Montana Outdoors

07/16/2025

🌿🌱Fields of Belonging🌷 🌱

How a summer spent surveying meadows brought the outdoors into a young woman’s comfort zone.
I started the day with a typical icebreaker: “What is your favorite thing to do outside?” The students answered one by one: “Hiking, fishing, hiking, hiking…” In the Blackfeet Tribal Nation, most folks spend time outside. But Justine hadn’t. When it was her turn, she responded: “I don’t like going outside, and actually I avoid it if I can.”
I mumbled “Oh, that’s okay” and moved on with the meeting. On the inside, though, I was distressed. We were about to spend two months crawling around muggy, buggy meadows on Blackfeet lands east of Glacier National Park. Our project was to survey grassland plant communities, thanks to a research grant from the Montana Native Plant Society, and with help from Blackfeet Community College (BCC) and the National Park Service.
The flyer I posted said “Get Paid To Work Outside” in large, bold font. Yet somehow, Justine, a criminal justice major who was visibly uncomfortable outdoors, had applied.
On our first walk to the field site, she fell behind. My trusty technician Heidi Fleury checked in with her and learned Justine had little experience hiking and was terrified of bears. When we made it to our plot, she wouldn’t sit down because she was also terrified of bugs. I was sure she would quit by the end of the day.

Read the rest of the story by Nico Matallana-Mejia here:
https://issuu.com/.../montana_outdoors_july-august_2025/26

Subscribe to Montana Outdoors here: https://qr1.be/T8MU

07/07/2025

06/16/2025

🎣In a state world-famous for fly fishing, Montana’s Missouri River near Craig might be its most celebrated and hardest-working trout water. Since fish surveys began in 1982, biologists have typically counted more than 3,500 rainbow and 600 brown trout per river mile in this 35-mile blue-ribbon stretch of the “Mo.”🎣
In 2022, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks biologists recorded 6,132 rainbows per mile, the third highest on record, and a whopping 1,594 browns—the most ever counted and 2.5 times the average. This deluge of trout didn’t last. By 2024, counts fell back to 3,312 rainbows and 744 browns. So why the yo-yo?📈
Find out where you can read more and subscribe to Montana Outdoors in the comments!
📸 #1 - Arnie Gidlow
📸 #2 - Jess Mcglothlin

06/11/2025

📸Are you a photographer who wants to contribute to Montana Outdoors magazine?

We’ve updated how we send out photo calls, and to keep receiving them, you’ll need to re-sign up to join our new database.

Whether you’ve submitted before or are hoping to get published for the first time, don’t miss your chance to be considered for upcoming issues.

To learn more about how to sign up, visit qr1.be/JLRV

06/03/2025

Launched in 1966, the Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) has become the primary source of long-term, large-scale population data for more than 400 species of North America’s breeding birds. The USGS Eastern Ecological Science Center and the Canadian Wildlife Service jointly coordinate the program, which includes more than 4,000 survey routes across the continental U.S. and Canada. No other single resource provides as much data on the continent’s bird populations—and it is fueled largely by volunteers.

One such citizen scientist is Ed Harper, who spent the last 46 years surveying birds in central Montana. He shared his experience with us in the latest issue of Montana Outdoors, read it here: issuu.com/montanaoutdoors/docs/montana_outdoors_may_june_2025/32

05/20/2025

Ghosts in the Woods by Allen Morris Jones in the latest issue!
Read the article here ➡️ https://issuu.com/.../docs/montana_outdoors_may_june_2025/20

05/13/2025

We made it
by Tom Dickson

Earlier this spring, I heard my first red-winged blackbird of 2025 at the tiny pond outside the FWP office where I used to work. I say “used to” because that was the day I retired after spending 23 years as editor of Montana Outdoors.

Read the full article in the latest issue here: https://issuu.com/montanaoutdoors/docs/montana_outdoors_may_june_2025/46

04/18/2025

Hot off the press! The May–June issue of Montana Outdoors is rolling out, and we’re giving you a behind-the-scenes peek as it comes to life. Inside: elusive lynx, soulful catfish, shifting trout waters, and the highs and lows of birding. Stay tuned!

12/19/2024

Montana Outdoors January-February 2025
Volume 56, Number 1

If the Steller’s jay on the cover of this 44th annual Montana Outdoors photo issue looks cold, that’s because it is. Photographer Craig Barfoot, of Polson, shot the chilled corvid last winter in a forested area northwest of town where he’d paused from putting up firewood at a friend’s house. “That was during that cold snap last January, when it got down to 30 below,” he says. “The woods had fresh snow, and the jay had been feeding at a bird feeder when I saw him resting in a larch. Usually, they get spooked, but it was so cold that morning he was in something like a fluffed-up torpor and just sat there.”

Barfoot ran to his pickup and grabbed his camera, hoping the jay would stay put. “He stayed still while I kept my distance and used a long lens so as not to disturb him,” he says. Bothering a bird or any wildlife in bitter cold can cause them to expend precious energy, Barfoot explains. “Another challenge was getting a clear shot up through the branches of the larch. And I had poor light, so I had to use a high ISO in combination with a relatively fast shutter speed, which helped capture all that feather and snow detail.”

Barfoot grew up in the Black Hills, where his dad was a logger. He earned his graduate degree in fish and wildlife management at Montana State University, did his graduate work surveying fish in southeastern Montana prairie streams near Ekalaka, not far from his childhood home, and has worked as a fisheries biologist for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes since 2000. “I picked up photography years ago and have messed around with it ever since.

It has become a real passion,” he says. “I mostly take unusual photos of unusual animals like frogs, toads, and birds—like this Steller’s jay—that many people have never heard of.”

—Tom Dickson, editor

12/12/2024

Late last week I put the finishing touches on the 2025 Montana Outdoors Photo Issue. It's a bittersweet occasion, as this was my twenty-third, and final photo issue. I can't reveal the cover yet, but copies of the magazine will arrive some time during the last two weeks of December. I will design and assemble one more issue for Montana Outdoors, and then pass the torch to the next graphic designer.

I'm posting this for some closure, but also in gratitude as I reflect on all the photographers whom I've had the privilege of working with over the past 23 years. Roughly 1,000 photographers of all stripes—professional, amateur, youth, and photojournalists—have contributed their images to Montana Outdoors since I started back in 2002. Some of them have had just a single image published in the magazine, others I've only known through email or a phone call, and some have even become friends. All of these photographers have put their trust in me as I've pored through nearly 200,000 images. It started with slides and transparencies on a light table, and later transitioned to all-digital photo files on my trusty Mac. Truly, it's been an honor to carefully handle the best work of so many photographers, and to apply a layer of creativity in how their images are presented in the pages of the magazine. I've done my best to appreciate and recognize the talent, skill, and artistic eye of those who chase the light.
—Luke Duran, art director

11/07/2024

Great article on moth species and study in Montana, in the November-December 2024 issue of Montana Outdoors. The story features awesome illustrations from Jada Fitch Illustration.

Moths for Montana Outdoors