Cold 'n Wet
Woke up to rain this morning…as usual…and it was so cold! I stayed curled up in the bed and had my tea in bed…couldn’t make myself get out of the warm blankets!
But…we had to get up eventually. We got into the truck with the pups and Tim got into his rig and we went up to where we had our culvert trap. On the road, we came upon a yearling (or 2-year old) buck deer on the road. Well, the little guy didn’t want to get off of the road, so I must have driven behind his scared little butt for at least a mile. I kept honking at him and accelerating up on him, thinking he’d jump off into the woods or grass on the side of the road at some point…but he kept going! It took a good minute, but he FINALLY ran off of the road! This was a GREAT start to the day for our dogs! Fancy was beside herself that we were chasing a deer! We always tell her NOT to chase deer and NOT bark at them…but here we were, chasing a deer in a car! So she kept barking…no matter how much I told her “NO!” She wouldn’t listen. This, of course, put her into what D and I call “Spaz Mode” where she just cannot settle down and whines incessantly. She was that way until we headed home hours later!
A couple pictures of the buck getting his exercise for the day:
No bear in the culvert trap…as expected. We pulled the trap due to the amount of activity that was going to be going on up that road. We drove further north and parked the culvert trap at an education center so we could go check out another site for setting a trap. We joined a biologist working on the DNA hair-snare project. His team had set up a barbed wire corral for collecting hair samples off of bears as they crossed the wire to get to a pile of wood with stinky stuff on it. They also set up a remote camera to see what came in…the same group and set up that caught the wolverine footage from a few days ago. I guess, the site they put the corral in was a site Tim used to trap a bear last year. They had this camera set up for two weeks and had grizzly bear hair all over the wire…but the tape was bad in the camera, so they never saw what came in! Frustrating! So, they put a new tape in and ran it for a week and today was the day for him to check it. We wanted to see the site because D and I will be setting a snare there on Sunday.
The biologist got the video camera out and rewound the 17 minutes of recorded tape and we started viewing it…the trigger to start the video is affected by movement and temperature change…so, some of the tape was simply the sun hitting the sensor and triggering it…so a few minutes of that…a deer came in…then a group of people came through! Well, it turned out that it was a group of folks that were on a tour of grizzly bear habitat with a famous bear biologist, Chuck Jonkel…known by all of us…when he walked up to the camera and waved we all laughed and said, “Ah…Chuck!” Then the video cut to a pine marten (a large weasel-like animal that’s very cute) coming into the site. At one point he was running around and then all of a sudden a second pine marten fell out of the sky into the corral! It had shimmied up a tree to a piece of cloth they hang over the corral to send scent into the wind to bring bears in. The little guy must have gotten on the cloth and lost its grip and he just fell into the frame! It was a silly site…he immediately ran back up the tree to do it again…then we saw a third one…and they all ran around and goofed off together…it was a very fun piece of video…but…no bears. That was a bit of a discouragement. But, we re-hooked up the video, Tim and I brought in two deer legs and a torso and put them in the middle of the corral, spread some fresh lure (stiiiinky) and about three gallons of cow blood. That should bring a bear or two in! Down the road from the site was a HUGE pile of grizzly bear poop…big enough that I would wager it didn’t belong to a female…but a large male, and I don’t want him in our snare!
So, we left that area and headed down to a tiny town called Polebridge and had food at their mercantile…amidst the rain and cold.
Here's a picture of Tim in his state rig in front of the Polebridge Mercantile...our favorit lunch spot in the whole world!!
This is the group of us sitting and having lunch on the porch of the Merc. There are at least 5 local dogs that hang out on that porch hoping for a bite of food...I'm sure they get quite a few.
We aren't sure why the dogs like us so much...we stink of dead stuff! *Wink*
This is Tim with a couple of the locals...he usually doesn't look this grumpy! In the upper left corner of the picture you can just make out our state rig...the two green garbage cans behind the cab are almost full of dead deer parts...a pretty stinky vehicle!
This is Sausha...a tiny little three-legged bear dog that lives at the Merc. She's old and wise and, even after losing a leg three years ago, she still chases off the bears that come by and lets EVERYONE know who's boss! We just adore her! (I should note that she lost her leg to another dog...not a bear)
My jeans got pretty wet and so I was chilled pretty badly after sitting out in the cold. I was wearing my favorite fleece jacket, but had gotten stinky deer parts on it, so it smelled… D had been complaining about it the whole drive off of the mountain…but I didn't want to take it off b/c I was so cold. D said he would let me crank up the heat in the truck as high as I wanted for the drive home it if I promised not to put the fleece jacket on…so, that made me toasty-happy! We got home and went into Kalispell to run some errands.
Trapping shuts down for a few days since Tim is going out of town. We would keep it going, but if we were to trap that female, the head of the wildlife department doesn’t want anyone but Tim taking this female over to the new ecosystem…so we won’t trap for her until Tim gets back. For now, we’re going to be housebound so we can keep an eye on Tim and Carol’s kids while they are away. D has plenty going on, so that works well for him.
On Sunday we’ll head up to throw out some snares since Tim gets back on Sunday night…we’ll run the trap line on Monday and hope we get our little girl!
It’s supposed to snow tonight over 6,000 feet. If we were in Utah, we’d be getting snow at our house! It’s supposed to get into the 70s tomorrow, but I think we may have seen the last of the 80+ degree weather! That’s a good thing…can’t have it too hot while we’re trapping!
But…we had to get up eventually. We got into the truck with the pups and Tim got into his rig and we went up to where we had our culvert trap. On the road, we came upon a yearling (or 2-year old) buck deer on the road. Well, the little guy didn’t want to get off of the road, so I must have driven behind his scared little butt for at least a mile. I kept honking at him and accelerating up on him, thinking he’d jump off into the woods or grass on the side of the road at some point…but he kept going! It took a good minute, but he FINALLY ran off of the road! This was a GREAT start to the day for our dogs! Fancy was beside herself that we were chasing a deer! We always tell her NOT to chase deer and NOT bark at them…but here we were, chasing a deer in a car! So she kept barking…no matter how much I told her “NO!” She wouldn’t listen. This, of course, put her into what D and I call “Spaz Mode” where she just cannot settle down and whines incessantly. She was that way until we headed home hours later!
A couple pictures of the buck getting his exercise for the day:
No bear in the culvert trap…as expected. We pulled the trap due to the amount of activity that was going to be going on up that road. We drove further north and parked the culvert trap at an education center so we could go check out another site for setting a trap. We joined a biologist working on the DNA hair-snare project. His team had set up a barbed wire corral for collecting hair samples off of bears as they crossed the wire to get to a pile of wood with stinky stuff on it. They also set up a remote camera to see what came in…the same group and set up that caught the wolverine footage from a few days ago. I guess, the site they put the corral in was a site Tim used to trap a bear last year. They had this camera set up for two weeks and had grizzly bear hair all over the wire…but the tape was bad in the camera, so they never saw what came in! Frustrating! So, they put a new tape in and ran it for a week and today was the day for him to check it. We wanted to see the site because D and I will be setting a snare there on Sunday.
The biologist got the video camera out and rewound the 17 minutes of recorded tape and we started viewing it…the trigger to start the video is affected by movement and temperature change…so, some of the tape was simply the sun hitting the sensor and triggering it…so a few minutes of that…a deer came in…then a group of people came through! Well, it turned out that it was a group of folks that were on a tour of grizzly bear habitat with a famous bear biologist, Chuck Jonkel…known by all of us…when he walked up to the camera and waved we all laughed and said, “Ah…Chuck!” Then the video cut to a pine marten (a large weasel-like animal that’s very cute) coming into the site. At one point he was running around and then all of a sudden a second pine marten fell out of the sky into the corral! It had shimmied up a tree to a piece of cloth they hang over the corral to send scent into the wind to bring bears in. The little guy must have gotten on the cloth and lost its grip and he just fell into the frame! It was a silly site…he immediately ran back up the tree to do it again…then we saw a third one…and they all ran around and goofed off together…it was a very fun piece of video…but…no bears. That was a bit of a discouragement. But, we re-hooked up the video, Tim and I brought in two deer legs and a torso and put them in the middle of the corral, spread some fresh lure (stiiiinky) and about three gallons of cow blood. That should bring a bear or two in! Down the road from the site was a HUGE pile of grizzly bear poop…big enough that I would wager it didn’t belong to a female…but a large male, and I don’t want him in our snare!
So, we left that area and headed down to a tiny town called Polebridge and had food at their mercantile…amidst the rain and cold.
Here's a picture of Tim in his state rig in front of the Polebridge Mercantile...our favorit lunch spot in the whole world!!
This is the group of us sitting and having lunch on the porch of the Merc. There are at least 5 local dogs that hang out on that porch hoping for a bite of food...I'm sure they get quite a few.
We aren't sure why the dogs like us so much...we stink of dead stuff! *Wink*
This is Tim with a couple of the locals...he usually doesn't look this grumpy! In the upper left corner of the picture you can just make out our state rig...the two green garbage cans behind the cab are almost full of dead deer parts...a pretty stinky vehicle!
This is Sausha...a tiny little three-legged bear dog that lives at the Merc. She's old and wise and, even after losing a leg three years ago, she still chases off the bears that come by and lets EVERYONE know who's boss! We just adore her! (I should note that she lost her leg to another dog...not a bear)
My jeans got pretty wet and so I was chilled pretty badly after sitting out in the cold. I was wearing my favorite fleece jacket, but had gotten stinky deer parts on it, so it smelled… D had been complaining about it the whole drive off of the mountain…but I didn't want to take it off b/c I was so cold. D said he would let me crank up the heat in the truck as high as I wanted for the drive home it if I promised not to put the fleece jacket on…so, that made me toasty-happy! We got home and went into Kalispell to run some errands.
Trapping shuts down for a few days since Tim is going out of town. We would keep it going, but if we were to trap that female, the head of the wildlife department doesn’t want anyone but Tim taking this female over to the new ecosystem…so we won’t trap for her until Tim gets back. For now, we’re going to be housebound so we can keep an eye on Tim and Carol’s kids while they are away. D has plenty going on, so that works well for him.
On Sunday we’ll head up to throw out some snares since Tim gets back on Sunday night…we’ll run the trap line on Monday and hope we get our little girl!
It’s supposed to snow tonight over 6,000 feet. If we were in Utah, we’d be getting snow at our house! It’s supposed to get into the 70s tomorrow, but I think we may have seen the last of the 80+ degree weather! That’s a good thing…can’t have it too hot while we’re trapping!