Let the trapping begin!!!
D and I started the day taking the camper to a gas station and dumping the tanks and refilling on water and propane. It's getting bloody cold here at night and I require A LOT of heat for comfort, so we go through the propane a little quick with me. We then went to a local coffee place/food place that has wireless internet and checked email and such and were soon joined by fellow bear conflict specialist friend, Angela. She is putting together a packet for real estate agents to hand out to new homeowners that explains how to make their property "unwelcoming" to bears and mountain lions and such...and she needed a second opinion on things. So, we worked for a couple of hours on what she had and put together some more stuff for her. Great visit. Had lunch...yadda, yadda, yadda.
D and I then returned to Tim's, reparked the truck, go last minute field gear together, hooked up a culvert trap to the back of the state truck and took off to the hills to set the culvert trap and try to find potential spots for snaring bears.
Tim sent us up a particular Forest Service road that we thought was gated that we could get behind because WE have a key, ha ha ha!! But, as we drove up to it we discovered that it was open...we kept driving in wondering how far it went and if we could get far enough back to areas that most people wouldn't go...we were alarmed at the amount of people up there on a Tuesday and found out that they were all up there picking huckleberries. These berries are really, really popular in Montana and sell for a pretty high price...at the same time they are a VERY important berry for bears to eat and get fattened up for the winter...so it's frustrating knowing how important it is to the bears and knowning that hordes of people are up in the hills gathering them to sell in town. But, I usually will sneak one or two when I'm up in the hills, too...so a little bit of a hypocrit there. Well, the raod didn't go much further and we hit the end of it...bummer. So, we had to turn around and head back down and with frustration look at the map with mazes of Forest Service roads on it that we were completely unfamiliar with. We found a closed road that we decided to check out.
On that road we found a pretty good spot to drop the culvert trap and try to catch a bear. From there we continued on to see if we could find some good snare sites. What's fun is...we just take a road..."Oh, that looks like it might lead to some good spots, let's go up this one." We have no clue where it really ends up, but often they lead up to the top of a mountain and breathtaking views. Well, on our way up one such road, we rounded a curve and I stopped the truck to look down an old grown-over road that I was wondering if we could either try to drive down or set a snare in...I glanced back up the road for a moment to see if I could tell where the road was leading us to and if we'd get into better habitat for it when I saw the tail of a mountain lion disappearing into the brush on the side of the road...I had just missed seeing it cross the road! I whispered to D, "Cool! Mountain lion!" But he had totally missed it. I inched the truck up to where it had crossed to see if there was any chance of glimsing it...but they're so elusive that I pretty much knew it was a lost cause. So, we kept on going. We turned onto a road that got into some pretty good habitat, but no good for setting snares. But at the end of the road was an area that logging trucks had been loaded with logs...so this area was the size of a parking lot! D likes to tease my driving because I sometimes get nervous turning the truck around when you're facing a mountain side that you could easily slide down with the wrong placement of a tire! So, he looked at me when we reached the middle of this massive area and said, "Do you think you can turn around in this?" Well, usually turning around on one of the roads we travel is a five point turnaround...these roads are usually only big enough for one vehicle with small turn outs here and there. So, to get D back for his little comment, I began doing a 20 point turn around in the middle of this massive area! It was quite funny. Put the truck in reverse, crank the tire, go back about a foot, put it in drive, crank the tire in the opposite driction, go about a foot, and over and over and over again. I can keep a pretty straight face in these situations and I looked over at him at one point and could see he was trying to keep a straight face as well. But finally he just launched at me and started tickling me while screaming at the top of his voice. Pretty funny...I got him back, I think!
We continued on another road that eventually narrowed down to a two-track "road" that had three foot high vegetation growing down the middle. Shrubs and such brushed both sides of the truck as we traveled down it. It's wet enough right now that we don't have to worry about fires starting, but a few days of hot dry weather would put me in fear of driving such a road. About 3/4 of the way down this road we turned a corner and saw three piles of bear poop in the road and the vegetation was gone, so it was safe to stop and get out and not risk the hot undercarriage setting the grass on fire. We looked around at the poops and one was from earlier today...very fresh! Off to the side was a huge tree stump that bears had been tearing apart to get insects and behind that stump was a bunch of pine trees that bears had been feeding on...and many, many more piles of poop! It looked like a potential snare site, but if we were to set a snare and capture a bear, it would be hard to dart it with all of the undergrowth around it. So, I tossed some bait in there just to see what kind of animals would come in on it and if bears take the bait or not...I'm not holding my breat that we'll go back to the spot...with it being such a fire hazard and not an ideal snare set spot, despite the amount of activity it obviously gets...and it looks like the Forest Service is getting ready to do some work on the road...we probably won't be back up there. But who knows.
We made it to the end of the road and it ended up looping back to the road we started on...so, we decided to head on home...we had been out for 5 hours at that point and it was getting COLD!
It has snowed a couple of times in the mountains already, the leaves are starting to turn up in the higher elevations...the starlings and robins are flocking up...the chickadees are coming down...fall has arrived in the west, everyone...get ready! Looking outside the camper window, the clouds look like the puffy ones that I call 'snow clouds'...and I think if it were 20 degrees cooler, we'd be looking at potentially waking up to snow. Gooooood trapping weather!!!!!