulian

SEELEY LAKE – The kid was only 5 years old when he topped Pyramid Pass for the first time. The sign said “Bob Marshall Wilderness.” His father, leading a string of mules, had disappeared over the horizon before him. Nearly half a century later, Jack Rich recalled what he saw.

“Right on the other side, he was watering his pack string on the shores of a mountain lake,” Rich said this summer. “That vision is as clear to me today as it was when I was that little 5-year-old boy. And that’s the reason I’m here. I just can’t get it out of my blood.”

Outfitting trips into the southern “Bob” became a way of life for C.B. Rich in 1958, when he and wife Helen bought the Double Arrow Ranch at Seeley Lake. A tribute to C.B., who died in 1996, is posted at the Pyramid Pass trailhead. It includes an ode he once penned to the wild mountains.

With help from his dad, Jack took over the business in the mid-1970s and has kept it thriving. The Rich Ranch, now set at the edge of a picturesque meadow between Salmon Lake and Ovando, offers winter snowmobiling, dude ranching, backcountry and summer fishing and sightseeing trips.

But in the autumn, its focus is big-game rifle hunting in the Bob.

This fall, a 10-day wilderness hunting trip into the Bob with the Rich Ranch costs $4,950 or $5,950, depending on whether a hunter wants a private guide or not. Pricey, yes, but it’s the only aspect of business the Rich family deals in that didn’t take a hit when the economy went south in 2008.

“Ironically, our hunts are the bright spots,” Jack Rich said. “We’ve got hunts that are booked into 2012.”
The 10-day hunts over Pyramid Pass are rooted in tradition. The first begins on Sept. 14, on the eve of big-game rifle season in the Bob Marshall and Absaroka-Beartooth wilderness areas. The last ends on Oct. 17.

Rich, eight clients and four guides make up the typical hunting party. They meet at the ranch the night before the hunt and part of the next morning is spent there, eating breakfast, gathering up the last of the supplies and loading the trailers. It’s a 45-minute drive to Seeley Lake and up the Forest Service roads to Rich’s corrals near the trailhead. Then it’s a matter of loading the packs on the mule pack trains, saddling the horses, adjusting stirrups and whisking through a seminar on trail etiquette and horsemanship.

Over the years, strings of snappy all-black mules have been developed, and they are objects of pride to Rich.
“These are the tools of our trade,” he said after a four-day trip in late August to stock the base camp. “But they’re also near and dear to our hearts.”

Rich estimated the mule strings make 30 trips a y Save ear into the Bob, for summer fishing and sightseeing trips over any of six passes, for the autumn hunting journeys and for the stocking of base camp.

In the weeks leading up to hunting season, they’ll pack in 70 loads of firewood, 50 loads of hay, 30 loads of pellets and 24 loads of gear – tents, stoves, food and cots.

Camp includes some 40 certified bear-resistant containers. Rich said he’s had more close encounters with grizzlies than he’d like to think about, meetings that usually leave him weak-kneed and shaken.

“But in all these years, we’ve never had a bear come in and try to tear into our camp, knock on wood,” he said. “I say that with hesitation, because I don’t want the first time to come.”

“We like the fact that we have grizzly bears, wolves, mountain lions, black bears back there,” he added. “We don’t see them as the enemy. They’re part of the wilderness too.”

The faster-moving pack strings lead the way on the 10-mile, three-hour ride from the trailhead to base camp at the southern base of Leota Peak. It’s in the upper Youngs Creek drainage, a stream that flows 20 miles northeastward before joining Danaher Creek to form the South Fork of the Flathead. Two other outfitters have base camps lower on Youngs Creek.

Rich said there are more than 30 outfitters who have permits to work in the Bob Marshall, half of which operate both in summer and fall.

Base camp at Leota Park is at the bottom of a 2,500-foot avalanche chute.
“It’s literally a million-dollar view camp,” Rich said. “If you look, you’ll see all kinds of animals on that mountain. And the North Star is right above the peaks. It’s just one of those almost surreal settings.”

No matter how well-conditioned the hunters are, everyone’s at least a bit tired by the time they reach camp. On the Sept. 14 trip, there’s no hunting until the season starts the next day, but Rich said there’s time to get in some first-day hunting on the Sept. 26 and Oct. 8 excursions.

Before that, however, is the mandatory “town meeting” in the kitchen tent. Rich, his wife Belinda and co-hosts Ralph and Peggy Cahoon have already taken pains to book hunters who are coming to the Bob Marshall for the right reasons.

“If a hunter calls me up and says, ‘How much is it going to cost me to get a good six-point with you boys?’ we send them somewhere else,” Jack said. “We don’t sell six points. Never have, never will. We sell wilderness hunts, so I’ve got to make sure I do a good job of booking hunters who value and appreciate what a wilderness hunt is, versus a private ranch hunt or a canned hunt of some kind.”

The new hunters are reminded of it, and a number of other rules of the hunt, at the town meeting. If a law’s broken – intentionally or otherwise – the Forest Service or Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is notified immediately.

“Another thing I tell my hunters: Nobody pulls the trigger but you, so don’t pull the trigger unless you know what you’re shooting at,” he said.

Don’t let elk fever or someone else’s encouragements pull the trigger, he instructs. Don’t let the fear of going without a kill in spite of all the money you’ve paid collar your decision to shoot.
Pace yourself, is another of Rich’s tips. There’s no shame in sleeping in sometimes, or returning to camp early.
“The worst thing you can do is go like the devil for the first three days of a 10-day hunt, then be completely shot because you’ve used up everything you’ve got,” he said.

Routines are quickly established. The hunters sleep in one of two four-man tents, or in smaller tents set aside for heavy snorers. Early morning getaways on horseback alternate with later-morning foot hunts in the nearby black timber, which culminate in a hearty breakfast back in camp.

“That’s always a good time for social activities and talking and bragging and lying,” Rich said.
A shower tent is a welcome respite, and Rich makes it mandatory after a hunter has been in on a kill.

“You don’t want them to be walking around smelling like an elk carcass,” he said.
A lot of camp time is spent around the kitchen table. It seats 16, and there’ll sometimes be four cribbage games going at once.

“Cribbage is a huge thing in our camp,” said Rich.

One of his guides started the shirt tale tradition. A hunter who misses a shot at an elk is obliged to sacrifice the tail of his or her shirt. With a felt-tip marker, the hunter must write the tale of the shot on the shirt. Then comes the “Reading of the Tail” in camp.

Some will write, “Missed bull. 150 yards. Damn,” Rich said.

“Then we had one guy from Maine who wrote a poem. He wrote it first on a piece of cardboard and then transcribed it onto his shirt tail. It’s cool. It isn’t an embarrassing thing. We try to make it fun. And we’ve only had one hunter in 50 years that has bullied up and wouldn’t let somebody cut their tail.”

While the Bob abounds in big game, and most everyone packs a deer tag, the focus of hunts is on elk.

“The good old days of elk hunting are right now,” Rich said. “Montana’s elk population is up, our cow-calf ratio is up, and that’s a sign of good management. There are some places in the state the cow-calf ratios are down from predation, but it seems like the migratory herds of the Bob Marshall aren’t one of those.”
Rich said there are thought to be between 9,000 and 11,000 elk in the Bob Marshall ecosystem of more than 1 million acres. That’s a small share of the state’s 150,000, he pointed out.

“So there isn’t an elk behind every tree by any means. If you want to go to the high odds, there are still other places to go hunt elk,” he said.

Same with bears. Rich doesn’t court black bear hunters any more, for a simple reason. The grizzly population has increased perhaps fivefold since they were federally protected in the 1960s, and it’s too darn hard to tell the two apart.

“There’s nothing worse than having a hunter who spent his money, looking over your shoulder as you’re glassing the mountain, saying: ‘Is he a black bear? Can I shoot him?’ ” said Rich. “And you’re facing all that pressure knowing that if he shoots and it’s a grizzly, it’s on our shoulders.

“We just don’t want that pressure anymore. You just don’t know what they are.”
If someone with a bear permit does book a trip, Rich’s rules are that the bear must be in sight for
20 full minutes – time enough to either establish the species or for the bear to run off – before the trigger is pulled.

On the last night of the hunt, the successful hunters donate parts of their kill for a heart, liver, tenderloin feed in camp.

“If we’ve had good luck, we could have two or three tenderloins,” Rich said. “It’s kind of bittersweet when every hunt comes to an end, because the hunters have bonded with one another and the guides if we’ve done a good job of screening them.”

Rich said he’s had hunts when everyone fills their tags and others when no one does.

“We intentionally do not say, ‘Man, we filled 48 percent of our hunts last year,’ because this might be the year we only fill 10 percent,” he said.

“There are good hunts and bad hunts. You should not book it because you want to whack and stack a bull with us. You book it because this is one of the most phenomenal places to hunt that you’ll ever have.”

Reporter Kim Briggeman can be reached at 523-5266 or at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .