Montana Outdoors Magazine
Leave It to Beavers
Ouch! Another branch whacks me in the face as I follow Torrey Ritter through an alder and willow thicket in the waist-deep water of Spotted Dog Creek. The FWP nongame wildlife biologist looks back and grins.
“I told you it was a jungle.”
He had, but I still couldn’t get my head around it. The day before, Ritter said we’d be visiting a westslope cutthroat trout stream that bisects Spotted Dog Wildlife Management Area, 20 miles northeast of Deer Lodge. I’d imagined a serpentine ribbon of water winding through an open grassy meadow. But this boggy 3-acre widening of the creek, where we are pushing our way through thick brush, is a chaotic quagmire, more swamp than stream.
