Unit M106 (Fisher River)

Montana FWP's material on unit M106 stops at the boundary — there is no agency account of where its Shiras moose live. Every place named below sits inside the unit line. Which of them holds animals in your season is for you to find out. The unit lies in Lincoln and Flathead counties.

The lines of the unit: Kootenai River, Cripple Horse Creek and Wolf Creek

Montana FWP draws unit M106 in Lincoln and Flathead counties with a boundary that runs on Highway 2, Route 37, USFS Road 835 and USFS Road 36, and on Kootenai River, Cripple Horse Creek, Wolf Creek and Elbow Creek, walked corner by corner in its hunting district legal descriptions. It tells you the shape of the unit and nothing about its inhabitants. Its value is practical — those are the features you will navigate by, and the ridges that separate one day's country from another's.

High ground inside the line: Meadow Peak, Elk Divide and Calx Mountain

Named high points inside the unit include Meadow Peak at 6,699 feet, Elk Divide at 6,582 feet, Calx Mountain at 6,540 feet, Wolf Mountain at 6,118 feet and Rogers Mountain at 6,062 feet. Several carry a public-land flag in our data, which makes them the first places to try for a view. Moose need standing water and willow, so on dry country they are tied to the few drainages that hold both.

Holding ground: Sedlak Park, Wolf Prairie and Dunn Creek Flats

Below them sit Sedlak Park at 3,036 feet, Wolf Prairie at 2,969 feet, Dunn Creek Flats at 2,720 feet, Williams Gulch at 2,669 feet and Swede Gulch at 2,242 feet. That is the low country of the unit — the ground animals drop into when they are pushed or when the weather turns. Two you can watch from a single knob is worth more than five you have to drive between.

Montana FWP publishes no Shiras moose success figure for unit M106 that we can tie to this unit alone, so we won't quote one. The plan: walk the willow bottoms slowly at first and last light and look for fresh browse before you look for the animal.

Glassing from Brush Mountain, Fritz Mountain and Mount Sterling

Take a position on one of Brush Mountain (5,847 ft), Fritz Mountain (5,777 ft), Mount Sterling (5,767 ft) and Weigel Mountain (5,767 ft) and be on it before light. Work the morning with the air falling away from you, then accept that by mid-morning the wind has reversed and the plan has to change with it. Glass the edges first, then the shaded timber, then the edges again as the light goes. On the rut hunts, late September bulls answer a cow call near water.

The way in: Highway 2, Route 37 and USFS Road 835

We have no road inventory for this unit, so the only routes we can name are the ones Montana FWP draws the boundary with: Highway 2, Route 37, USFS Road 835, USFS Road 36 and USFS Road 3500. Those are its edges, not its interior — useful because they are where you leave the pavement, and useless for telling you what the inside is like. Pick the edge nearest the country you mean to hunt and work in from it on foot, rather than driving the perimeter looking for a way through.

A first plan from the pins on this page

The map above marks Meadow Peak, Calx Mountain and Wolf Mountain as places to see from, and Snag Gulch and Swede Gulch as ground to watch. Each pin is a named feature verified to fall inside the unit line, not a spot anyone has hunted. Walk between two of them rather than driving between four, and you will learn more in a day.

What we can't tell you

Some of the ground named above carries no land-status flag we trust, so check ownership on a current layer before you hunt it. We have no Shiras moose success figure for this unit that survives checking against Montana FWP's own harvest and hunter counts, and we would rather say so than print a statewide average as though it were measured here.