Fifty deer in a tree
Are there more deer here in the Flathead Valley than there were when the first homesteading began in the late twentieth century? I don't know, but there are certainly a lot more whitetails than there were seventy years ago when I was in second grade. I know there are also more deer here in the valley than there were even during World War II when there weren't many hunters thinning them out.
For a little base line info I've dug out a couple of interviews with men who lived here in the 1880s and 90s. This first reference to hunting is from the memory of R. H. "Harry" Vose, a man I knew quite well in the 40s. He and his brother Oliver came out of retirement and helped us kids do the U.S. Forest Service work during World War II. Here is some of Harry's tale:
"At that time (late 1880s) we had no game laws and the early settlers here in the Flathead made a regular practice of waiting until real cold weather set in and then killing as many deer as they thought they could use. I don't remember when our first game laws were enacted, but as I remember, our first deer limit was six. I often heard others say that it was eight. Before a limit was fixed, deer meat was often fed to any animal or bird on the place that would eat it, including pigs, dogs, cats, and chickens. Of course the choicest meat was for house use and was preserved in many ways, jerked, salted, smoked, pickled, and canned."
Harry also tells of the Indians often bringing fresh venison to his family's cabin northwest of Kalispell and trading it to his dad for things they needed, such as sugar, salt or whatever.
Now let us quote from memoirs of Robert Saury which were collected by Mrs. Steve Slack back in the 1960s:
"Years ago there was no hunting season. Two men lived where the Columbia Falls park is today. They loved to hunt and the country was mostly forests with many large trees and parks. One day one of the men stopped by and told my dad they had a deer he could have. I went along and in a huge tree there hung 50 (fifty) deer. The men gave a deer to anyone who needed one. The first deer season, each hunter was allowed 12 deer and season lasted 6 months."
Bob Saury's folks moved to the Flathead from Butte in early 1891 when Bob was only a baby. They traveled in a covered wagon and it took three days for them to get from Polson to Columbia Falls. Bob's father hauled freight from Demersville to Columbia Falls for a living and they lived in a tent at first but his mother was expecting so the rented a single room upstairs in a house where his brother was born December 23, 1891. Bob's dad eventually got a farm of his own, became camp boss for State Lumber Company, which later became Stoltz, and he got paid $80 a month and room and board.
Bob's mother cooked for the lumber camp: "She charged $4.50 a week for the meals and she bought her groceries at cost. Good round steak was 15 cents a pound and the best steak was 25 cents a pound. She had a helper with the cooking and sometimes cleared $300 a month. That was a lot of money then. Loggers wages were $2.00 to $2.50 per day."
Here's a little more of Bob Saury's recollections: "The Cunninghams lived at the same place where the Aluminum Plant is today. I saw the murderer of Lena Cunningham swear, with his hand on the Bible, that he was innocent. The lawmen were afraid the man would be mobbed and hung on the spot so he was taken speedily to the Kalispell jail…The murderer was sentenced to hang but had to wait three or four weeks until he was 21 years old. He wanted his shoes off when he was hung as he didn't want to die with his boots on."
*Note (Bob was only four years old at the time of the Cunningham murder so I suspect parts of his old age recollections were put there from hearing talk from his father and others he admired, not from personal observation.) As you local history buffs may recall, Calvin Christie was convicted in August '94 of killing Mrs. Cunningham in April. He was the first killer "legally" hanged in Flathead County. The hanging took place outside Kalispell's original City Hall building on First Avenue East, December 21, 1894, at "ten seconds past ten in the morning."
Justice was swifter…in the olden days.