Still Winter?

Well the last week’s weather wasn’t too terrible. It was just cold and windy which isn’t too bad unless on a 4-wheeler. Then it’s not too much fun. Well it’s not too much fun driving a few miles on one at 30 miles an hour. While driving fence it’s not too bad and we are done with the fence. We still have another two mile section to take down but it’s all still standing up strait now.

We are finishing up our Sage grouse lek counts in our little basin here we only have a handful left to do. Then we have some searches to do for new leks. We are heading up to Blue Mountain in the morning at 3:30am to get to the few leks that we can and do a few searches. Our boss did a few flights over that area Thursday and Friday and he said it looks like it’s still the middle of winter up there and there are still 5 to 6 foot of snow up in the leking area. The National Park Service’s paved road is still buried under snow in places and they aren’t opening it till possibly next month. So we are going tomorrow to get what we can then we’ll be done up there. We did drive right up in the middle of a lek this last week and I think I got some really good pictures!

We did some White Tailed Prairie Dog searches this week but it’s still pretty cold and in most places we are searching for them they aren’t up yet. So we’re hoping to get some more done next week since the weather has been and looks pretty bad this week. We did finally see our first coyote since we have been here. We have seen lots of sign but they are very heavily hunted because of all the sheep that are in the area. So they have learned to stay pretty hidden. I did see a few pretty nice elk bulls this last week too. I found out there are about 1500 elk in our area right now getting ready to migrate to the mountains.

We started counting Columbian Sharp Tailed Grouse this last Friday. They are pretty crazy birds. The males kind of look like an airplane on the ground when displaying and they run around all over really fast and then some fly over here and then fly back. All this makes them pretty tough to count. Plus they flush off the lek very easy. We did find a new lek the day before we started our lek counts on them which is pretty cool because it is in an area that they have not previously been. Dustin and I split up to cover more leks and he took the 4-wheeler. I finished all my lek counts and started back to where I dropped him off. I hooked up the trailer and waited for about 20 mins and then was thinking o should go look for him. But he was able to reach me on the radio and the 4-wheeler died on him so I drove the 15 mins to where I was closer to him since it was still pretty muddy back there but we didn’t have to push it too far. And now that is in the shop for who knows how long.

We washed the Explorer on Friday as well. We joked as we were doing it that we were washing away all the mud that was holding it together. Then on the way home it started shimmying really bad so I guess it wasn’t much of a joke! All the mud we had collected put our tires way off balance and we got that fixed today.

Got a call from Brian, our boss, on Sunday night. He said we get a truck in 3 weeks but we need to go to Denver to pick it up on Monday. So Monday morning we did our counts and of course it was snowing… drove to Meeker picked up the boss’s truck drove the four and a half hours to Denver, picked up the truck, and drove back. It was a log drive we ended up having a 14 hour day Monday. But all in all it wasn’t too bad. It will be nice when we have the truck though. It is a 2002 Dodge Ram 2500 with a nice big bed to fix our 4-wheeler so we don’t have to haul it on the trailer any more.

Today was just a bad day it rained most of yesterday afternoon, rained all night and snowed in the morning. So even the main good dirt roads were terrible…. We had to change our plans for today and we weren’t able to get much done since we couldn’t drive our explorer off the main road. Tomorrow may not be much fun either we had a nice little snow/rain/hail/thunder storm roll through here not too long ago with 45 mph winds. And the rest of the week looks about the same. So it’s probably a good thing we had a 14 hr day on Monday. Oh well got to love the weather reminds me of Cheyenne.

Requesting new weather!

So I get a call Tuesday night from Brian and it turns out that the guy that was going to be coming up with the ATV is not coming anymore. Brain is done with the whole thing so we get to drive down to Grand Junction and pick it up. Not that’s a problem Dustin were looking forward to going down, for one we get our ATV and as it turns out there is a Cabela’s in Grand Junction!

So as normal we get left here about 45 minutes before sunrise, we only have about a 15 minute drive to leks in our basin here, do our lek counts and then head on down to Meeker around 9 am. Grab Brain’s truck and head to Grand Junction. Well turns out it was a long day. No problems, got the ATV, stopped at Cabela’s for 15 minutes because we were ready to head home. So we got home about 4:30ish so it was a really long day for us but it was good now we have our ATV.

On Thursday, more rain/snow, oh and now the wind! Did our lek counts in the morning and then met Tyler at the Bitter Brush Wildlife area. Tyler is, I think, the guy in charge of all the DOW’s property in this area. Oh he is also the guy that helped us get the explorer out. Anyway, he was having us drive around the property checking fence and also he needed us to take down about a quarter of mile of fence. We drove for the fence line for quite a bit then got to the fence to take down and we got all the wire down and hauled back then it was time to head home.

The next morning we did some searching for new leks in a few areas and were unable to locate any. Then back to the Bitter Brush Wildlife area to finish our fence removal. It is pretty surprising how many deer, elk, and antelope die because they become entangled in fence. We haven’t covered much more than a forth of the fence, well maybe less than that, and we have seen at least 20 animals that have die because of fences. Fences and cars are the major predators out here. We finished pulling the posts and got them hauled back and drove some more fence before our gas on our little Kubota UTV got low. Then we drove out to Blue Mountain to see if we can get into some of our leks there. It took us about an hour and a half to get to the near end of the lek site and we could only reach two site because the road and everything else for that matter is still covered in about 2 feet of snow. The other end of the site is about and hour from the near end and the National Park Service Road there is closed until the end of April. Dustin and I are thinking if this weather keeps up we won’t be getting into those leks at all this season. We had snow today and are getting more tonight and tomorrow. If we don’t get a week with out precip and temps above 60 degrees I really don’t think we will get in. We would just really like to get data on those leks. Oh well that’s wildlife for you the weather rarely cooperates. That’s all for now!

Free of the Mud! But not the Snow.....

So I haven’t posted the last few days because I have been really sick with a bad sinus infection… Not fun couldn’t breath well and couldn’t sleep at all. So I missed all of conference due to that and a blizzard on Sunday. I picked up some over the counter stuff which has helped me so much to breath and sleep. I just wish it would go away all together now.

So we got the explorer out on Saturday morning. It only took us an hour to get it out we just dug around it a bit and pushed it out. The original plan which took part of the time was to drive Tyler’s truck in a bit and winch it out. He could only get halfway in before he started to sink in so we were too far to winch it out so that is when we decided to just push it out and it worked!! Brian is such an awesome boss, he never got mad about any of it! He did tell me on the way out to it that if we couldn't get it out we would just light it on fire and say some one stole it!

Dustin started to work with me yesterday; he will be working with me the rest of the summer. We went and did some lek counts and then went in to town to get our communications gear in our explorer fixed. Then it was off to Meeker, which is about 50 miles away, so he could meet Brian. Well Brian’s kids were sick so he wasn’t there so then drove back home.

Today did some more lek counts saw about 27 males on one lek and seven on another lek. Then I buried the explorer in a snow drift on the way to try to get to the last lek that we thought we might be able to make it to. That took about 30 mins to dig out but we got out again. Oh well happens this time of year. Then we drove to Meeker to try and see Brian again and the plan was to then go get a ATV in Grand Junction. Yeah, well we did see Brian but did not get to go to Grand Junction so that means we get to drive to Meeker tomorrow to pick it up once it arrives in the morning. I love driving to Meeker everyday! Haha, that’s life no ones fault just the way things work out!

We do get to start searching for White-tail Prairie Dogs after we finish Sage Grouse in the mornings. Well maybe anyway it is suppose to snow a bunch at least thru Friday. So they won’t be very active. Hopefully the weather dries up soon, there are about 30 leks we can’t get to until it does. It can rain or snow for that matter in May, whatever it wants! We just need a few weeks of dry and sunny!
Still missing Raquel and waiting for August! Well that’s all for now! Hope all is well with everyone!

I love my job!

Yesterday was a pretty good day. I was able to get to 7 leks. 4 of those leks had no activity on them at all the other 3 had some activity but the numbers were really low. One had 12 males and the other two were under 8. These numbers are similar to many areas throughout the area here. This will greatly affect hunting for the next season.

While driving between leks I came across two small herds of elk about 15 in each and then a few miles down the road I found a herd of about 200 elk milling around on private property. They are still down in the low areas till the snow melts in the hills. There is a lot of snow here still for this time of year I have been told. I have also seen thousands of mule deer. There are herds all over this basin. The major predator of mule deer and elk, it seems, are cars. On most main two lane roads you can’t drive a 1/8 of a mile or 1/4 of a mile without seeing dead deer and elk that have been killed by semis or cars.

I found a dead Golden Eagle that we will be turning in to the US Fish and Wildlife Service for use by Native Americans. We turn over all Bald and Golden Eagles to the USFWS as per federal law.

I’ll be doing lek counts until the end of April or the beginning of May. After I finish my morning lek counts I’ll work on prairie dog locating and raptor nest counts. The first two days in May I’ll be helping with fish electro shock surveys and will start doing Sagebrush obligate song bird counts and continue those through June. In July I’ll be mapping out some private land to be maintained for wildlife and do some radio telemetry to retrieve GPS collars off of deer. There are some other odds and ins that I’ll be assisting with throughout the season I just don’t know what they are yet though.

Today was probably the worst day ever hopefully it will be the worst day that I have of the season and all the rest will be better. I was on my way to my first lek this morning and took a road across a famers field that started out pretty dry and as a got in farther it got muddy and I decided to turn around and buried the explorer about a foot and a half down in the field. It warmed up before my boss was able to get there and so now it is still stuck and we are hoping to get it out tomorrow morning when the ground refreezes. The worst part for me is that we don’t have permission to be on this land but my boss said it would be fine and that it won’t be too big of deal. I still feel really bad about it though. So I did not get much work done today.

I took some pictures of some Sage Grouse males on the lek the other day and hopefully I can get them developed and put some on here. That’s all for now!