Marcus Ellery
President
Third-generation Montana hunter, raised on a cattle place outside Big Timber where his grandfather kept a running tally of every elk the family took off the same drainage. Marcus joined the chapter in 2008, chaired the banquet for six years, and took over as president in 2023. Most of his volunteer hours go to access, working landowner by landowner to keep gates open to public hunters. If you have a question about where the chapter's money goes, he is the one to ask, and he will give you the long answer.
Dana Whitcomb
Vice President
Dana runs a survey crew out of Livingston and has spent twenty years reading country for a living, which turns out to be useful when you are trying to work out where a habitat dollar does the most good. He handles the chapter's landowner relationships and access agreements, and he is the reason three ranches in the Shields Valley still take youth hunters every fall. He shot his first bull at fourteen with his father's rifle and still carries it.
Rae Ostlund
Secretary
Rae taught school in Bozeman for thirty-one years and retired into what she calls the busiest job she has ever had. She keeps the minutes, the bylaws, the membership roll and the rest of the board honest, and she has not missed a meeting yet. She came to hunting late, at forty-two, after a friend talked her into an antelope trip, and she now runs the chapter's Ladies Afield weekend every September.
Rafael Ochoa
Treasurer
Rafael spent twenty-six years as a controller for a regional grain cooperative before retiring to a small place south of Wilsall. He took over the chapter's books in 2021, replaced a filing system that had been living in three shoeboxes, and now closes the year within two weeks of the banquet. He hunts mule deer with the rifle his father brought north from Chihuahua in 1974.
Hollis Pike
Past President
Hollis has been a member since the chapter was chartered and served as president for nine years, longer than anyone before or since. He stepped back in 2023 but did not go far, and he still leads the work party that maintains the guzzlers on the east face every spring. Ask him about the first banquet, held in a rented Grange hall with eleven auction items and a borrowed PA, and set aside some time.
Sutton Vance
Banquet Chair
Sutton has chaired the banquet for five years and treats it as a second job from August through February. He grew the sponsor program from four local businesses to thirty-one, and he is the one calling outfitters in July to lock in donated hunts. Off season he runs a small crew doing timber stand work, and he keeps a camp on the Boulder that has hosted more chapter planning meetings than the actual meeting room.
