Hunting, Hiking, Geocaching and More

Geocaching
We will supply coordinates, maps and wide open spaces - you will need to bring your spirit of adventure! Cache boxes stashed throughout 15 square miles will allow you and your family to scour this wild environment in search of hidden treasure. Cache box rewards vary to fit all ages and can be customized to accommodate any special occasion. We will provide visitors with location coordinates, clues and maps to help accomplish the mission. And unlike typical geocaching, coordinates to cache boxes hidden on Hughes Mountain Ranch will be available only to our guests.

Hiking & Biking
In addition to geocaching, the Hughes Mountain Ranch offers a range of opportunities for its guests to enjoy the outdoors. You will be provided with maps and coordinates to many miles of biking and hiking trails. Bicycles can be rented from The Knicker Biker Bike Shop in Great Falls.

Click here to download a PDF map of trails for hiking and biking.

Wildlife Watching
For nature enthusiasts, our maps will also guide you to fishing holes and areas for bird and wildlife watching and elk horn hunting. The Little Belt Mountains are a popular destination for bird lovers. There are nearly 150 bluebird boxes and 142 bird species within the intermediate area. The Hughes family takes pleasure in monitoring the activity of bluebirds in the spring (laying of eggs, hatching, fledging) and reporting this information to Bluebird Mountain Trails, Inc.

According to a 2006 Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks game count, approximately 1,200 elk inhabit the two districts, 448 and 420, where our ranch borders the Lewis & Clark National Forest and Judith River Wildlife Management Area.

CM Russell Auto Tour
The Montana Legislature designated Highway 87 between Great Falls and Lewistown as the “Charles M. Russell Trail.” The artist lived and worked in the Judith Basin for ten years and his art provides a window into the past to tell the story of American Indians, buffalo and wolves, cowboys and the open range, mountain men and miners, and the inevitable change that came with progress - homesteaders, railroads, highways.
(Credit: CM Russell Auto Tour Guide)

The CM Russell Auto Tour will guide you through the landscape that inspired Russell’s paintings. A printed guide book will be made available to guests at Hughes Mountain Ranch. Below is a sampling of the artwork and the corresponding interpretations included in the guide book; to the right, a map showing the auto tour route.

Lone Wolf, 1900 (#7 on the map)

The Legendary Wolves of the Basin: Prior to settlement, wolves, like the wildlife they preyed upon, were abundant. As wildlife herds were depleted and livestock took over the range, the clash between the wolf and the rancher was inevitable. With a market for pelts and a bounty on the wolves, the “wolfer” became a familiar figure on the plains. Indians disliked the wolfer because the poisoned baits and traps killed the Indians’ dogs and occasionally their ponies.

Some believe the bounty law resulted because the wolfers were inclined to spare the pups to be sure of a continuing livelihood. Cattlemen felt no such tenderness toward the pups. The bounty started out at $1 in the 1880s and grew to $15 by 1911.

Roping a wolf provided sport for the cowboys. When out of work in the winters, some cowboys took up trapping wolves. Wolfers were replaced by the government trapper in the 1900s, and the wolf was virtually eliminated from the Basin by 1930. The last wolves of the Basin became legendary due to their prowess and cunning. Old Snowdrift and Lady Snowdrift prowled the Highwood Mountains while the White Wolf eluded many a pursuer south of Stanford in the Little Belt Mountains. The White Wolf is on display at the Basin Trading Post in Stanford. Rumors of wolves in Central Montana persist to this day.

The First Furrow, 1907 (#5 on the map)

The First Settlers: If you approached Stanford 100 years ago, you may have been greeted by a scene like this. The earliest homesteaders arrived in the Judith Basin in the 1880s. The first lands to be settled were the creek bottoms. The Hughes family were early pioneers in the Judith Basin. Gerald Hughes remembers the early settlement:

“Pa got started on his forty-acre homestead here in 1894, but he didn’t stay on forty acres long. There was lots of opportunity. By the time he’d been here ten or fifteen years, he’d built up quite a farm where he raised hogs, cows for milk and beef, grain and vegetables, and put out teams on contract to construction crews and worked a little coal mine on his land.

The railroad came in ‘07, and the whole town of Stanford was moved a mile or so, to where you’d get off the train right in front of the hotel. The homesteaders flooded in about 1910 or ‘12; they’d come to Stanford on two, three railroad cars: furniture in one; the family in one; a milk cow, a few horses, and some pigs in a third. They just kept comin’ and comin’, and lots of settlements sprang up with new businesses and stores, and Pa supplied a lot of ‘em with coal out of his mine; and some forgot to pay - I’ve still got ‘em on the books.” (Gerald Hughes, The Range, Mountain Press, 1990, p. 65)