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!
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