Sept. 2-3
September 2, 2005
Went and checked traps, nothing. Got prepped to go to NF palace.
Some pictures of the Polebridge Palace...thank you, Nature Conservancy!!!
Looking East at the Palace and its view:
The kitchen:
The bedroom with the king-sized pillow top bed...aaaahhhh!:
The upstairs:
Sunrise from the deck looking east at Glacier National Park...our view every day!!!:
September 3, 2005
Woke up at 6:00 AM to what I thought was the sound of a bear breaking into the bait truck…D woke up at the same time and said he heard the dogs barking. So, we slapped on our clothes and grabbed our pepper spray and shotgun and went outside to investigate. Turns out it was only the clap of thunder that I thought was a thump in the truck and is what caused Fancy to start barking. So, we were fine. We ended up just snuggling in bed and getting up to start our day when my alarm went off.
We ran our trap line and had no bears in traps. So, we headed back to the Palace and D worked on a box for his remote camera setup. Once he finished with that, we ran our existing trap line once more and then went down to visit with good ol’ Lee, a local North Fork resident for who only knows how long! He had a patch of land up Coal Creek that we had tried trapping on in the spring, got two bears but no female, so when we got our female in another area, we pulled the trap on his property. But, a week ago he had called about seeing 6 bears feeding on a hill together! So, we went and visited with him and chatted about the bears and New Orleans and all of the events of the world, got him to OK us putting traps on his land again, then we headed out to scout.
We checked out the area where he said he had seen the bears, but there wasn’t anything there to set snares with…totally burned area, no shade for a trapped bear. So, then we went onto his property and set a snare near an area we had trapped two bears in the spring. We also went up on a ridge and set another snare that I do not have high hopes for. But, the lower snare, I think has potential…it’s close to a creek and we made sure it smelled REALLY bad, and it has D’s camera setup on it. So…we now have 7 traps up and waiting for bears….
Tomorrow we have a wedding to go to…so you know there will be a bear in a snare that will make it hard for us to make it to the event. Archery season started today, so there are floods of people up here…makes running trap lines very interesting and also keeps us from putting traps on open land…we’re aiming for closed roads and private property now!!