Mission Valley News, Nov. 14, 1979

Big game harvest is above average

Although it’s too early to predict the total 1979 big game harvest, hunters appear to be doing better than the past two years, according to estimates released by Robert F. Wambach, director of the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

Wambach attributed the success over the first two weeks of the five-week general big game season mostly to weather.

On the first weekend, hunters had to endure an early season snowstorm, which blanketed the high country with good tracking snow. But the harvest was down on that first weekend since the weather was too tough for some hunters.

However, the snow stayed until the second weekend, and with those good hunting conditions, hunters did very well.

Mission mayor sells business to Morton

By Olive Wehr

After 25 years of pumping gas, making bulk oil deliveries, and starting furnaces, Walter Hamel has sold his Exxon Station and bulk business to Stuart Morton, operator of Stuart’s Service Center in St. Ignatius.

Morton plans to run his new facility as a self-service station, while utilizing its bulk plant facilities.

Although Walter is out of business now, he still cares for his customers, especially for some of the older ones who have patronized him since June 1951 when he started business at the old Beckwith station.

State seeks to save fish study after tribal raid

A meeting was scheduled yesterday afternoon between State, Tribal, and Federal officials in an effort to calm the ruffled waters of the Flathead Lake and the continuing study of the fisheries.

“We want to come to some understanding that would let us continue the work we’ve been doing with the big boat for the past 10 years,” Fish, Wildlife and Parks Deputy director Fletcher Newby told the MVN on Tuesday morning, five days after tribal and Bureau of Indian Affairs officers swooped down on the state’s research vessel and confiscated its nets and catch.

Taken last Thursday were two gill nets, two float nets, four galvanized tubs and about 125 fish, mostly Kokanee salmon.

The state’s regional supervisor, Thomas Hay in Kalispell, placed the value of the nets at about $75 to $80 each.

“The loss won’t break anybody,” he said, “but we’d like to get this thing settled.”

He said the fish, which were also confiscated were probably the catch just taken from one of the nets. There was no advance warning of a seizure of the equipment, Hay said, nor has there been a similar confrontation in the 20 or so years that the State of Montana has conducted fisheries studies on Flathead Lake.

According to published reports of the incident, two Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks employees were stopped by BIA special agent Vern Erickson and tribal game wardens on the southern half of Flathead Lake, which was within the Flathead Reservation boundary. The equipment was seized, but no arrests had been made of the biologists, Scott Rumsey and Stuart Kienow, as of the beginning of this week.

Hay acknowledged that neither man held a tribal use permit, “though we do post signs for the public at lakeside parks telling them that tribal fishing permits are required for non-tribal members.”

… The continuing fish study project seeks to determine age and growth of the salmon, measured through a bone taken from the ear of the netted fish.

… The prior, and still unresolved, to-do came over the alleged slaughter of three moose and an elk without state permits by a Flathead tribal member and four friends in Lincoln County, off the reservation but on what Indians claim is part of their aboriginal hunting grounds.