Big Sky Country | Doug61 - 10/17/2026 14:41
Good reading. Just one question. Are things getting sketchy for you and your cattle? Public?
We’ve never had them bother our cattle. Few yrs ago, we calved 50 1st calf heifers, had 50 live calves—-a record for us!
Put them on neat field by=creek and a fkn mountain lion ate one! They very neatly turn hide inside out, clear up to ears—like skinning a musk rat.
Neighbors got permits to kill 2, then I heard there were 3—so, evening or two later was outside, heard some hounds running then baying treed-2 shots—-then a third.
Bear tracks within half a mile of our house haven’t seen any this yr—-don’t usually bother much but more of then and being seen/watched more.
I’ll post a ,ink if I can—-few people trying corn which was unheard of a few yrs ago—-
As many as seven grizzly bears scattered across a Montana cornfield when a combine rumbled toward them, according to a video reportedly taken on Thursday, October 8, near the small town of Augusta.
The bears appeared to have been feeding in the corn. As the noisy machine approached, they fled in different directions. One bear turned back toward the combine, then cut toward the corn as if to hide, then changed course again and ran off.
Augusta sits where the Rocky Mountain Front drops onto open prairie, and locals say scenes like this are becoming routine. Saddle maker Sparky Wallace told Cowboy State Daily the footage did not shock him. He thought it was filmed about 12 miles from his home. Rancher Collins, who described seven grizzlies on his own property in June, said there are videos like it all the time.
Grizzlies are not usually social animals. Adult males often travel alone, and mothers stay with their cubs. But bears can tolerate one another when a large amount of food is concentrated in one place, and a ripe cornfield offers exactly that. That may help explain why several bears were feeding together, though the video alone cannot confirm why.
The scene also reflects a larger change. Grizzlies once ranged across much of the Great Plains, but hunting and settlement pushed them into mountain strongholds, and they were listed as threatened in 1975. A first-ever rangewide report released in December 2025 found that occupied grizzly range in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, which includes the Rocky Mountain Front, grew by about 2,500 square miles, a nearly 12 percent increase over two years. It now covers more than 24,000 square miles, with much more open prairie than the Yellowstone region.
Living alongside grizzlies takes planning. In Montana's Mission Valley, the group People and Carnivores helped fund an electric fence around a dairyman's cornfield, where close to 15 grizzlies could often be found before the fence went up. The Missoulian reported that the fence has been partially successful.
Locals say seeing grizzlies near their farms is no longer a surprise. For the bears, the prairie was once part of their range, and it is slowly becoming part of it again. What will it take for farms and grizzlies to share that ground safely?
Sources: Cowboy State Daily / WyoFile / Missoulian
(This photo is used for illustrative purposes only.)
Well that don’t work if you’re on Facebook try
Beyond The Wild
There’s 8 bears in that group—-
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Grizzly Bears—just poster for interest
