Sanders County Ledger - Your Best Source For Sanders County News

40 YEARS AGO • MARCH 29, 1984

EDNA HILL LEADS A RUGGED REWARDING LIFE

by Linda Shaffer

Mainly, she is a mountain woman.

And she has been all her “39 years.” Edna Hill at her ranch in Trout Creek smiles amidst trophies of elk and other wild game she has hunted and photographed over the years.

And hunters she has guided have warned others about her. “Watch out for that woman in Montana…she’ll walk you to death,” they say.

Hill has been guiding new hunters in Sanders County’s rough mountain country for over 40 years of her adult life. And if that seems unusual, Edna’s other pursuits in what have been considered male fields might surprise you, too.

For three years in the 1960s, after a devastating highway accident on the old Perma curves, doctors told Edna she would never walk again. No longer would she break trail pursuing the elusive elk in western Montana’s rugged mountainous terrain.

With a lot of broken and crushed everything from the accident, Edna spent three years strapped on a stretcher-type bed where she was rotated every two hours, “like on a spit,” she recalls.

Those who know the spirited Edna can guess her reply to the doctors about never walking again. “By gosh I will walk. There’s another fish to catch and an elk that just went over the mountain,” she told them.

And right out of the hospital, she says, “I got my husband Wayne to get me on one of our horses and we went up 12 miles to Wanless Lake for a week,” riding with one arm and one leg not fully recuperated and functional yet. “I had to get back into the mountains.”

Fatherly influence didn’t get Edna into hunting and fishing as a little girl. In fact, her father Alexander McCann “didn’t care for hunting and fishing,” she says. And her mother never hunted either. Edna just came by it on her own and “it sure keeps you in shape,” she says.

How does a 120 pound woman pack out heavy game? Son Bill, who has outfitted with his mother for the past 20 years, is there to assist but never questions whether Edna does more than her share. She has earned quite a reputation among locals and out-of-staters who make up her hunting parties.

Edna points to a complete first aid kit she always takes along when guiding. And she feels CPR knowledge is of prime importance for all her guiding crew. “So far in all these years we’ve never needed it,” she says in a thankful tone.

Hill recalls her first years guiding when she and Wayne had a Trout Creek nightclub (in the area between Naughty Pine Saloon and The Lakeside convention center). “We had some pretty good bands come up to play. Some of the people would come in and say there were no elk around here. That was in the 40s. I told them I could show them where there was an elk or two and took them out for free.”

On a trip to Wisconsin and Michigan this past year with son Bill to advertise their outfitting business, they kept the bow hunters’ interest as they told Montana hunting stories and showed photographs of their impressive trophies.

But hunting elk, deer, bear, sheep, goats, and lion isn’t all Edna does.

“I have a job offer up in Nome for six months as a foreman of a state highway construction crew with the Bureau of Indian Affairs,” she says matter of factly, “and I’m not just sure yet when I’ll be going up. I’d be back to guide, of course.”

She would probably just as soon run a cat than be the foreman in Nome, she says, “but they want me to be the foreman of the job. I’ve sure built roads before, some up the mountain, but the permafrost up there will be something new to deal with.” But then Edna has tackled a lot of things in her life.

Running rodeos in Trout Creek in the 60s with Wayne and raising five children was only a part of what kept the Hills busy. And of course Edna helped build the arena.

She has done her share of logging over the years, too, and was the first woman packer for the U.S. Forest Service running a mule train to haul in supplies.

“When the Forest Service hired me, I cleaned out their files,” she says, “but then I was either sitting up at Whitepine Peak Lookout or packing in for them after that.”

To be continued…