On our second day we went to check out Montana State University and went to the football game where they played, and beat, Dixie State. After the game we decided to check out the downtown party scene in hopes of finding a friendlier crowd than we experienced in Missoula. We were delighted to find some good people in Bozeman and had a good time mingling with the locals. Later in the evening, we were greeted with a great surprise! By a pure stroke of luck, we were reunited with our friends from the bachelorette party we met in Cody, Wyoming, who had actually just come from the wedding reception. We ended up hanging out with Jamie, Breann, and their friends for awhile and then headed back to the campground.
The next day we had a lunch date with Ms. Lynn Meyers, who used to work for The Potts Company and now lives in Bozeman. Ms. Lynn is another one of those people who totally has things figured out. About 5 years ago she decided Montana had so much more to offer than Atlanta and packed up everything she had and moved to Bozeman. After a wonderful lunch with Ms. Lynn, we headed back to the campground to plan our next move. We decided to stay put in Bozeman for the next couple days and commute about 80 miles north to hunt on the ranchlands surrounding Bozeman. That evening we decided to take a little drive and headed about 70 miles south down highway 89. We went all the way to Gardiner, MT, which is right on the Montana/Wyoming state line at the head of the north gate into Yellowstone. We found a cool little steak house where we grabbed some dinner and then headed back to Bozeman to get some sleep before our early morning hunt the next day.
I must make a confession to my wonderful blog audience. I (Cheggy) had made prior plans for Sunday night’s activities, but blew them off to go on the little trip to Gardiner with my good bud Potts. I was supposed to take Breann on a date in Bozeman to prove to her that not all boys from Georgia are bad people. Yeah, guess I kind of further proved her point about her stereotype of GA boys! Oops, another one bites the dust for Cheggy, story of my life!
The next day we woke up early and headed north on highway 89, which is where the locals told us to go for good Coyote hunting. This part of Montana consists of huge ranches and the ranchers are anxious for hunters to help them control the predator species on their land. We spotted a ranch house in Ringling, MT and drove up the rancher’s house and knocked on the door to ask if we could hunt his land. He was very receptive and told us that Higgins Ranch had 8500 acres we were welcome to hunt. He showed us a map of the property and we were off. We found a ranch access road a little south of his house and decided to set up in a prairie and try our hand at calling in some coyotes. We tried for a couple hours at several locations and soon became distracted by the vast population of prairie dogs, which are another arch nemesis of the ranchers. We quickly re-focused our efforts to prairie dog extermination and had the time of our lives. They were everywhere. We were able to shoot them from 2 yds away all the way to 175 yds away! After executing genocide on the prairie dog population, we packed it up and headed back to Bozeman on some little dirt road we stumbled across. On the drive back we saw a black bear, a huge bull elk, several bald eagles, mule deer, pronghorn antelope, and several white tail deer. The ride took several hours, but was totally worth the detour.
We got back to the camper and later that night I was greeted with a message from Breann, who totally called me out and thanked me for the wonderful date I neglected to take her on! She was totally in the right on this one. I stood her up and I will admit it was wrong of me to do this. Thankfully she agreed to give me another chance and we made plans for a “make up” date the next night.
The next morning we headed back up 89 and stopped at another ranch to try our luck at our new found passion of prairie dog hunting. We had little success and decided to go back north to Higgins Ranch. We had another good day of prairie dog hunting there and managed to impress ourselves with a few long range shots. We wrapped things up a little early and headed back to Bozeman to get Potts some dinner and for me to get cleaned up for my date! Breann and I met up for dinner that night and I had a great time with her. She is a very sweet girl and graciously allowed me to redeem myself for standing her up.
Bozeman was a great town and definitely one of our favorite stops along the trip thus far. We had a great time traveling thru the city and the surrounding outskirts. This is definitely a place we hope to return someday in the future.
-Cheggy
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