FWP AT WORK Ryan Rauscher, Wildlife Biologist

ALL-SPECIES MANAGEMENT

RYAN RAUSCHER

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN INTERESTED in wildlife of all types. Before I became a biologist, I did a lot of hunting and trapping. My dad was quite a hunter, and in fact he once had the number one typical Boone and Crockett mule deer in Montana. It hung over our family’s fireplace for years.

My first job with FWP was as a nongame wildlife technician, and that really added to my understanding and enjoyment of songbirds, amphibians, and those species that aren’t hunted. Later I was the native species biologist in Great Falls—where I acquired that magpie mount in the photo—and then in Glasgow. That’s where I really melded my game and nongame responsibilities, because I also managed furbearers, worked on mountain lions and moose, and was involved in other game species management.

I’m not alone in my interest in the full spectrum of wildlife. I’ve rarely met a hunter whose enjoyment of the outdoors isn’t enhanced by nongame species and who doesn’t recognize that these other animals are part of the full experience of being outdoors. I vividly remember one afternoon while elk hunting in the Gallatin Range when I watched a long-tailed weasel for about an hour with a hunter I happened to meet. His excitement for the day wasn’t about hunting elk; it was about watching that weasel hunt.

For me, that notion hits home every time I’m turkey hunting and hear a black-capped chickadee sing, welcoming spring.

This fall I left my position in Glasgow and started working as the wildlife biologist in Conrad, about 12 miles from where I grew up and where my great-grandfather homesteaded in 1908. I had my eye on the job in Conrad from the day I started college. It only took 22 years, 7 months, and 9 days to get it.