HELENA – By order of the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission, the hunting of all mountain lions will close in management unit 422 one-half hour after sunset on Thursday, Oct. 27.

This hunting district will re-open for the hunting of all mountain lion for the winter season beginning Dec. 1. 

For more information, visit FWP's website at fwp.mt.gov/hunt/by-species to check the current quota status, or call the toll-free number at 1-800-385-7826.

Are you in search of effective techniques for saving money in the face of a seriously weak economy? If so, you are not alone. Owners and entrepreneurs are looking for ways to get their company finances in order and on the right track before 2023 arrives, and it becomes potentially harder to turn a profit. In fact, now is the best time to act because it appears that the nation's financial situation will get worse before it gets better.

What can you do? In addition to investigating possibilities for outsourcing a few core operational functions, explore other areas where you can make a few cuts, changes, or quick fixes to minimize expenses and boost the bottom line. Commercial fleets can gain a competitive advantage by transitioning to electric vehicles. Other worthwhile tactics in the war against rising expenses include:

Consider the following ideas that can help any company owner or manager get ready for whatever 2023 holds.

Use EVs For Commercial Fleets

For fleet managers, whether their companies have one, two, or hundreds of vehicles, transitioning away from combustion and towards electrical power is a profitable decision. Supervisors of commercial fleets always have cost on their minds, which is why they often begin exploring the concept of purchasing EVs (electric vehicles). The good news for company owners is that the benefits of electric cars outweigh the negatives across the board.

Not only is the typical EV a cleaner running machine, but the technology delivers long-term sustainability. One reason so many companies opt to switch to electric power is the fuel efficiency factor. In fact, commercial cars, vans, and small trucks that use electric power offer a high degree of cost-effectiveness. That translates to lower operating expenses for businesses that use EVs as their fleet vehicles of choice. The good news is that it's easy to begin the process of replacing combustion fleet cars and vans with electric ones on an incremental basis, which avoids the need for high up-front costs as the process begins.

Identify Outsourcing Possibilities

The majority of managers dislike the idea of giving control over a core function to a third party. Unfortunately, the modern world is a complex one, and almost no one can do every job alone or even with a small team. That's why it's so critical for owners to learn the fine art of letting someone else step in and take some responsibilities on occasion. Review your entire organizational plan with an eye toward identifying at least one function that can be outsourced. Be careful to study both short-term and long-term expenses because some service providers might appear to be a costly alternative but pay off in the long run.

Knowing what you are great at, and where you need help, is a great way to build leadership skills as well. One example is how outsourcing can positively impact the customer experience. People that take to e-commerce as their main shopping strategy are always looking for ways to improve the online shopping experience and if your website and user-friendly efforts are not up to par, they will bop on over to your competition. If this is not something you are great at, outsource the task. The result will be a higher performing aspect of your business, greater customer satisfaction, and less stress on you since you won’t have to be bogged down with trying to complete something that you struggle with.

Reduce Inventory Stockpiles

Inventory can be one of the stealth expenses in any organization, particularly ones that store merchandise for future sale. Entrepreneurs tend to think of goods on hand as a great convenience, and that's often the case. However, remember that it costs money to store, maintain, insure, and protect inventoried items. For medium and large companies, the ongoing expense of holding goods in warehouses or on-site can be significant. Consider developing more precise reorder points for all your for-sale goods. That way, you'll always be carrying as little inventory as possible. Adjusting order timing means paying less for insurance, security, and spoilage.

Purchase Supplies in Advance

Explore the idea of making next year's supply and equipment purchases now, before the year-end price increases take effect. As 2023 approaches and inflation continues to reach record levels, it's possible to save a significant amount of money just by acting fast and acquiring machinery, appliances, devices, equipment, and similar items as soon as possible. Buying in bulk or bundling different items from one seller are two of the most effective ways to get the lowest prices on needed supplies. Let sellers know that you are searching for discounts and are willing to purchase a larger-than-normal quantity all at once. They might be willing to negotiate and help you save even more.

The following is adapted from Ending Pain.

Most of us don’t understand pain, but we all experience it. The Western medical system generally sees pain as a sign of something broken that needs fixing—as a manifestation of injury or disease, an inevitable consequence of damaged tissues. This pathology model of pain is both thoroughly inculcated into popular thinking and, unfortunately, wrong in most cases. 

Actually, most pain can be traced to hidden sources of muscular disturbance known as “myofascial trigger points.” Briefly, trigger points in muscles generate “danger signals” that are sent to the central nervous system, which evaluates the signals to assess the threat level. Based on that assessment, the brain may choose to “output” what we know and feel as pain. 

When muscles develop trigger points, they can misbehave in a variety of uncomfortable, painful, and disruptive ways. Unless practitioners understand that these patterns of dysfunction are commonly caused by trigger points rather than injury or disease, they are likely to pursue inappropriate treatments that make the situation worse. 

Here are six common ways muscles misbehave, which are often misdiagnosed. 

1. Strength Deficits
Many patients come to our clinic having been assessed by a physical therapist or other medical professionals as having a “strength deficit.” In these cases, the patient has failed a strength machine evaluation, and the doctor will assign them strengthening exercises for whichever muscles tested weak. But often, these muscles aren’t truly weak at all; they have developed trigger points that lead to dysfunction.

Once a muscle becomes overloaded and develops trigger points, some percentage of its fibers are essentially taken offline and locked in a contracture; they become taut fibers. When a motor signal is sent to the muscle, many of its fibers cannot respond because they are already contracted. 

These taut fibers send danger signals to the spinal cord, which can cause active pain referral. As a result, when the patient tries to engage the muscle, they are likely to feel pain as the muscle bunches up. In addition, once the CNS receives those danger signals during a muscular contraction, it can inhibit that muscle and engage its antagonist as a way to provide safety. 

Before we can ask the muscle to take on more work, we have to help the muscle fibers become healthy. Otherwise, if you put additional demands with resistance training on muscles that have trigger points, that’s a formula for more overload, and they are likely to get worse. This happens often and is a primary cause of failed therapy. 

2. Resistance to Stretch
Another sign that trigger points are present in a muscle or muscular system is limited or compromised range of motion in the corresponding joint or joints. This phenomenon is often present in so-called frozen shoulder syndrome.

Resistance to stretch is an easy phenomenon to reproduce in a muscle with trigger points. As the muscle lengthens, the taut fibers attempt to lengthen as well, pulling apart the area of the sarcomeres in contracture. This mechanical disturbance of the trigger point will tend to irritate the contracted tissues, increasing their signaling to the spinal cord. Discomfort will increase, and the patient may notice pain in the stretching fibers as well as the referral zone of the muscle. 

As soon as there is a pain response, the CNS tends to go into protective mode by locking things down with muscular engagement. For the CNS, reduced motion equals increased stability and safety, and taut fibers from trigger points are a useful way to provide additional stability without excessive energy demands.

Stretching a muscle with trigger points is a reliable way to produce its pain referral pattern and assess which muscles are responsible for a pain pattern. It is not, however, a good first step in treatment. In cases where range of motion is limited and the muscles are resistant to stretch, it’s a mistake to try to lengthen muscles before therapeutic and rehabilitative work on the tissues. 

3. Grabbing, Shaking, Twitching
If trigger points are present in the muscle or its antagonist, you may notice that the muscle periodically “grabs,” resisting lengthening or shortening. You must move the joint slowly, paying close attention, or you might miss it. You might also notice a muscle twitching at rest or feeling shaky and unstable when the client attempts to engage it. This is a strong sign that taut fibers are sending disturbing signals to the spinal cord, confusing the system about how to respond.

Muscle spasms may accompany trigger point dysfunction. Some muscles spasm when you try to shorten their fibers if they have embedded taut fibers. You may have experienced this phenomenon in the form of a charley horse in the hamstrings or calves. Once the spasm starts, you basically have to wait until it subsides. They aren’t necessarily painful, but they compromise the muscle’s ability to both lengthen and shorten. 

4. Poor Balance and Coordination
Poor balance might also be an indicator that trigger points have developed in the body. Good balance, as in standing on one foot, requires a constant, fluid interplay between muscles on both sides of a joint. Balance poses such as tree pose in yoga aren’t static experiences—the muscles controlling the ankle and foot must perform continual micro-corrections to maintain stability. If these movements become too large, the person will wobble and shake.

Trigger points can negatively affect one’s balance and coordination by sending erroneous signals to the CNS regarding muscle tension and length. This process can disturb the coordination between agonist and antagonist muscles, resulting in poor balance. Related signs include dropping things, poor fine motor control reduced ability to play musical instruments, poor performance in sports, and similar problems.

5. Muscle Inhibition
The manual therapy field has a concept called muscle inhibition that is based on the observation that muscles sometimes don’t engage when or as fully as they should. It can also describe a situation when muscles that should contract simultaneously fire in succession, causing imbalance in the joints and even in the position of bones. 

To better understand this phenomenon, let’s look at a prime example. A muscle that commonly becomes inhibited is vastus medialis, the medial short quadricep head. The quadriceps have oblique attachments to the tendon that controls the kneecap. The branch on the outside of the leg (vastus lateralis) is a larger, more powerful muscle than the inside quadricep (vastus medialis). When a patient develops pain and swelling around the knee, it is common to observe that the vastus medialis doesn’t contract right away as the patient tries to extend their knee, causing the patella to divert in a lateral direction. This is sometimes called inhibition of the vastus medialis. 

In the case of an inhibited vastus medialis, the patient will likely feel pain around their knee, but the root cause is often trigger points in other, more distant muscles. In some cases the body seems to let one side of a functional antagonist relationship dominate when dysfunction develops.

6. Shortening Dysfunction and How It Blocks Stretch
Healthy muscles can be stretched or shortened without causing pain or other discomfort. Most people are familiar with stretching and know that certain muscles will feel uncomfortable if you attempt to stretch them beyond a certain point. Very few people realize that muscles can become dysfunctional when shortened. In fact, shortening dysfunction is an even more significant issue than stretching dysfunction and can occur with either passive or active shortening.

Active shortening occurs when you engage a muscle. If you use your biceps and brachialis to bend your elbow, those muscles are contracting actively and the overall length of the fibers becomes shorter than they were with the elbow straight. If you rest your arm in a bent position, such as during sleep, you are no longer actively contracting those muscles. At that point, we say that biceps and brachialis are being passively shortened.

Normally, muscles become softer when in passive shortening, so a telltale sign of shortening dysfunction is the muscle hardening as it is shortened. This indicates that a type of automatic spasm or contraction is happening within the muscle without a motor signal from the spine telling the fibers to engage. This condition can sometimes be painful, and even if not, it can stop the joint from bending any further, meaning that it inhibits the stretch of the muscle’s antagonists.

It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way
When muscles develop trigger points, they can misbehave in a variety of ways that confuse medical practitioners, who assume an injury at the site of the pain. Often, trigger points can masquerade as more serious conditions, leading physicians to misdiagnose the source of the pain. 

When I became a bodyworker, I began to realize that pain is almost universal. Most of my clients were seeking relief for their chronic or acute pain, having been failed or dismissed by medical doctors and other professionals.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The proper treatment of trigger points offers an effective solution to common muscle misbehavior.

For more advice on muscle behavior, you can find Ending Pain on Amazon.

Chuck Duff is a Renaissance man who loves challenging the status quo. He studied Buddhism and psychology at University of Chicago, then moved to a career in software research and innovation. He is a serious guitarist and a trained chef. His daughter is a talented dancer and photographer. His own back pain led him to research pain science and develop CTB, a novel integration of Thai bodywork and trigger point therapy. He taught at Pacific College of Oriental Medicine and founded the Coaching The Body Institute in 2001. He remains pain free by practicing what he preaches. More at coachingthebody.com.

BOZEMAN – Bear specialists and game wardens with Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks have responded recently to several separate conflicts involving grizzly bears in southwestern Montana.  

No people were injured in these conflicts. However, one grizzly bear was euthanized, and several others were relocated.  

Defensive encounter 
On Oct. 14, two hunters were walking along Eldridge Trail south of Taylor Creek in the Madison Range. They heard brush breaking and saw a grizzly bear charging at them. Both hunters fired multiple handgun rounds at the bear, and it left without any signs of injury. The hunters were not injured.  

The bear’s charge was likely the result of a surprise, defensive encounter because of the wind direction, the bear’s proximity to the hunters and because the female bear was accompanied by two cubs.  

The next day, FWP staff flew the area extensively and did not find an injured bear. During a ground search, FWP and U.S. Forest Service law enforcement staff found bear tracks and handgun casings from the two hunters, but they did not find blood, hair or any other evidence the bear was injured.  

This incident is still under investigation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).  

Gardiner bears relocated 
A female grizzly bear and two cubs were recently captured and relocated from Gardiner. 

The bears were first reported to FWP on Oct. 10 after eating from apple trees in town and grazing on grass and dandelions on the football field at Gardiner High School in the evenings. Staff from FWP and Yellowstone National Park hazed the bears out of town at night five times over several days with paintballs, cracker rounds and rubber bullets. The bears eventually moved to another part of town, where they continued eating apples at night. Over time, the bears continued to return and eat apples more often during daylight hours, reducing opportunities to safely haze the bears due to daytime public safety concerns.  

On the morning of Oct. 17, the bears were reported feeding at apple trees near a school bus stop, which prevented kids from being able to get on the bus. 

As a preventative measure, FWP trapped all three bears that evening. The bears were in good health, and there was no evidence they had gained access to unsecured garbage. In consultation with the USFWS, FWP bear specialists outfitted the sow with a GPS collar and relocated the bears to a site previously approved by the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission. 

Big Sky grizzly euthanized 
An adult female grizzly bear was euthanized on Oct. 21 after several conflicts with people in Big Sky.  

The female and two cubs frequented homesites in Big Sky for several weeks leading up to the day they were captured. The bears were also seen at Ophir Elementary School during daylight and evening hours. Gallatin County Sheriff’s deputies and private landowners made multiple attempts to haze the bears out of town with vehicles and rubber bullets, but the bears kept returning to the area.  

At about 11 a.m. on Oct. 19, the bears approached a group of people on private property, forcing the people to go into a building. A landowner approached the bears in a vehicle, attempting to haze them away, and the female bear charged at them. The bears then left for a short time and returned to the property again.  

FWP was notified of the encounter and trapped the bears on the property. The 25-year-old sow was found to have poor body condition, with low fat reserves and heavily worn teeth. In consultation with the USFWS, FWP euthanized the sow due to human safety concerns; the bear’s poor health, habituated behavior, and aggressive response to hazing; and property damage. 

The sow was 25 years old and had been captured previously as a non-conflict bear during annual population monitoring research. The cubs were relocated to a commission-approved release site. 

Grizzly bear mortality on Highway 191 
On Oct. 23, an FWP game warden responded to a report of an older male grizzly bear that was struck by a vehicle and killed on U.S. Highway 191 near West Yellowstone.  

Be Bear Aware 
Montana is bear country. Grizzly bear populations continue to become denser and more widespread in Montana, increasing the likelihood that residents and recreationists will encounter them in more places each year. Unsecured attractants—such as fruit trees, garbage and bird feeders—can lead to human safety risks and property damage.  

Avoiding conflicts with bears is easier than dealing with conflicts. Here are some precautions to help residents, recreationists and people who work outdoors avoid negative bear encounters:  
• Remove fruit on and around fruit trees. 
• Keep garbage, bird feeders, pet food and other attractants put away in a secure building. Keep garbage in a secure building until the day it is collected. Certified bear-resistant garbage containers are available in many areas.
• Never feed wildlife. Bears that become food conditioned lose their natural foraging behavior and pose threats to human safety. It is illegal to feed bears in Montana.  
• Carry bear spray and be prepared to use it immediately.  
• Travel in groups whenever possible and make casual noise, which can help alert bears to your presence.  
• Stay away from animal carcasses, which often attract bears.  
• Follow food storage orders from the applicable land management agency.  
• If you encounter a bear, never approach it. Leave the area when it is safe to do so.  
Bears are active during the general hunting season into late fall. Hunting in places that have or may have grizzly bears—which includes areas of Montana west of Billings—requires special precautions:  
• Carefully read signs at trailheads and observe area closures that may be in effect. 
• Carry bear spray and be prepared to use it immediately.  
• Look for bear sign and be cautious around creeks and areas with limited visibility.  
• Hunt with a group of people. Making localized noise can alert bears to your presence.  
• Be aware that elk calls and cover scents can attract bears.  
• Bring the equipment and people needed to help field dress game and remove the meat from the kill site as soon as possible. 
• If you need to leave part of the meat in the field during processing, hang it at least 10 feet off the ground, 4 feet from any vertical support, and at least 150 yards from the gut pile. Leave it where it can be observed from a distance of at least 200 yards.  
• Upon your return, observe the meat with binoculars. If it has been disturbed or if a bear is in the area, leave and call FWP. 

Grizzly bears in the lower 48 states are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Management authority for grizzlies rests with the USFWS, working closely in Montana with FWP, the Forest Service, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Geological Survey, Wildlife Services, and Native American tribes. This collaboration happens through the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee.  

For more information and resources on bear safety, visit fwp.mt.gov/conservation/wildlife-management/bear.  

BOZEMAN – Hunter numbers were below average and hunter success was mixed in southwestern Montana over the opening weekend of the general deer and elk hunting season. 

Wildlife biologists with Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks in southwestern Montana operated six game check stations over the weekend and met with 1,732 hunters. Biologists use check stations to collect data on hunter participation and success, as well as the species, sex and age class of the animals harvested. This supplements data collected through hunter harvest phone surveys each year. 

Steady rain, snow and fog limited visibility for hunters in many areas, likely contributing to reduced harvest compared to averages. 
The Alder check station saw 335 hunters, which was 18 percent fewer than the long-term average for opening weekend. About 10 percent of hunters harvested an animal, which is below the long-term average of 12 percent. Elk harvest was 55 percent lower than average. Poor visibility and wet conditions likely contributed to reduced elk harvest here.  

The number of hunters and harvested elk at the Cameron check station were also below average for opening weekend. The check station saw 414 hunters during opening weekend, compared to 579 last year and a long-term average of 495. Hunter success this year was about 10 percent.  

FWP staff at the Gallatin check station met with 127 hunters, about 11 percent of whom were successful. The number of hunters here was below average, but the percentage of hunters who harvested deer or elk was above average. 

The Divide check station saw 330 hunters, with a success rate of more than 10 percent. This was about 18 percent fewer hunters than last year, and 10 percent fewer than the long-term average. However, hunter success here was 13 percent higher than last year and 6 percent below the long-term average.  

Biologists also operated check stations near Canyon Ferry and Gardiner. In total for the region, biologists checked 14 white-tailed deer, 53 mule deer and 83 elk. 
These figures do not account for different hunting season regulations over the years, which have varied from liberal to restrictive for elk and mule deer, depending on population status.  

On October 23, 2022, at 9:29 A.M., Gallatin County 911 Dispatch received a report of two overdue hunters. The hunters had been last seen in the Mystic Lake Cabin area the day prior at 7:10 A.M by a third member of the hunting party, but never returned to the cabin for their planned stay overnight.  Gallatin County Sheriff Search and Rescue were dispatched to locate and assist the missing hunters.

Gallatin County Sheriff Search and Rescue Valley Section and SAR Dog teams deployed to the area the hunters were last seen from the Bozeman Creek Trailhead.  After several hours of clearing trail and navigating snowy conditions, ground teams and a SAR Dog team were able to reach the Mystic Lake Cabin, where they located the hunters.  One member of the party had suffered a minor injury the night before, which delayed their ability to make it back to the cabin in the dark.  The hunters had arrived at the cabin after their hunting partner had already gone for help, and were seeking shelter from the inclement weather.  SAR teams conducted a medical assessment and transported the hunters back to the trailhead.

Sheriff Dan Springer encourages hunters to prepare for changing weather conditions and to carry a means of communication should an accident happen.  Seeking shelter and remaining stationary aided rescuers in conducting a timely and efficient rescue in this case.

BOZEMAN — Artificial intelligence can help libraries provide better services, including making materials more accessible, but using AI can also raise ethical questions, according to Sara Mannheimer, associate professor with the Montana State University Library.

Now, Mannheimer is leading a team working to help librarians and archivists make ethical, values-driven decisions about how best to use artificial intelligence in libraries and archives. Their efforts are backed by a $250,000, three-year grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

“We see AI as this potentially transformative technology for libraries,” Mannheimer said. “AI can provide services that users love – services that can make the library better – but we want to use AI in a way that is careful and with an eye toward potential harms so that those harms can be minimized.”

Artificial intelligence refers to machines that are programmed to process complex information and mimic human actions. AI is powering social media and search engines, and it factors into data-driven decision-making in education, criminal justice, business and other fields, Mannheimer said. It helps find relevant information with personalized internet search results, book and movie recommendations and more.

Over the past few years, libraries and archives have begun using artificial intelligence to enhance their services, especially to help with describing items in their collections and helping patrons discover them. But using artificial intelligence can also come with drawbacks, Mannheimer said.

“AI is not actually intelligent,” Mannheimer said. “It’s still a machine that’s working through a process. It’s dependent on what data you feed it.” Because of that, she noted, it’s important to recognize that AI can be biased and limited by the data it uses and to consider how to account for and potentially address those biases.

Mannheimer said one of the main ways that libraries use AI is in archives and special collections to help create metadata and catalog terms. It helps librarians and patrons understand, on a larger scale, what’s in the library’s digital collections.

With that additional data, scholars can do things like data mapping – a process that connects a data field from one source to a data field in another source, which can help facilitate data migration and integration – or distant reading, which uses computational methods to analyze literature.

Having that additional data available aligns with a widely held library value of making collections more accessible, but Mannheimer cautioned that it’s important to balance accessibility issues with privacy issues.

“When collections are digitized, it opens up the scope of use if it’s openly available on the web,” she said. “Having digitized archives widely available is very different than having them sitting in a box that only certain scholars would access in person.”

In addition, libraries have begun using AI to enhance library services, such as recommending books for library patrons, yet such a service could be at odds with patron privacy.

“There’s this long-standing idea that in order for (library users) to have intellectual freedom and explore topics with impunity, we don’t keep lending records,” Mannheimer said. “But if there is a search program where a patron can opt in to creating a profile, and libraries can keep track of what you’ve borrowed and recommend other titles for you, suddenly there is a tension. We’re trying to align with long-standing library values, but also we’re coming into this culture where there are different expectations from our users about the services we provide.”

To help address the challenges that come with AI, Mannheimer and colleagues at MSU, Iowa State University and James Madison University are developing resources, including a harms analysis tool and handbook, to advise on the ethical use of AI in libraries and archives. They’re also hosting workshops with librarians, archivists and library users and have created an advisory board.

“We’re trying to bring in as many people with different perspectives as possible to make sure that the ethical decision-making guide we make can be used by people with all different sorts of values and experiences,” she said.

Mannheimer and her team plan to create a free tool to help decision-makers in libraries consider all of the potential angles and ramifications of AI. The team plans to distribute it to colleagues and also make it available online.

“It will basically be a guide where, when you embark on either buying an AI product or creating your own AI project, it will help you consider all of the potential angles,” she said. “We think it will be really helpful to have a series of questions to consider.”

In addition to Mannheimer, who is leading the grant, other members of the project team include Jason Clark, Doralyn Rossmann and Scott Young with the MSU Library; Bonnie Sheehey with the MSU Department of History and Philosophy; Hannah Scates Kettler with Iowa State University; and Yasmeen Shorish with James Madison University. The grant is affiliated with the MSU Center for Science, Technology, Ethics, and Society.

Doralyn Rossmann, dean of the MSU Library, said she’s excited to be a part of a team providing needed tools for libraries and archives to navigate the ethical challenges of using AI in keeping with library values.

“AI has so much potential to help people meet their information needs,” Rossmann said. “Our team brings together expertise to ask thoughtful questions about the ethical intersection of libraries, our patrons and AI technologies.”

On October 22, 2022, at 10:40 A.M., Gallatin County Dispatch received a call from the Garmin International Emergency Response Coordination Center (IERCC), who had received an SOS from a satellite communication device.  After communicating with the device owner, it was determined a hunter had broken their leg while navigating rough terrain near the Albino Lake Trail in Big Sky.

Gallatin County Sheriff Search and Rescue Big Sky Section, Valley Section, and a Big Sky Fire Department responded to assist with the call. SAR Big Sky and Valley ground teams deployed on foot to the patient with ropes and a one wheeled litter. Another SAR Big Sky team deployed from the Eldridge Trailhead on a four-wheel drive side by side. Teams faced difficult terrain and harsh weather while attempting the backcountry rescue in snowy and icy conditions.

It took volunteers several hours to locate, assess, and evacuate the patient. Once ground teams arrived at the patient’s location, they stabilized the injury and created a plan to evacuate the hunter by one wheeled litter, and then onto the side by side for transport back to the trailhead. The hunter was then transported several miles down the trail to the Big Sky Fire Department Ambulance and ultimately transported to Bozeman Health for further evaluation.

Sheriff Dan Springer would like to commend the hunting party for being prepared with not only a satellite communication device, but for being adequately dressed for the changing weather and long day in the elements.

Photos courtesy of Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office.

BIG SKY, MT - (October 22, 2022) — An October winter storm has delivered more than a foot of snow at Big Sky Resort, with continued accumulation forecasted through the rest of the weekend. 

Big Sky Ski Patrol observed snow drifts more than two feet deep at the top of Challenger lift at 9600 feet. 

Today, Big Sky Resort also saw its first snowfall in the base area at 7500 feet.
Big Sky Resort opens for the winter season in just over a month on Thanksgiving Day, November 24. 

Let it snow!