Like many Westerners, I follow water rights issues, usually with the kind of horrified fascination reserved for train wrecks and other disasters. Over the years, combat reports from water war zones (such as the lower Colorado, the Owens Valley, and more recently the Klamath Basin) left me grateful such epic nastiness doesn’t happen in Montana. […]

During my recent trip to Tulsa, I stopped into a chain drug store (similar to Walgreens) next door to the hotel. When I got to the register, a mom with two young kids was trying to exchange an item she had purchased for a very similar item that had the same price and was made […]

Our native bull trout and westslope cutthroat trout were doing just fine until the lake trout population exploded in Flathead Lake due to the misguided introduction of Mysis shrimp. Large runs of adfluvial cutts and bulls would head up river every spring to spawn. Several years later the young return to the lake to grow […]

By John Fuller The jury has spoken and declared that George Zimmerman was justified in defending his life from the not-so-angelic young man violently slamming his head onto the concrete. This incident represented a scenario of self-defense in its purest form. However, the race-hustlers saw an opportunity to further their careers and the president and […]

The problem with law enforcement and governing matters on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation is you often only get one side of the story. And there’s a good reason for that. It’s only one side doing the talking. This latest instance, in which a Great Falls man was arrested for posting critical comments of the Blackfeet […]

Infested: “to overrun a place or site in large numbers and become threatening, harmful, or unpleasant.” A recent letter to the editor composed by my friend and fellow Flathead Valley angler LaVerne “Lucky” Stultz, and published in several area papers, used this term to describe what lake trout have done to Swan, Lindbergh and Holland […]

“I love Montana. I want to be here,” said former Gov. Brian Schweitzer, declining a run for the U.S. Senate. Schweitzer will enjoy private life after running three consecutive statewide campaigns. In his last election, the Democrat won reelection with nearly two-thirds majority. Needless to say, Schweitzer is popular in Montana. After three terms of […]

Hotels often provide fuel for writing and a recent trip I took was no exception. I noticed there were some Goldfish crackers crushed on the floor as I got off the elevator at six this morning. At the time, I figured that the staff hadn’t seen the mess yet. Six hours later as we headed […]

Benjamin Franklin said, “Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security.” I find these words most apropos today. Our society as a whole has become so risk adverse every calamity requires an insurance policy or legislation to ensure “ it can’t happen again.” In an effort to make our workplace safe, we’ve […]

By John Fuller Egypt’s deposed President Morsi, a member of the Arab Brotherhood (an Islamic jihadist organization) was democratically elected only a year ago. After millions of Egyptians demonstrated in the streets rebelling against Morsi’s increasingly intolerant policies, the military staged a military coup d’etat. That would be a step towards liberty, but as usual, […]

Republican Congressman Steve Daines has introduced HR 2259, a North Fork Watershed Protection Act, and he deserves much credit for doing so. Democratic Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester had earlier introduced virtually identical legislation (Senate Bill 255). It passed out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on June 18 of this year. […]

For those of us who call the Flathead home year-round, it’s easy to be selfish in the summer. Every day off is already accounted for. There are rivers to float, mountains to hike and festivals to attend. The season speeds by and when obligations arise, they tend to rain on our precious sunny days. How […]

We’ve all heard the flapdoodle over conservative groups being targeted by the Internal Revenue Service, while liberal groups were not. But nearly lost in the clutter was a recent national Fox Business News segment about two previously unknown federal “nonprofits” that Fox’s David Asman declared were a “political vehicle for Brian Schweitzer.” One was the […]

Donald Trump has repeatedly been quoted as saying “It’s not personal, it’s just business.” It’s easy to read his comment as cold words from a billionaire bent on grinding through another interchangeable cog in his machine, but I think it means something different altogether. I think it means that his decisions aren’t driven by emotion. […]

For good reason, generations of Americans have called Montana “high, wide and handsome.” Our accessible public lands, big skies and clean water make our state a world-famous place to play. And that’s what makes it one of the best places on Earth to do business. That’s our shared belief at Business for Montana’s Outdoors: that […]