Outdoor & Environmental Writing

Sunset for Hatteras Village?
IndyWeek.com - May 7, 2003
A condo project on the southern tip of Hatteras Island has town folk wondering if the end is near.

Primitive Hunters
Montana Outdoors - September/October 2013 Edition
Short-faced bears standing 12 feet tall, massive dire wolves, mammoths weighing up to 10 tons—at one time hunting in Montana was a highly dangerous necessity.

Conservation

How to Make Your Own Yellowstone, Mexican Style
High Country News - November 11, 2002
At Boquillas Crossing on the southern edge of Big Bend National Park, the Rio Grande is slow and muddy, waist-deep and 50 yards across. You can hail a boatman from the group of men who loiter around the gravel bars on the Mexican side, playing cards on the tailgate of a pickup, their saddle horses tethered in the mesquites. One of them will drop his cards and give you a ride across the river for a small fee.

Prairie Dreaming
Orion Magazine - September/October 2006
A bold initiative is underway to buy a huge swath of Montana -- and turn it over to Mother Nature.

Room to Maneuver
The Nature Conservancy Magazine - Winter 2004
A new partnership between conservation groups and the Department of Defense has formed to confront a common enemy: unregulated urban growth that threatens both biodiversity and military readiness. 

Today’s Sportsmen And Sportswomen Are A Powerful Force For Conservation
The Nature Conservancy Magazine - Autumn 2006
When a hunter dreams of a trophy elk, thoughts run to frozen mornings deep in the Rocky Mountains. Minnesota seldom comes to mind, and there’s little reason why it should,
since the state issued only five permits to hunt elk last year. Nonetheless, when The Nature Conservancy needed help acquiring a critical 800-acre piece of Minnesota grassland, it was the hunters of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, based in faraway Montana, who stepped up.

The Best Wild Places: Clearwater Basin, ID
Field & Stream - November 15, 2011
Few feelings in life can match it when you are going out there. 

Hunting on the Range: Amenity Ranch Boom Spreads East
January 15, 2007
Wide open spaces inherent to central Montana ranches like this one are attracting a new wave of buyers looking for "amenity ranches" outside the scope of the West's traditional hot spots.

Firearms

Self Defense on Trial : The Joe Campbell Case

Rifle Review: The Shootrite Katana

The Guns of Bonnie and Clyde

Pistol Under Pressure

A Practical Lesson On Self Defense Revolvers

Famous Firearms of the Old West: From Wild Bill Hickok’s Revolvers to Geronimo’s Winchester, Twelve Guns That Shaped America’s History

Mystery Rifle: Muzzleloader Found in Montana
Field & Stream - March 26, 2009
Maxx Martel, from Glendive, Montana, is known as a man who finds things. “When I’m out, I look around everywhere. Just yesterday, I found a .45-70 bullet, and an 1857 penny, the kind with an eagle on it.” Martel’s country is the wide open grasslands and huge cottonwood bottoms of the Yellowstone River.

Artful Presentation
Western Art & Architecture - Winter/Spring 2010
Julian & Sons thinks ouside the box when it comes to showcasing exquisitely crafted tools of the hunt. 

The Shootrite Katana Rifle
Tactical Gear Magazine - Fall 2010
In JKD, one does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.

Water

Confining the Yelllowstone
Field & Stream - December 31, 1999
One of America’s greatest trout rivers is becoming a victim of its own wildness. The Yellowstone is the ultimate American trout river. At least, it used to be.

Monsters of the Mekong
Field & Stream - April 28, 2003
243 lb. carp caught in Cambodia’s Tonle Sap River.

PLANNING IN THE WEST. Wild Rivers and Riprap: The Case of the Yellowstone
New West - October 2, 2006
It is a dream shared by millions, many of them coming to the end of successful careers in the rush of city and suburb, the endless juggling of money and family, the stress of the deal and the commute. The dream is of a western river like Montana’s Yellowstone, and a home within sight of the place where a clear ripple of shoal water falls away to a deeper green, and a trout rises to a passing caddis fly.  

Salmon Paradise Under Fire
Field & Stream - September 28, 2008
There are places in this world, if you are a hunter and a fisherman, that own a kind of mythical power, places where every one of the basic elements of what drives us are intact, and present. If we are lucky, some of those places are close to home.  

Strangling the Last Best River
High Country News - April 12, 1999
Montana statesman Mike Mansfield, summing up the highlights of his career in the U.S. Senate, claimed to be most proud that he “had saved the Yellowstone River from the Corps of Engineers.” But while the Yellowstone is still the longest un-dammed river in the Lower 48, it is now a long way from “saved.” 

Takedown
Field & Stream - June 6, 2006
The inner workings of a huge California poaching ring-and how wardens busted it.

Field and Stream Report: The Truth about Mercury and the Fish You Eat
Field & Stream - March 31, 2004
It is the most basic of human rights: to fish for food, to take from the bounty of our waters a healthy meal for ourselves and our families. The practice is as old as mankind, from a caveman bent over a river with a sharpened stick to a modern angler powering a cast into the waves with a surf rod. 

WILDLIFE POLITICS

Special Report: A Bad Year In Grizzly Country
Field & Stream - February 15, 2005
A report on what happens when men and bears collide, and why there were so many encounters in 2004.

How Three Men Survived Attacks by Grizzly Bears
Field & Stream - January 31, 2005
Wally Cash has hunted and guided the Pilgrim Creek elk country near Moran, Wyoming, for 44 seasons. On September 21, 2004, Cash was hunting alone, planning to cross a ridge and meet up with one of his partners. His hunting party had killed a bull the day before, and the fresh gut pile was nearby.

Money Game
The Atlantic Online - June 2000
Impatient hunters seeking guaranteed trophy antlers -- and impatient Asians seeking aphrodisiacs -- have made elk farms a thriving business. We’re just starting to assess the damage.

One Way to Save the Wolf? Hunt It.
High Country News - May 10, 2010
Montana wildlife managers deem the first wolf season a success, for both hunters and hunted. 

Predator Hunters For The Environment
High Country News - June 25, 2007
Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife has protected a lot of Western land and species. It’s also killed a lot of coyotes (and can’t wait to go after some wolves). 

Wolves and Elk: Hunting for Answers
Bugle - September/October 2005
It’s been five years since we last focused a major special section on wolves. Much has changed in that time. We have a better understanding of some things, yet countless questions remain. This concludes a two-part series that explores the many facets of the relationships between wolves, elk, people and the land. We hope this series, taken as a whole, offers a clear, accurate, even-handed appraisal of wolves in elk country.

The Killing Fields
Missoula Independent - March 9-16, 2006
Vol. 17, No.10
A buffalo hunt turned into a slaughter on the border of Yellowstone National Park. Could slaughter be the key to setting the bison free?

How the Gray Wolf Lost it's Endangered Status
High Country News - May 29, 2011
From the beginning, it was clear that the resurgent wolf population would need at least the threat of legal action to survive...

Hunting Amidst Grizzlies: Always Respect the Bruin, and Remember Your Bear Spray
Field & Stream - November 16, 2011
A Kalispell elk hunter shot and killed a charging grizzly bear in the Badger-Two Medicine Area of the Rocky Mountain Front on Wednesday.

The Creature of McCone County, Part I
A Montana Wolf Mystery & the Fury it Breeds
March 29, 2006
The creature, whatever it is, came out of Montana's own McCone County, wandering from the rough breaks of Timber Creek.....

The Creature of McCone County, Part II - Creature Feeds Conspiracies, Controversy
March 30, 2006

Investigative Reporting

Dasen Girls

Part 1: Inside the World of the ‘Dasen Girls’
NewWest.com - March 17, 2005
When the police arrested Kalispell businessman Dick Dasen on prostitution charges last year, it seemed there had to be more to the story than a wealthy man paying for sex. There was more. A lot more.  
 

Part 2: A Mother’s Worst Nightmare
NewWest.com - March 17, 2005
When Angela Guzman-Rogers first met Dick Dasen at Deana Dimler’s hair salon, he started giving her money with no strings attached. But her mother Connie knew something was wrong. Very wrong. 

Part 3: A Pillar of the Community
NewWest.com - March 18, 2005
Dick Dasen was a successful entrepreneur and investor, an observant Christian, and a generous supporter of local charities. The story of his secret life seemed too extreme to be true.

Part 4: ‘Our Give-A-Shitters Were Broken’
NewWest.com - March 18, 2005
Jenna Clark and Summer Rae Mahlen were deep in the Kalispell meth scene, mainlining the drug and taking lucrative ‘appointments’ with Dick Dasen. But as their friend Angela once told them, there were huge sacrifices to be made. 

Part 5: The Scourge of Rural America
NewWest.com - March 19, 2005
In the Flathead Valley of Montana, as in many rural areas, methamphetamine is breeding crime and destroying lives at a shocking rate. Yet for most of those who fall into the grip of the drug, the only “treatment program” available is prison.

Part 6: Crime and Punishment
NewWest.com - March 21, 2005
Kim Neise is already in jail for procuring underage girls for Dick Dasen, and a number of other ‘Dasen Girls’ now have prostitution convictions on their records. Yet for all his
sordid behavior, it’s not clear whether Dasen himself will land in prison.

Article by Rebecca Howell praising New West's Coverage

Dasen Trial

Epilogue: Waiting for the Dasen Trial
NewWest.com - March 24, 2005

A ‘Dasen Girl’ Takes the Witness Stand
NewWest.com - March 28, 2005

Witnesses Pile on the Evidence in Dasen Trial
NewWest.com - May 3, 2005

A Sad Procession of Witnesses
NewWest.com - May 8, 2005

Prosecution Rests in Dasen Trial
NewWest.com - May 15, 2005

Dasen’s Fate Now in Jury’s Hands
NewWest.com - May 20 2005

Dick Dasen’s Sentencing Reflects The Strange Nature of His Case
NewWest.com - September 13, 2005

Essays

Balancing Act - Chinese Acrobats and Topophilia
April 6, 2006

A Climbing Life
Mountain Gazette - June 14, 2000

Blood Relations
Montana Headwall - October 2. 2009
You can go farther. You can go higher. But nothing will get you deeper into the mountains than elk hunting.  

Martial Arts

MONTANA’S ULTIMATE FIGHTING EXPERIENCE
New West - April 24, 2006
Majestic Mayhem: Cage Fighting in Kalispell  

Fight Clubs
Oxford American - January/February 2001
"We follow the standard rules - no small-joint locks, no groin strikes or eye gouging, no biting."