Klamert’s attorney, Jo Casey, has filed documents with the state’s high court arguing just the opposite: that the Water Court judge’s ruling should stand because Iverson and the Wilkses “failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence” that Klamert’s water right had been abandoned. His rights were first challenged in 2011, so the legal fight is now entering its eighth year.

At stake are Klamert’s five decreed water rights on Flatwillow Creek, which total 34 cubic feet per second of water to irrigate just over 730 acres south of Winnett. That may not sound like a lot of water, but one hydrologist testified that between 1988 and 2004 the creek probably averaged only 5 cfs a year.

Klamert purchased the water rights when he bought the Bullseye Ranch in 1998 from the Nebraska Feeding Co. The earliest of those five water rights was filed on April 25, 1882. That was seven years before Montana became a state and only a month after Frederick Billings and investors platted the city of Billings.

Someone had the foresight at the time to file a water claim in an area that was quickly becoming cattle country. The DHS Ranch — founded by Helena banker Andrew Davis, Samuel Hauser and Granville Stuart — was founded in 1879 just south of the Judith Mountains in what is now Fergus County.