McCone County Museum, Circle, Montana

Beyond the crowded museum cases of arrowheads, tractor seats and barbed wire displays, at the back of the McCone County Museum, there is a long room housing a wildlife collection assembled by Orville Quick (a graduate of the Northwestern School of Taxidermy and curator of the museum) and his sons Randy and Larry. The collection represents over 40 years of hunting trophies that once hung in the Quick home until their numbers overwhelmed the house.

Nowadays the wildlife exhibit contains examples of most all of Montana's wildlife, from small rodents to large geese to paddlefish. Some of the smaller mounts are assembled into rudimentary dioramas, but the various species are thrown together without recreating a very believable habitat for them. Two raccoons climb a pine log past a great horned owl toward a shelf where a mountain lion awaits them. Squadrons of mergansers, ducks and geese forever buzz the narrow plywood stream where a nearby family of badgers snap and snarl at one another.

Notable display: A Frankenstein fossil critter with antelope horns and a rattlesnake tail, labelled: "So new its yet unamed!"

Highway 200 Circle, Montana 59215

Open Year Around Weekdays 9am - 5pm