MONTANA OUTDOORS 3332 SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2013 FWP.MT.GOV/MTOUTDOORS

Beckman’s Big SurpriseHow a reclusive millionaire’s commitment to mule deerand public hunting access created central Montana’s newest wildlife management area.By Dave Carty. Photographs by Jason Savage

GOLDEN GIFT Evening sunlight sends a warm glow over the Beckman Wildlife Management Area northwest of Lewistown. մեe 6,600-acre parcel was made possible by a bachelor farmer who le $3 million in his will to benefitdeer and deer hunting access.

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It was mule deer that Beckman wanted tobenefit from the nearly $3 million he left inhis will when he died in 1997, at age 88.

It turns out Beckman earned a bit ofmoney farming as a young man and put hismodest savings into gold mine stocks. “Hewas a smart man, but he also got lucky withthose investments, because they made hima lot of money,” Luoma says.

Under the terms of his will, a board oftrustees that included Luoma (who alsoacted as Beckman’s personal representative)was given specific instructions to purchase apiece of land in central Montana that would be put into public ownership for theenhancement andhunting of muledeer. The boardasked FWP to find asuitable site it couldbuy and then donateto the department.

The first pur-chase, in 1999, was a2,560-acre parcel bisected by the Judith River. FWP acquiredthe land when it learned the owners wanted

to sell the property so they could retire. Atthe time it was platted as a subdivision, butthe couple decided to sell the land to FWP topreserve it as wildlife habitat. An adjacent2,129-acre parcel was purchased two yearslater, and then a few smaller parcels wereadded to fill out the WMA, which today con-sists of 6,600 acres.

Sonja Smith, FWP area wildlife biologistin Lewistown, says the department takes seriously Beckman’s wish that the area sup-port a strong mule deer population. “Thebreaks-like habitat on Beckman, with therimrock and ponderosa pine, is classic muledeer habitat,” she says. “Our goal is to main-

tain strong mule deer numberson and around the wildlife management area, though rightnow numbers are down through-out most of central Montana because of natural populationfluctuations across the entirelandscape.”

Smith says FWP is helpingmuleys by maintaining irrigated

crop fields in the bottomlands, which produce barley, wheat, and alfalfa. The department also lets an adjacent rancher rotationally graze cattle on the WMA in exchange for allowing public hunting on hisproperty. “We’re also working to increase

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n honor of Leroy “R.B.” Beck-man, I was hoping we’d seesome muleys.

But on a blustery day this pastspring, the wind was blowing sohard I figured every deer in thevicinity would be hunkereddown, trying not to get knockedinto the next county. As MarkSchlepp, the Montana Fish,Wildlife & Parks central regionwildlife area manager, drove us

in his department pickup down a gravel roadtoward the Beckman Wildlife ManagementArea (WMA), the vehicle rocked as gustshammered first one side then the other. If Iwere a mule deer, I thought, I wouldn’t beout on a day like this.

Schlepp was giving me a tour of the Beck-man so I could see for myself this remark-able wildlife area that I’d heard about andlong wanted to visit.

Seen from the rimrock far above the Ju-dith River, the Beckman at first looks likemuch of the other country in this part ofcentral Montana—rolling to flat farmlandand miles and miles of wheat and CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) grasses.But once you drop down into the WMA it-self, which follows the serpentine course of

the wild and free-flowing Judith for severalmiles, a new world opens. Rolling hills cov-ered with ponderosa pine are home to Mer-riam’s wild turkeys, while the river bottomshold a healthy population of white-taileddeer. Pheasants live in the thick willows andlush grasslands along the river, while sharp-tailed grouse, Hungarian partridge, a smallelk herd, and 20 or so pronghorn are foundon the drier uplands. Songbirds thrive allover.

And then there are the mule deer—thereason this lush, wildlife-packed place cameinto state ownership in the first place.

What a willMoney to buy the WMA came from R.B.Beckman, a reclusive bachelor who lived onthe outskirts of Great Falls. Thought byneighbors to be penniless, Beckman worepatched bib overalls, drove an old paneltruck filled with trash, heated just one roomof his small house, and lived off a meagerSocial Security check. “He grew up poor,near Denton, where his mother was aschoolteacher,” says Jim Luoma of SandCoulee, Beckman’s closest friend. Luomasays Beckman didn’t smoke or drink andhad only a few interests: buying and sellingold guns, and hunting mule deer .

From a wildlife management andpublic access standpoint, all thisland blends together.”

LUSH LANDSCAPE Top: filled with trout and smallmouth bass, the Judith River windsthrough verdant bottomlands of the BeckmanWMA. Above: Nongame wildlife such as westernmeadowlarks abound on the wildlife manage-ment area. Le: R.B. Beckman, whose secretestate allowed the wildlife haven to becomepublic property.

Dave Carty of Bozeman is a longtime contributor to Montana Outdoors. Photographer Jason Savage lives in Helena.

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LANDSCAPE MOSAIC մեe Beckman WMA, roughly 20 miles northwest of Lewistown, is the centerpiece of a patchwork of public and private lands supporting wildlife habitat and hunter access totaling more than 10,000 acres.

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manager who lives in Lewistown. Some ofthe PF parcel is planted in wheat and barley,while the rest is in native grasses or incrested wheatgrass that Roberts says volun-teers will eventually plant to native cover.

Roberts adds that PF’s lease on thenearby section of school trust land allowsthe group to maintain 320 acres in wheatand barley cropland (half left fallow eachyear) and open the other half for intermit-tent grazing.

Constant maintenanceThose who think WMAs are simply pur-chased, fenced, and left alone would besurprised to see how much active manage-ment they require. On the day Schlepp wasshowing me around, he and another FWPemployee inspected two portable waterpumps as well as hundreds of feet of pipethat will deliver water to upland areas to

irrigate hay and grain plots for deer, wildturkeys, and upland birds. A major projecthas involved spraying thousands of acres ofweed-infested uplands to control spottedknapweed. “In some parts of the Beckman,the knapweed looked like a purple sea,”Schlepp says. In addition, old fencing wascoming down and new, wildlife-friendlyfencing was going up so that parts of theWMA can be rest-rotation grazed. Themanaged grazing system invigorates nativeplant communities, benefiting the privatelyowned cattle as well as the public’s muledeer and whitetails.

“This whole complex is a team effort,”says Smith. “In addition to all that Pheas-ants Forever has done, a huge amount ofcredit goes to [former FWP Lewistown-area wildlife biologist] Tom Stivers. Hewrote the original proposals, conductedpublic meetings, and figured out the graz-

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elk harvest to reduce depredation on neigh-boring ranches and lessen competition forhabitat with deer,” she says.

Mosaic of wildlife landsIn addition to benefiting wildlife and recre-ation in its own right, the Beckman area anchors a mosaic of adjacent public andprivate conservation lands that in combina-tion provide more than 10,000 acres ofprime habitat and unfettered public accessto hunting and wildlife watching. “From awildlife management and public accessstandpoint, all this land blends together,”Schlepp tells me, gesturing toward the hori-zon. Next to the Beckman WMA is the1,000-acre Pheasants Forever Wolf Creekproperty, behind which is 1,800 acres ofDepartment of Natural Resources andCon ser vation (DNRC) land. Also abuttingthe WMA is a DNRC school trust fund

section. Pheasants Forever holds the leaseon those 640 acres, allowing the conserva-tion group to manage the land for grazing,small grain production, and wildlife habi-tat. Yet another part of this enormous com-plex of wildlife habitat is a large multi-unitBlock Management Area.

“The Beckman is the centerpiece of anentire landscape of wildlife lands accessibleto public use,” says Schlepp. “Whatever wedo on the WMA may have an effect thatgoes several miles north of here and severalmiles south.”

The Mule Deer Foundation, MontanaWildlife Federation, and other groups sup-ported the Beckman WMA acquisition andmanagement. Pheasants Forever (PF) hasbeen especially active. Craig Roberts, presi-dent of PF’s Central Montana Chapter, sayshis members planted five shelterbelts on theBeckman, the PF property, and adjoining

DNRC land, and has another planned forthe WMA in 2014. Plantings include buffaloberry, silver sage, chokecherry, golden cur-rant, and Rocky Mountain juniper, totalingseveral miles of winter cover. All—includingdouble rows of 36,000 silver sage shrubsthat link the shelterbelts—were planted byhand, on soil cultivated and prepared a yearin advance.

The group has also planted five wildlifefood plots on the WMA.

Pheasants Forever generally doesn’t buyand own land, but Roberts says the organi-zation purchased the Wolf Creek property in2008 because it connected the BeckmanWMA to the 1,800 acres of DNRC propertya mile or so to the west. “We were con-cerned the land would be subdivided, so webit the bullet, did some intense fund-raising,and acquired it before we lost the opportu-nity,” says Roberts, a retired DNRC area

ROOM FOR MORE Le: A mule deer doepauses amid uplands framed by ponderosapines. Pheasants, whitetails, wild turkeys, andother game animals abound, but mule deer areof particular importance on the Beckman.մեough numbers are down throughout centralMontana, FWP is improving habitat on the WMAto speed up recovery there. Below: A bluff onthe Beckman overlooking the Judith River.

The Beckman is the centerpiece of an entire landscape of wildlife lands accessible to public use.”

MONTANA OUTDOORS 39

will have tumbled down and eroded into theprairie soil.

The Beckman land is what’s known to bi-ologists as a “transitional area”—topographythat transitions from the water-sculptedbreaks of the Judith River to the uplandshundreds of feet above. Seen from a highvantage point, the area is beautiful, with drysandstone breaks, some rising 1,000 feet,contrasting with ponderosa pine, Douglasfir, and fertile bottomlands. At one point,Schlepp and I drove along nearly a half mileof white sandstone cliffs, on a smaller scalebut every bit as spectacular as the muchmore famous White Cliffs on the MissouriRiver about 25 miles northwest. It was atreat to view this scenic wonder, hiddenwithin a box canyon and virtually unknownto any but the handful of hikers and hunters

who have discovered the place in recentyears. The Judith—ordinarily low, clear, andfilled with trout and increasing numbers ofsmallmouth bass—raged with peak runoff.On that cool and sunny spring afternoon,the place burst with green, fresh growth.Whitetails bounded from thickets along theriver, and tracks of pheasants, turkeys, andsharp-tailed grouse crisscrossed dried mudin the road ahead of us.

All day I was hoping we’d see a few muledeer, too. And finally we did—two does, likelypregnant and about to drop their fawns.

No doubt R.B. Beckman would havebeen pleased.

For a detailed map of the Beckman WMA, visitthe FWP website (fwp.mt.gov) and search for“Wildlife Management Areas.”

38 SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2013 FWP.MT.GOV/MTOUTDOORS

ing plan and how to get water to go to all the right places. And then there are theneighboring landowners. Much of thecredit for all the wildlife around here goesto them for controlling weeds, maintaininggood grazing practices, and other types ofland stewardship.”

Spectacular sceneryDuring the extremely high water of spring2011, much of the Judith blasted through existing curves in the river bed, creating en-tirely new channels. From a ridgeline hun-dreds of feet above, Schlepp pointed out theriver’s previous route. Already, isolated gravel

bars were sprouting seedling cottonwoods,which, with cows now unable to graze them,have begun providing songbird habitat. In thedistance sat an abandoned homestead, whichhad once been just a few yards off the water’sedge but was now a quarter-mile from theriver. A few decades from now the building

Much of the credit for all the wildlifearound here goes to neighboring land -owners for controllingweeds, maintaininggood grazing practices,and other types ofland stewardship.”

PLENTY TO SEE Lewistown areawildlife biologist Sonja Smith scansthe Judith River valley for wildlifeon the Beckman WMA. Facing page,clockwise from top le: mallard henand ducklings; Wilson’s snipe; muledeer buck in velvet; killdeer.

Sharing a farm worker All work on the Pheasants Forever property and many habitat improvements on the Beck-man WMA are done by Virgil Gluth, of Denton. մեe conservation group provides tractors,plows, seeders, and other equipment for Gluth’s uplands management work, while FWPfunds his seasonal position through its Upland Game Bird Enhancement Program. “Virgilhas been invaluable to us out here,” says Craig Roberts, president of Pheasants Forever’sCentral Montana Chapter. “He prepares soil for shelterbelt plantings, plants and weedsshelterbelts, builds and fixes fences, plants food plots, maintains the equipment—you name it. All the management activities here are coordinated through Virgil. He’s thecenter of operations.” Gluth’s handiwork: rows of shelterbelts