Northwest Montana Huckleberries

Northwest Montana Huckleberries

Northwest Montana is infamous for huckleberry picking. Families passed down the secret locations for picking and the biggest and most flavorful huckleberries and all of Montana. And this blog will not be giving those secrets away. Huckleberries are wild, they love going on a mountainside in well drained soil that is acidic. It seems like they refuse to grow under tamed, cultivated environments. Huckleberries need lots of snow to cover their shallow root structure.

Hucks in a Cup

Northwest Montana Huckleberries prefer elevations of 3500 to 7200 feet. They seem to like areas that have been freshly burned. About mid July, huckleberries turned from a deep red to a deep purple at the lower elevations on south slopes. The Kootenai National Forest and the Flathead National Forest are very popular huckleberry picking grounds.

Some people like to pick berries along the road. These bushes are often extremely dust covered, and it gets a lot of car exhaust on them. I would not recommend the berries. Remember when you are huckleberry picking that bears love huckleberries to and quite often berry pickers run into bears. In a later post we will talk about Bears safety in Northwest Montana. For now get your buckets ready, summer is coming.

the Way Huckleberries should be Eaten Mmmm..

PS. I think large commercial berry picking should be outlawed. Berry picking for the love of the wilderness and eating the berries right from the bush is the way its done. Picked and Eaten with love.