I have officially declared that we need a bunch of snow. Why you may ask? Well that would be because I want to shoot a deer. And I know my vegetarian sister who may or may not read this at any point would be screaming "no no... don't shoot Bambi" but to no avail since I'm gonna do it anyway despite her vehement protests. Its not because I'm some horribly evil person that wants to kill things. Its because I enjoy hunting and also enjoy the venison jerky, roasts, and back strap steaks that come from a successful hunting adventure. So far however we haven't been seeing much in the line of "shooter deer". Seen plenty of does and little spike bucks and if it gets toward the end of season and I haven't gotten anything they will be fair game but for now they have an official Tracy Pass Slip. But as for the snow, we need some to push the bigger bucks down into the open and to also push the cow elk down off the high country so that Frank and Mace get a chance at a shot. It will be nice to have a freezer full of wild game. People think I'm weird for thinking that but then again they didn't grow up in my family where elk burger and steaks were more commonly cooked for dinner than chicken or beef. My brother, sisters and I were all raised on wild game and never thought anything about it. It was yummy and so much healthier for us than anything that mom could have picked up from the super market. So my preferences have remained toward wild meat and have missed having to available. So anyone and everyone who reads this, start praying to the snow gods for me and maybe I'll start having some luck.
It has been an excruciating 3 years since I've been in the awe striking presence of the University of Montana Grizzly football team. I tell you those are a long 3 years. But by tomorrow that will have all changed. Yes thats right. I'm going to go watch our Grizzlies kick some serious UNC butt tomorrow up in Greeley. Dad has been talking about this game pretty much non-stop since the beginning of football season when he found out the Griz were going to playing down here in Colorado. He has been looking forward to this game all through his treatment and told me that no matter what he was going to go to it. So we himmed and hawed about how to make the event as comfortable as we could with dad being such a hurting unit these days. Thankfully Brenda works in a Nursing home and therefore got us both a sporty wheelchair and handicap decal that we can use over the weekend so that at least dad will be warm and cozy in that rather than on the cold aluminium bleachers of the stadium. I'm seriously thinking I should decorate the wheelchair this afternoon with appropriate maroon and silver streamers. I figure if he has to ride in the thing he should be doing it in style. Don't you think? Lucky for me I was down in Colorado at the right time to go as well. So we'll have two huge Griz fans at least cheering our little lungs out at the game. Mom's coming too and she of course gets excited but its not quite the same as the annoying loudness my dad and I share at the games. I'll be sure to fill in the details of our extravaganza tomorrow at some point. FIRST DOWN .... MONTANA!!!!
Why is it that something so cheap and easy to produce tastes so fan-fricking-tastic? I'm just talking about plain ol add some cream and sugar if you want coffee. For the last several months I've been trying to cut down on my coffee consumption and switched to herbal teas. But I felt like there was something missing in my life. Sad but true. So one of the first things I did when getting down here to Denver was buying some coffee since my sister hates the stuff. I know I know... talk about blasphemy. I've been enjoying my black brew ever since. Dad has been drinking about half a cup with me every morning when he gets up. We just sit in Brenda's family room and chit chat about a little bit of everything. I think its one of the few times during the day that he feels halfway normal. Mornings were my time with dad. Having breakfast together and talking about what was going on in our lives. So the coffee drinking is pretty significant, especially since he is actually able to drink coffee again after 13 months of not having a drop of the liquid life force.
I am being inducted into the multi-team cheering hall of fame this weekend. Rachel, my oldest niece is having her high school's football homecoming day tonight. I have been invited to come along and hang out with her friends at the game and cheer my lungs out for her poor little Stanley Lake Gators. Apparently they don't have much of a football team but how can you not go to your own school homecoming right. The dance is tomorrow night though and I get to do Rachie's hair for it. Thats pretty darn cool. She has a fabulous purple dress that her boyfriend Dusty is going to go head over heals for. I tell you I'm glad he is an upright and decent guy because I'd hate to be the one to beat up my niece's boyfriend for being a jerk... and I would if that was the case. They actually make a really sweet couple and I'm excited to be getting a change to get to know him better and see them interact so well.
As for tomorrow I'll be in the stands of Platte Canyon High School up in Bailey cheering on the team that Mark has been coaching for years now. I've only been able to see a few scrimages over the years and it will be nice to see Mark's Huskies kicking butt. So far they are undefeated this season and hopefully tomorrow will just be a continuation of that trend. Now while I may be sitting in the Husky stands and wearing blue and black war paint with the girls but my heart is also going to be with my fellow Griz fans as they play Eastern Washington on Saturday. So yeah... thats my weekend so far. Mom and Dad headed up to Cheyenne today to spend the night and get some simple house stuff done. If I hadn't already promised Rachel I'd do her hair I'd have gone up with them but I'd made the prior committment and I want to hold those kind of promises. I think its good for them to have some time to themselves too and they'll be back by tomorrow afternoon so I'm not horribly worried about not going with them. But since the weather is turning south even as I'm writting this, keep them in your prayers for the return trip tomorrow. Have a great weekend all.
Yesterday was dooms day for Polly's pumpkin. About 3 weeks ago her pumpkin had stopped putting on any size to it and we all figured that it was because it was just too cold at night for it to be growing anymore. So yesterday Polly decided it was time to cut it off the vine and get the official weigh in. Frank made a handy dandy platform sling that he hooked up to the bucket of his tractor so that after we cut the pumpkin off, we could easily get it out of the corral it had been growing in. Much to our disappointment when we lifted the thing onto the platform we found it was no 260 lbs like we'd been figuring. Something was very wrong. After hooking the platform to one of the sping scales Polly had for weighing beef, we found that her pumpkin only weighed 180 lbs after subtracting the weight of the platform from the total.
entireity. In doing so we found the problem. In one of the creases on the back side of the pumpkin there was a split that ran almost from the stem to the butt of the pumpkin. Not only that but right where it had been setting on the ground there was a hole big enough to slide most of my hand through. I could reach in and start pulling out seeds that were rotten. That was the reason it was so light... it had lost all its solidness and bugs were eating it from the inside out. We're not exactly sure why it split but our currenty theory is that the pumpkin tried growing around the board we had it set on and the strain on the wall was too much so it just split at the edge of the board. Mace and I are going to get onto Pumpkin Chat and ask around to see what may have caused it to happen or if our theory is valid.
My parents just celebrated their 43th wedding anniversary on Thursday and I can't help but think I hope and pray that I will be as lucky some day. Its becoming such a rarity that people actually stay together at all, let alone 40 some years. I think I'm truly blessed to have come from two such strong and caring individuals. And the best thing is, I know they are still madly in love with each other. I'm not saying its the same giddy kind of love that they probably had when they met as teenagers, that's right they'd been dating from the time they were 15-16 years old to the time they got married, but a mature and deep love that you only get from knowing and being with someone that long. When I first think about my parents individual characteristics I think of two very different people, so maybe opposites really do attract. But when I continue to dwell on it I see more and more similarities between the two of them. Their deep rooted Catholic faith, their love of science, nature, and history, their sharp as a tact intellects, their ties to family values both from past generations to their own children and grandchildren, their desire to be the best people they can be in this short life, and the fact that they grew together toward common goals. That's the stuff of love for a lifetime. Yep I really am lucky to have grown up as theirs. And as you can see by the picture, the grandkids are lucky to have them too!
PARENTS, and by God I'm going to leave it on a positive as well. What could be more positive than the awesome apple pie I mad this morning and letting cool right now. That's right... nothing. I must say this one is gorgeous don't you think? Apple pie is the shizzle. Polly has a great apple tree in her garden that had a boom crop last year. We spent hours picking, pealing, slicing, and freezing most of them for apple pie and apple crisp fillings during the year. I tend to like to put the apples in oatmeal in the morning before heading off to work. Its filling and delicious. But I looked in my freezer this morning and saw one lonely ziplock bag stuffed with apples from last year and realized that a new crop is going to be ready for picking any day now so I might as well used these babies up. So I am. I should be a baker... I swear! Set up a bakery for other people to enjoy my goodies. Most of the time I'd rather bake it than eat it and cooking has always been a stress reliever for me. Good thing I have a bunch of people that love what I make so that I'm not really hogging out on it myself. My rear end thanks them as well... lol. The staff in the office love me. I'll drop off some goodies in the morning in the conference room next to the coffee maker and by the time I come back from the field every crumb is gone. I think the guys in my office are glad to have me around. I keep watching food network and finding more and more recipes that I'd love to try. Glad the holidays are fast approaching so I can try out a few of them for Turkey day or Christmas. .jpg)
There is absolutely nothing as cute as a bear cub. Note of caution though... try to stay out of mama bears way. Black bears may be skiddish but they aren't stupid. If they think you are going to try and harm their cubs they wont wait a second to come after you. Most of the time though they either tree up or go running off through the forest. This mama bear and one of her cubs ran for the nearest dark patch of woods while the last of the cubs was confused and started to climb up the nearest aspen tree. He got about halfway up before he realized the rest of the family wasn't doing the same and came crashing down the tree and rumbled after his mom and sister. I basically just leaned against a tree and watched with a smile on my face. They were a good 50 yards away from me before they realized I could be something dangerous walking through the woods with tree borer and tape measure in hand. I think it was the orange vest and hard hat that gave me away... *laughs*.
really great shot. Luckily enough I have not run across any grizzlies in my adventures out in the woods though there are plenty of them out there. Several area's in which I work are grizzly relocation points of bears that have tried pestering camp sites in Yellowstone and other prominent tourist areas. I've seen sign of them but thankfully they are smarter than their black bear cousins and boogie out of an area long before I even know they were there. Last summer I made some great castings of grizzly bear prints with a grad student and bear researcher from MSU. I know I know... booo to MSU but he's a great guy and is do ecological studies that will be really interesting if they get published. Environmentalists keep saying the griz population around here isn't healthy and vibrant... this kid has other news for them. David has seen enough proof to know that our population is actually one of the healthiest in the griz recovery areas... plenty of cubs... plenty of habitat to grow in... not as many people for them to come in contact with. Take that you GREENIES!!! Not that I'm bitter or anything. It just gets frustrating when you're told over and over there isn't a sustainable griz population in the area and you know otherwise. I know I'm preaching to the choir here so I'll stop. Hope everyone is having a great day. I'm loving my super short Labor Day Holiday Week! I'm already in my weekend here. Woo wooo!
The second option, and seemingly most popular in this neck of the woods is WOOD! Just about everyone I know has some sort of wood stove or even wood belly furnace to keep their houses warm in the winter. I tell you what, nothing keeps a house as warm or dry in the winter as wood heat. I certainly learned to appreciate that over the past two winters when I would come into the house after a day in the field snowshoeing, getting cold and wet. But of course wood does not get delivered by little elfin type fairies, no no, if you want it you either have to have the chainsaw and wood permit to go out and get some, or know someone that will do the work and sell it to you by the cord (for those of you that don't know, a cord is a volumetric unit that is a pile of stacked wood measuring 4x4x8 ft).
source of heat is a wood stove in each of their homes. Each spring and fall Frank and Mace buy a wood permit, lovingly provided by yours truly out at the ranger station, and head out Martin Creek or Huckleberry with two 3/4 ton pickups and a 17 ft flatbed trailer. In a days work the two men can load the trailer and two pickups with anywhere between 3 and 4 cord of wood. That may not sound like much but when you look at everything loaded it seems like a ton. Mace's house is smaller so he only goes through about 8-10 cord of wood in a winter, the other house is a lot bigger and has a fireplace which is less efficient than a stove, so I shudder to think how much would we go through there. All I know is that Frank fills a bard full of wood and by the time spring rolls around there are only a few hunks of red fir or larch rolling around.
Once the trucks are loaded, the battle is only half over. This time of year with the rain fall and freezing and thawing between night and daylight, the roads off the mountains are pretty well beat up. Around every turn you either meet a washboard surface or some pothole that makes the truck dip precariously in one direction or another, which isn't too great when you have round pieces of wood stacked about 5 ft high in the bed. So we take our time and occasionally have to pop out of the cab and go adjust the load a little. Then we head home to offload and restack the wood. By the time everything is said and done we're all sore and tired and ready for a shower. All in a days work right? Oh wait... yesterday was my day off... *laughs*.
I am happy to report that, after measuring my pumpkin today and comparing the measurements to a very sophisticated table provided by bigpumpkin.com that a lot of people with too much time on their hands compiled, my pumpkin has grown quite a bit. The last time I blogged on here about it an put that picture up the circumferences was 37 inches was only 15 days old (the number of days it has been set on the vine) and weighed approximately 23 lbs. As of today, only a week later, the circumference is 58 inches and weighs 59 lbs. Talk about growth! I know its nothing compared to those giant pumpkin growers on the East coast that are breaking records with pumpkins that weigh over 1600 lbs but its a start. The seed that we started from came from a guy living in Pennsylvania and was about 830 lbs when the season was over an done with. I had hopes that we would get at least a 2oo lber by the time our season ends so maybe it will still happen if we can keep it safe and warm into the first part of October. We started the seed way too late compared to what those East coasters do, but then again they have a longer season to start with and don't have the big temperature difference between daytime and night. Mace and I are even talking about running an electric blanket out from his house to the pumpkin so that when its covered by all the tarps the entire system will be water proof and warm. If it gets too much colder at night we might just have to. I want my chainsaw worthy jack'olatern! Polly's pumpkin is a behemoth weighing in at over 100lbs already though hers .jpg)
doesn't seem to be growing at nearly the speed ours is. Hers is a prettier pumpkin by far though; perfectly round, bright orange and not a scar on the sucker. Ours on the other hand... well its had some identity issues. Its trying to change to orange but taking its sweet time doing it. It has a few blemishes that I can't figure out how they even happened. And there is no such thing as round in its pumpkin vocabulary. One side seems to be growing faster than the other and the top of the sucker near the stem has a big indentation for no reason whatsoever. With all its little imperfections we still love it though and treat it like the king of the garden it has become. So all hail King Pumpkin... ruler of gardendom!
entered habitat type data into my stand exam mini handheld computer. Yes the days of recording data entry after data entry by hand are past. Now I have a computer the size of an old school game boy prompting me to answer stand questions. The cost of each one of these little buggers is $2800… seems outrageous compared to a piece of paper and a pencil. In some ways it’s great because it makes sure I don’t leave out information, but at the same time it doesn’t really give me the option of writing further notes to explain some of the entries since old growth stand exams run a little bit differently and require additional information. So I still lug around a big metal folder clipboard to write more things down. It is a bigger pain in the butt really. But my gripes about technology aren’t the point here.
own in the freezer is not to be this year. I know… so sad isn’t it. At least I can still go deer hunting. This buck I saw last spring would do nicely. I actually wonder how big its antlers are now. Doesn't matter I guess. I'm just looking for a nice tender deer for roasts, jerky, and backstrap steaks. Robin (my vegitarian sister) is cringing right now reading that I'm sure.
might get. It set on so late that its having to play catch up to Polly's 100 lb one now. I'm very jealous of my future mom-in-laws gourd actually. Its a nice bright orange and a perfectly round 67 inches in circumference as you can see from the pic I took of hers yesterday. *sniffle sniffle* It puts mine to shame at the moment. I can't really complain though. My pumpkin is still in that light yellow baby pumplkin stage of development though it should start to get more orangy any day now. My little guy has put on about 20 lbs in the last week and is starting to so show some umph. I think its weights close to 35 lbs total now, though maybe even a bit more than that since its getting harder to lift. Its kind of a pain in the rear end though. Mace and I are so paranoid that it might freeze at night (already had frost Aug 1st) that we have a system of covering the entire pumpkin plant every single night. It starts with wrapping the pumpkin itself up in a giant towel, then p.jpg)
utting a big box over that to keep the little guy as warm as we can. After the pumpkin itself is covered, we use the system of boards we set up running the entire length of the plant to support the 6 tarps we need to cover the plant. It looks pretty haphazard after all is said in done but it keeps the plant a good 20 degrees warmer than the rest of the garden, which is worth it after all the work we've put into pruning and burying the vine itself day after day. I know it sounds like a lot of extra work, and it is, but its been really fun seeing something grow so much so fast that it seems worth it. Again... there isn't much to do in Trout Creek Montana, I have to get my kicks in somehow.
I picked the last of my raspberries and made the very last batch of jam yesterday. Mace's chest freezer is pretty much filled to the brim so I'm not exactly sure where I'm going to put these last 8 jars. Between making raspberry and strawberry jam, freezing the peppers we've roasted from the garden, and the litany of other stuff we've made and canned over the past few weeks cupboards both at Mace's and Polly's house are getting stuffed. Its a nice feeling really seeing all the hard work paying off. Weird thing is is that both gardens still haven't be fully harvested. We've just been picking at it as thing have ripened but there is still a ton out there. All the onions, carrots, rest of the beets, more peppers and tomatoes, green beens, peas, etc etc I'm not sure where everything is going to go. Its been a great growing season and the produce has been yummier than ever for it. 
We had a giant salad with carrots, lettuce, cucumbers, yellow peppers, and red onions all of which came from our garden except for the lettuce. Then we had elk steak cooked on the grill with roasted new red potatoes and carrots (again from our garden). It was one of the best meals we'd all had in a long time. Fresh veggies are just too yummy. To top the night off we all sat around a fire pit outside and roasted marshmellows with Lane and Gracie (Mace's nephew and niece) and watched the shooting stars til midnight. All in all it was a great evening.
flamulated owls. Because this owl is strictly nocturnal and you wont hear a peep out of him during the day, I use a multi use caller to try and get a response from the little bugger at night. If I get a call back from an owl I keep calling and taking azimuths until I can triangulate the position of that particular bird. Then in the day time I return to that area and see if I can find a nest site to monitor. This species looks like a minature version of a screech owl with eyes as black as coal and live in Ponderosa pine stands. Its actually pretty amazing we have any of flamulated owls on our forest since we have few true old grow ponderosa stands. They seem to have adapted to a mixed stand of ponderosa, doug. fir, and lodge pole pine. I think they are kind of cut really. And they have really long "whooo whoooooooooooo" kind of call. What every kids grows up thinking an owl should sound like.
f you who were in my forestry/wildlife classes you'll know what I'm talking about but since this blog is for everyone here is a little history and breakdown of the problem. Mountain pine beetles inhabit pines, particularly the ponderosa pine, lodgepole pine, and the white pines. During early stages of an outbreak, attacks are limited largely to trees under stress from injury, poor site conditions, fire damage, overcrowding, root disease or old age. As beetle populations increase, the beetles attack most large trees in the outbreak area. The beetles kill the trees by boring through the bark into the phloem layer on which they feed and in which eggs are laid. Pioneer female beetles initiate attacks, and produce pheromones which attract other beetles and results in mass attack. The trees respond to attack by increasing their resin output in order to discourage or kill the beetles, but the beetles carry blue stain fungi which, if established, will block the tree resin response. Over time (usually within 2 weeks of attack), the trees are overwhelmed as the phloem layer is damaged enough to cut off the flow of water and nutrients. In the end, the trees starve to death, and the damage can be easily seen even from the air in the form of reddened needles. Enti
re groves of trees after an outbreak will appear reddish for this reason. Usually older trees die faster. After particularly long and hot summers mountain pine beetle population can increase dramatically which can lead to the deforestation of large areas. The attacked areas are hard to miss as you can see here to the left. *sigh... whew didn't know if I could make it through all that* Everybody still with me or was that too much??? If I bored you I'm sorry, I think this stuff is pretty interesting. So what does that have to do with me? Well those trees that resist the attack are super important. They are the trees we use for genetic improvement of the whole stand. Each year I go out and find white bark and western white pine trees that have indicators that they have survived and beat out pine attacks, such as the streams of hardened re
sin. I code and mark each individual tree then come back and cage as many of thier cones as I can to protect them from clarks nutcrackers (like the one here to the right) and all the squirley species that will eat the cones. A month or two later I go back and de-cage the cones and collect them to send off to the Forest Service Genetics Lab. There they look at the resistance factors and create genetically improved seed from which to grow new sapling to plant in areas that have been devistated by the pine beetle attacks. This kind of work is important for many reasons. Whitebark pine and western white pine forests are habitats used by many different species of critters, including grizzly bears and being as I'm a U of M grad and our mascot is the griz, I think we ought to keep them thriving don't you?
So what else do I do? Well last year we had a miserably hot and dry summer and so I spent a good 3 weeks to a month up in a guard tower watching for fire starts. Thats the tower I was in up on Star peak last year. It not much to look at but it served its purpose. I give a lot of credit to those guys in the old days that did that all summer long. It doesn't sound like a tricky job but it really is. Its amazing how tired your eyes get when looking out accross the forest through a pair of binoculars day after day. Its also kind of a lonely job. Sure you have radio check-ins with the dispatcher and call-ins for supplies and what not but thats not the same as having a nice conversation or even chit chatting with someone. Another problem is that at certain time of the day the clouds swirl in a way that look like it could be smoke. So you have to sit there and check and recheck until you are positive its just a cloud. It wasn't all bad though. I got to rough it for a while and eat out of a mess kit. Yes, thats right... I call that fun. Makes me think of camping. Plus the night sky up that high is amazing. Shooting stars all over the place, I started to learn my constellations since I brought one of my field guides with me that had those kind of charts in it. It was a peaceful and someone reflective time when I had the chance to let my eyes go back to normal. 
when anymore, we had a local come into the office and say that he was pretty sure he saw a wolverine cross the road up over Steven's Peak in front of his snow mobil. Now for those of you that don't know, wolverines dont usually just pop up out of no where, especially in the middle of the day. They are night time critters. But not only that, wolverines had never been known to exist in this part of the country. The closest one we knew about was up in the Yaak, just south of the Canadian boarder up in Troy District. And at that, that was a fairly recent occurance. Wolverines just didn't come down this far south in Montana. My boss was a bit skeptical about the whole story and thought that maybe it was a fisher or martin that crossed the road and the local was mistaken. But just to be sure Doug (the the big chief) and Steve (the second big cheif) told me to take the big diesal 4x4 powerstroke (thats the big guns in the winter) and check it out... and oh try not to get stuck in the 4 feet of snow on the way up. So after making sure the big boy green rig had chains in the box and a snow shovel in the back I made my way up to the peak. A couple hours later, and a glorious few dig outs to p
ut the chains on those huge tires I got into the area. Low and behold the local was right. There were wolverine tracks crossing the road a couple times up there. So after straping on my trusty snow shoes, donning my gloves and hat, I took after the set of tracks that looked the freshest. The further I got from the road the more tracks showed up, and not only one set, but two. It was a mother wolverine and a kit that she, for some reason, didn't throw off for the winter. Finally it got too late and I headed back home to tell the office the news... it was a big deal. So after relaying the event so the big chiefs they decided that I was going to get ahold of a few of the biologists in the Fish and Wildlife service and see what they wanted to do about our little find. Thats when I met Ray Pederson, one of the carnivore kings with Montana FWS. Great guy I might add. 
After about a month of planning and everyone sending me back and forth up the peak to find where exactly the wolverine and her kit were denning (thank god for remote sensor night cameras), we set a day to capture and radio collar the adult wolverine. Now this truly was an experience for me. I got to be up close and personal with a critter most folks will never see in their lifetime. Ray darted her and I got to collar, record, and program all the gps settings because I was going to be the one monitoring her for the next few years and relaying the information to FWS. I'm happy to report she is healthy and still in the area, though I'm not exactly sure what happened to the kit. I think she finally threw it off this spring to make room for possible new kits. Big thanks goes out to Ray for forwarding the pics he took of the collaring since I didn't have any of my own.
are a species of special concern, so we are trying to monitor how many returning pairs we have return every year to nest and hopefully find some new pairs in the process since they seem to be moving into the area more and more. We go to each known nest site at least 4 times in a field season. The first time is to find a pair in last years next area and pin piont if they've moved and for what possible reason. The second and third times is to check on hachling success and the forth time is to check on fledgling success like the one over here on the left. Well he's more of a juvenile but you get the point. Its the last three times you really have to worry about being attacked. These birds are a pretty neat critter and have a really neat call if you like that shrill cross between and eagle scream and a crow caw. Once you hear it you'd never forget it. Well and the fact I have a caller that we use over and over to find the suckers. One of the neat things about the Goshawks is that they are an indicator species for the overall health of the forest they put their nests in, guess that means we are doing something right in those particular areas. Woo hoo, thats a switch.
u really have walk the whole creek to find them. This is usually best when done with too people walk the creek though. Usually you have one person start at the head of the creek just about where its wider than 3 feet, and the other person walks up from the bay side or the mouth. The only real dangers in this project is slipping on the river rock and getting a little wet, but then again thats how you beat the heat. Again we're monitoring hatchling sucess with this species because they are another indicator species of water habitat health. Its fun when you finally find a family of them and they are piddling around trying to teach the bambinos how to swim behind mama. Usually it involved a lot of baby quacking and flopping around near the shore until they finally get the courage to take the plunge.