101-Year-Old Hunter Carries On Family Tradition

If you Google “oldest elk hunter,” one of the names that pops up is Gordon Blossom, who killed an elk when he was 103. His younger brother, Dick, isn’t far behind. At age 101, Dick shot a cow elk this past fall.

“I’m planning to go next year,” he said.

Dick’s success was in partly due to House Bill 328, which the Montana Legislature passed during last year’s session. It allows resident hunters who are 75 years and older to use a general elk license to harvest an antlerless elk on private lands during any season in a hunting district where youth under 15 may harvest an antlerless elk. As of this week, 7,941 hunters who purchased a general elk license are 75 or older.

Dick was accompanied on his successful hunt by his two sons, Loren and Neal. The brothers put together a special hunting bench for their dad, which has a platform for Dick to perch his gun. Dick typically uses a walker to get around, but when he hunts, his sons walk with him arm-in-arm. He also shot a buck antelope this past season.

“Elk are my favorite to hunt and to eat, though,” he said. “I don’t hunt bulls. They’re not as tender as cows. And you can’t eat the horns.”

The three Blossoms got up before dark to search for their quarry. Neal said he could hear the cows “talking,” so they immediately set up and waited. Soon enough, a group of about half a dozen elk came close. Some ran off before Dick could get a shot, but one cow stayed standing broadside and he drew a bead on it and pulled the trigger.

“When I’m hunting elk and see one, I get pretty excited,” he said.

The group thought he missed, but when Neal walked over to the area where Dick had aimed his gun, he saw the cow lying on the ground.

“I yelled ‘Bring your knives!’ We all whooped and hollered and had a grand old time,” Neal said.

They ate the tenderloins that night.

Dick said he has been hunting elk for more than 80 years and estimates that he’s killed about 30. He started his hunting career when he was 10 years old chasing cottontails for the family’s dinner table. He continued to hone his shooting skills at sniper school when he was a young man in the army.

“You never forget how to do it,” he said.

Loren, 66, and Neal, 64, started pheasant hunting with their dad when they were young boys.

“He’d send us out to flush the birds,” Loren said and laughed.

The boys began hunting elk and deer when they were young teens.

“I used to take them out, now they take me out,” Dick said.

Outside his apartment at Touchmark in Helena, Dick has photos of himself and the animals he shot this year. Standing next to him are his two sons looking proud of their father.

Asked if he thought he’d be hunting at age 101, Loren said, “I doubt I’ll be alive.”

But judging by the legacy left behind by his dad and uncle, who died in 2020, there’s a fair shot.