January through March, 2011

Move Along, Nothing to See Here

As most of our readers know, Pauline was very ill in late November and was diagnosed with cancer soon after. The good news is that she is well on her way to recovery. However, the treatment was quite dreadful and severely limited our activities for this Winter. The story is not finished; there are follow-ups in the months and years ahead to make sure the cancer is gone and does not return. We hope to return to a normal lifestyle in the near future and resume quarterly reports with more substantial content.

We did host the MSU Wildlife Management Techniques course again. The students got to see the movies we made of a moose, bear and stampeding elk before their first field trip to our property this year. They will do a total of 3 field trips for the course, covering use of motion sensitive cameras and triangulation equipment. We're still hoping to catch a mountain lion and the students put out special “bait” to see if they can lure one into camera range. We will post the results of their camera field work when the results are in for our next report.

The last day of March brought a small drama. We woke to find a small herd of elk outside the bedroom window. The heard spooked, with all but one running south. One cow headed north and confronted a coyote (undoubtedly the source of the spook). She faced it down for some time. By the time Gary got the camera and powered it up, she was heading back to rejoin the herd. The coyote soon moved on to find other prey. This photo was taken out the master bath window.

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