Leslie Patten Books: Wild Places, Sacred Spaces

Cougars and Wolves-A puzzle

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Leslie

Finally time to post a cougar entry. Days have been warm, so when we’ve had snow, it melts off quickly. But I’ve had two interesting cougar tracking experiences.

Several days after a very nice snow I ventured out to an area where I’ve seen cat tracks many times. Its a landscape full of boulders with low cliffs easily passable for humans–perfect cougar tracking. I headed straight for some high cliffs where I found cougar tracks last year, and lo and behold, there were fresh puma tracks. Because the terrain is fairly easy, I was able to follow these tracks for over an hour, mostly up, down and over boulders. A coyote occasionally mirrored this cougars’ trail.

Left Hind

Nice front print

Right front (Rt.) Left hind over front foot (lt) cougar

Moving with an easy gait, occasionally jumping high up on a boulder or down into a gully (where I had to go around. Following a cougar isn’t easy), the cougar stopped on a rock at an overlook to size up the terrain. All this indicated that this cougar was relaxed.

I’d seen wolf tracks when I began early on, but not coinciding with my cougars tracks. Yet suddenly the wolf pack’s tracks appeared atop a ridge, fresh as the cougars’. The wolves and the cougar headed down a narrow path to a ravine below, where I lost the cougar tracks in an array of wolf tracks. I searched everywhere but the plethora of canine tracks obscured all other sign. What were those wolves doing? There was no sign of a kill in the area. Usually Koda is pretty good at finding carcasses when I can’t. I even went back on another day, combing the area for a kill, but nothing.

Cougar paw

Anesthesized cougar teeth

A few days ago I hiked up the mountain behind my home. A series of terraces stair steps up the mountain side. It’s a north facing wooded area and some of the shelfs are quite steep. I climbed fairly high when I came across a fresh cougar track. The cat scrambled to the next level, the final mesa before the mountainside turns to scree. It’s an area full of large boulders. The cougar easily and deftly walked up the slope toward a giant granite boulder which she jumped on top of. Yet what caught my attention were the wolf tracks that ran right in front of the boulder and over the cougar tracks–same freshness. Here again were cat and canine tracks together.

Again losing the cat tracks, I followed the wolf tracks back to the woods by my house. There I found not only cougar and wolf tracks, but a deer kill already picked over by birds, probably from the night before. Did the cougar kill the deer, only to be driven off by the wolves?

So, this leaves me with more questions than answers. Do wolves keep a pretty good bead on cougars? Cougar kills are easy food for other predators and that’s why they take time to cover their kills. But what were those wolves doing around that cougar on my first tracking excursion? What kind of competition are those wolves presenting to that cougar? And it also lead me to think about people who hunt cougars with dogs. Eight dogs have been killed by wolves in Montana this year while hunting cougars. Are those dogs more susceptible to being caught and killed by wolves because they are following cougars? There have been a series of dogs lost in Sunlight over the years, some for a few weeks, yet all the lost dogs have turned up, not killed by wolves. Yet a few years ago a hound hunting cougars was killed by the wolf pack.

I am curious about the relationship between cougars and wolves, two top predators competing for similar prey.

Filed under: Cougars | Tagged: Cougars, Wolves | 3 Comments »

Tracking small mammals

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Leslie

With warm temperatures and little snow in my mountain lion tracking areas, I’ve turned to tracking small mammals above my house. I’m not sure if I am just becoming aware of what these tracks look like, or if I am actually noticing an explosion of long-tailed weasels this year.

During last summer, we had a lot of reports in the neighborhood of weasels. One neighbor told me her indoor cat killed a baby weasel and left it in the living room. Obviously, some weasel had gotten into her house and had a litter. Because weasels kill a tremendous amount of mice, she wasn’t too happy with her cat. I personally watched a weasel take three baby bluebirds from their nest that were about to fledge. I attribute all these sighting to an explosion of Unita ground squirrels this summer.

The weasel family has a distinct gait, especially in snow, called a 2×2.

you can see the 2x2 gait where the back feet land in the front feet tracks.

you can see the 2×2 gait where the back feet land in the front feet tracks.

These are really clear weasel tracks on the porch. My shoe for size.

The only way I could figure out what kind of weasel I was seeing was to take measurements of the track width. After taking lots of measurements, I found I’m seeing long-tailed weasels, not ermines. From my observations, it appears that weasels hardly ever backtrack, unlike squirrels who make a deep trails back and forth between their caches and trees. They wander from one rock or juniper to the next looking for mice and voles. The reason you rarely see backtracking is because, unlike squirrels, they don’t have permanent dens. Instead they go out looking for prey, make a kill, then take over their prey’s nests. They might use these nests for a few days only.

Vole tracks on snow close up

Vole bound. You can see it’s tail drag. My shoe is for size.

Mouse tracks in snow

I’ve found these weasel tracks in fairly predictable areas–forested areas encircling small to medium sized meadows. This would make sense considering their prey consists mainly of voles and mice.

I followed a weasel track into the trees and came across Marten tracks. Martens, like weasels, are mustelids and have that characteristic 2×2 in snow except much bigger. Where weasels have a trail width of 1″-3″ depending upon which weasel, martens have a trail width of 2 3/4″ to 4 1/2″ and a much bigger foot. Once you start to recognize these tracks, they will be easy to distinguish from rodents and from each other.

Scale shows width of track

Ruler shows trail width

The Martens, unlike the weasels, like to travel in heavy timber for protection. They also eat voles, but take squirrels, carrion, berries,fruit, chipmunks and birds. Martens climb trees whereas weasels rarely do. They prefer old growth forests. James Lowery says that ‘logging that removes old growth trees and forest management practices that result in islands of forest separated by open space do not provide good habitat for marten and, some would say, destroy the health of the forest as well.” Lowery’s comments makes me wonder about the logging that is going on this winter in the Sunlight area.

I walked up Little Sunlight Campground the other day which has been extensively logged. Loggers have created huge slash piles. They took all the largest trees and left islands of narrow girthed conifers in groups with large meadows in between. When I walked the logging road, I saw almost no tracks except deer and a few elk, but no squirrels or smaller critters. Are these the best forest practices in a wild place like the GYE? Many people I talk to say we need this for fire protection, or we need the lumber. But control burns are better for the habitat as they suppress invasives that come up after logging, and encourage fire adapted plant materials that fix nitrogen to sprout. This kind of logging will be good for large browsers, but not for martens and other animals that depend on old growth forests and dense cover.

You can see the slash pile beyond Koda. This was a heavily forested area before logging

Filed under: Mustelids | Tagged: Logging, Long-tailed weasel, Martens | 2 Comments »

Turning my head upside down about Grizzlies

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Leslie

“The Grizzly Bear, by William H. Wright, first published in 1909, is one of the best all around books ever written on the subject. His books shows a hunter becoming a naturalist: Wright first studied the grizzly in order to hunt him, then he came to hunt him in order to study him.” Frank C. Craighead, Jr.

That’s quite a recommendation from Frank Craighead, one of the most well known grizzly bear experts. Craighead was instrumental in having this out of print book republished. Not only is this a highly readable book, but fascinating if you can get over all the grizzly bear hunts and killing he describes in the first half. But Wright was a product of his time. No hunting quotas, tags or seasons.

Grizzly in Lamar

But Wright is not just a bear hunter; he’s a fascinating character. He knows grizzlies inside and out. He sees a track and, even if he is not hunting bears, he gets in the mood to follow the griz for two days. He’s eight hours behind him, but because he understands grizzly habits, he figures he’ll eventually catch up. He describes where and when the bear was digging, if the bear was successful at catching his marmot or ground squirrel (and how many), when the bear took a nap, how it paused to sniff for danger…all in the tracks. Then when night comes and he still hasn’t caught up with the bear, Wright finds a large rock, builds a lean-too and a fire and beds down. Then he starts out again the next morning, all in unfamiliar territory. At last he finds the bear in dense shrubbery and kills it. Wright never baits bears as he considers it not fair chase. He only uses his own cunning pitted against the bear, whom he considers the smartest animal there is.

In one narrative, Wright is guiding two fellows on a bear hunt in the Bitterroots. The men are back at camp while Wright is fishing with the dogs. Wright and the dogs spot a grizzly. The dogs run after the bear and corral him in a hole. As the bear swats at the dogs, Wright, who left his gun back at camp and in his attempt to save the dogs, takes out his pocket knife and starts swinging at the bear. Long story short, Wright kills the bear with his pocket knife.

Grizzly minding his own business

Wright realized that grizzlies were endangered and becoming extinct. He loved these bears and admired their intelligence and had already begun photographing them in the wild in the attempt to save them. In 1906 he went to Yellowstone National Park to use some new photography methods. His was essentially the first ‘trail camera’. He used a sewing thread as a trip wire. One end he attached to an electric switch which exploded a flash and sprung the shutter of his camera. The other end of the trip wire was tied to a small stake driven into the ground beyond the trail. He located a heavily used bear trail, set up the apparatus, then hid in the bushes to watch, mostly at dusk and into the night.

From there he reports on the various bears that came bye. In every instance, whether mom with cubs, or three year olds, or old boars, the bears all stopped short of the thread, sniffed the thread, sometimes bolted, sometimes explored the thread up to the stake and down to the switch. Most all of them refused to go beyond the thread.

So Wright left the Mt. Washburn area and headed toward Lake. He set up the apparatus, but this time he found the thinnest wire he could, so thin that he himself couldn’t see it from ten feet away. He then chose a trail that was covered with grass in order to conceal the wire. Then he waited some two hundred yards up the trail and watched. Again, all the bears detected the wire, nosing along it inquisitively. Wright even recognized a few of the bears from the Washburn area on this trail.

Thinking that maybe these Yellowstone bears were quite adapted to people, Wright tried walking up and down the trail first to human scent it, then hiding behind the tree. But this only made the bears more inquisitive, some of whom came, under cover of darkness, within ten feet of him. Wright remained still in order not to frighten them. When they got close enough to figure out he wasn’t a stump, they all ran off.

Wright describes the grizzly temperament as very wary of danger. He says they are habitually cautious and alert, and the veru least scent or sound or sight sends them into the farthest hills.

Reading Wright has made me think again about grizzlies. My usual take on grizzlies is that they have not a care in the world as they are top predators. I think of them as swaggering through the woods, meandering from food source to food source. Yet Wright describes them completely differently, and says he found the protected Yellowstone bears no different than any other wild bears he had encountered in the Selkirks or the Bitterroots. Reading his tracking narratives, it appears these grizzlies are peaceable animals, not only wary of dangers, but mostly interested in sleeping and digging for foods. Without having such direct and repeated experiences with grizzlies, it’s impossible for a person to know their nature like Wright does. So instead, tales get told and assumptions are made, and all we can go on is what we’re told to do in case we actually run into a bear while hiking or camping, and usually this involves a gun or bear spray. With more bears inhabiting our region, it’s good to read all we can. I highly recommend Wright’s book.

A Grizzly track found by the river

Filed under: Grizzlies | Tagged: Bears, grizzlies | 3 Comments »

The Cry Heard Around the World

Posted on December 14, 2012 by Leslie

With wolf hunts now taking place in all three states around Yellowstone, new issues are coming up. Although Montana and Idaho had a hunt last year, this fall is Wyoming’s first wolf hunt.

At least 10 collared Yellowstone Park and Grand Teton wolves have been killed in this years’ hunt, and more than half of them occurred in Wyoming. The last collared wolf killed was taken in my area, hunt area 2, and she was the eighth wolf and so closed the zone. And this wolf, wolf 832F (F for female), dubbed ‘o6 by Park wolf watchers, was perhaps the most famous wolf in the world, and most loved. She’d been highly visible in the Lamar Valley since she was born in 2006, and was the alpha female of her pack.

’06 this summer hightails it away from Molly Pack

Last spring on a May morning I went to the Lamar and watched her with her son try and scare a grizzly off a dead bison. On the other side of the grizzly were two wolves of Molly’s Pack, a formidable pack in the Park that had been threatening to kill 06’s pups. Another wolf from the Lamar Pack, 754, was shot in my hunt zone in November. At least 2 collared wolves from Grand Teton have been shot, and there’s speculation that as many as 13 uncollared from GT have been taken in the hunt.

’06’s death has been highly publicized all around the world, from PRI to European newspapers. People from all over the world watched and knew ’06. In response to public opinion, Montana, who is about to begin their first wolf trapping season, has created a buffer zone around the Park’s northern border. Just for this hunt/trap season only. Next year is a different story perhaps. Although Idaho’s wolf hunting and trapping season is almost endless, the expansive Madison Valley sits in the way of many wolves migrating from the Park in that direction.

’06 swims the Lamar river, emerges onto the road right in front of tourists.

Wyoming is another story. Most of the Park is in WY, as is all of Grand Teton. 85% of the state has been approved by the Obama administration as a predator zone which means shoot on sight (or trap, or bait, or whatever) anytime, anywhere. So the managed hunt zone, called the Trophy Zone, is essentially the ‘buffer’ zone around the Park. With the loss of so many study wolves, is the era of Park research over? And with the hoards of wolf watchers habituating these wolves to a benign human presence, is the era of wolf watching in the Park about to change? Will it be harder to see wolves in the Park? And will that bring in less visitors? And should Wyoming manage their ‘buffer zone’ around the Park with Park research in mind?

I can say that my zone, hunt zone 2, had the highest quota of all the zones. If you take zone 2 and 3 together, they make up the entire Absaroka eastern side of YNP, with a quota of 16 out of 52 wolves. This is a rich area for genetic exchange, mostly Shoshone designated wilderness area, and wolves travel frequently in and out of the Park in this area following their prime food, elk. Those two areas alone, which are a prime buffer zone, make up 1/3 of the state’s quota for 2012!

Hopefully ’06’s death will bring some good and highlight what is wrong with the hunts the way they are managed now.

First, the quotas of 100 wolves and 10 breeding pairs per state was set a long time ago when no one knew how wolves would adapt to the Rocky Mountains. Although Montana is setting their own quota at 400, Idaho which has prime territory and over 70% federal lands, is in a frenzy to eliminate wolves, hunting and trapping 10 months of the year with no quotas. Wyoming, which has few wolves outside the Park, before the hunt it was around 230, is not only mostly predator status, but is also eyeing that 100 mark as their quota. These quotas are simply ridiculously low for the amount of good habitat and prey. Wyoming in many areas is trying to reduce their elk counts by giving hunters numerous tags, but at the same time reducing the predator that could do that job in a better, more effective and selective manner.

This wolf, from my valley, was by the road two years ago. With the hunts you will no longer see wolves so easily

Second, trapping is simply anathema to the 21st century. It is cruel and poses dangers to not only other wildlife, but to pets. Pelts are sold mostly to the Chinese market, which enrages me more. This is what happened with our beaver and bison in the 19th century, when European demand had hunters and trappers eradicating our wildlife for hats and coats. Wildlife as a commodity is simply wrong, just as human trafficking is.

Third, until the predator status is changed so that all of Wyoming is designated trophy status, the Trophy zone around the Park needs to be changed. Quotas in sensitive areas right around the Park need to be decreased, hunt zones readjusted, and hunt times changed for each area. Instead of hunting the entire trophy zone Sept or October through December, zones near the Park need to close earlier as the elk begin to come down from the high country and the Park wolves follow. Once Wyoming predator status is eliminated, wolf hunts should take place only in areas where there are conflicts with ranchers, not in areas with no conflict and lots of wilderness.

Finally, personally I disagree with hunting predators–wolves, coyotes, foxes, cougars, bears, martens, you name it. Being able to shoot a predator that is eating your sheep or cattle is one thing, hunting them for sport is another. On the other hand, just seeing a wolf or coyote passing your property doesn’t mean they’re going to cause trouble; and ranchers who are far-sighted and conscious are trying new methods for protecting their flocks and herds. Yet that being said, for now the delisting not only calls for a hunt, but in the short run of the next ten years, it may be the only way to quiet the loud and contentious opposition to wolves. Let’s just not undo all the good hard work that brought them here over these last 15 years.

If you want to comment and have your voice heard on the wolf situation in Wyoming, here is a link. Wyoming wolf hunt

Two wolves side trot down the road

Filed under: Wolf | Tagged: Grand Teton National Park, Lamar wolf pack, montana wolf hunt, nature, Wolf, Wolf '06, Wolf 832F, Wolves, Wyoming wolf hunt, Yellowstone National Park | 3 Comments »

Cougars–Ghost of the Mountain

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Leslie

With this post begins a series on cougars and cougar tracking.

The first cougar print I ever saw was at a tracking class around Davenport near Santa Cruz CA. Davenport is an ocean town, backed by rolling hills and wild lands. After a morning of tracking lessons, the group split up into smaller bands and we walked around the edges of a large field. In the middle of a dirt two-track road was one cougar print.

cougar track with penny for reference

When I lived in Marin County, my neighbors and friends had plenty of cougar sightings. With a plethora of deer and no hunting, along with a lot of preserved lands up and down the coast, Marin has its share of wildlife, including cougars. But its still rare to see one.

I lived in a subdivision that abutted a large swath of open space. Thirty years ago, the early residents had the foresight to purchase the hills behind their new homes to preserve forever. They gave the management of these lands over to the Marin County Open Space District. Once on a trail in these hills, you could literally walk to the ocean about twenty miles away through vast expanses of preserved lands and ranches. From the Golden Gate National Recreation Areas north to Sonoma County, here is where cougars roam.

Marin County. Gateway to lots of hiking, Mt. Tamalpais, Muir Woods.

View looking over the vast protected hillscapes of Marin that stretch all the way to Sonoma County. This is good deer and cougar country.

Although I walked those hills almost daily, and for years, I never once encountered a lion. In September, the driest month of the year, the deer would come down from the hills to the perennial stream that ran alongside Lucas Valley Road where I lived. And the lions follow the deer. It was at this time that most sightings occurred. One day a neighbor who lived next to the Open Space area, told me she was washing dishes in the kitchen when she looked out her window and saw a cougar. Another friend was walking his dog and saw a lion. Another friend told me her son was hiking on Mt. Tamalpais when he spied a cougar on a rock above him, watching. Sadly, I never had the pleasure of seeing one.

Because of the extraordinary amount of deer in Marin, cougars are living close to people. California voters outlawed cougar hunting in 1996, yet there has never been one incident in Marin of a cougar attacking a person. In July of this year a Marin county man was attacked in a remote area of the Sierra foothills by a cougar. He was alone, in his sleeping bag, awakened by a large paw on the side of his head. He survived. This is such a rare incident. One sound theory to explain this attack is that the man’s snoring sounded like a wounded animal to the cat.

California does give out kill tags to people who claim livestock loss from cats. But you have to ask yourself: other states have a hunt on cougars in order to limit their numbers and protect people. Yet in a state as big as California, these kinds of attacks are incredibly rare. From 1890 to the present, only 19 verifiable cougar caused deaths have taken place in all of North America–one of those was in California in 2004, the only death since California’s no hunting law began, with an estimated 4000-6000 cats statewide.

Filed under: Cougars | Tagged: california cougars, Cougars, mountain lions, puma | 4 Comments »

What is an elephant?

Posted on November 2, 2012 by Leslie

The Buddha tells a parable that is a classic: The King has six blind men brought to the Palace and asked to describe an elephant. “When the blind men had each felt a part of the elephant, the king went to each of them and said to each: ‘Well, blind man, have you seen the elephant? Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?” Each blind man describes the elephant differently. The one who touched his ear said he was like a fan. The one who touched his leg said he was like a tree trunk. The man who felt his tusk said he was like a spear. Touching the elephant’s body, one exclaimed he was like a wall. One man touched his trunk and said he was like a rope.

How can anyone describe the Whole until he has learned about all the parts. Relative to Nature, we are all like the blind man for we cannot see the whole and all the parts are too many, too intricate, and some parts even invisible which we will never see.

I was speaking with someone today about Grizzly bears and the need for connective corridors and Yellowstone to Yukon to become a reality; how if grizzlies are delisted in 2014, then hunted to control their numbers, they will just be in a virtual zoo in the GYE, and how studies have shown that without connectivity, over time the bear will go extinct in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Strangely enough, I was told that the plan was that if genetic diversity were compromised, then bears from other areas could just be flown in! I think that’s the idea with wolves as well.

Trying to manipulate all the parts to make a whole becomes a juggling act that is doomed to failure. Over time, we’ll never be able to control wolves for livestock on public lands or figure out how many we should kill to maintain elk and deer at levels we want; Or how to control the diseases in the ungulates we desire to hunt when we have killed the wolves that control those diseases; or manage cattle on public lands and still maintain healthy ecosystems for elk and deer; or control brucellosis, that originated with cattle, from transferring back to cattle from elk and bison; or keep enough control over Park bison and still have enough genetic diversity; or shoot enough coyotes to keep them from killing sheep or chickens; or kill enough raccoons to protect our cornfields. We are like the boy with his fingers in the dyke.

In the end, we always seem to learn that all the parts need to be there to make up the Whole; and the Whole can self-manage and heal itself quite well, without our interference. This has even been proven in places where humans are no longer allowed, like Chernobyl, now a healthy ecosystem as far as wildlife is concerned.

The question is not how do WE manage and juggle everything. The question is how can we live lightly? When all is said and done, it will not be the Endangered Species Act, nor some Act of Congress that makes the final difference, but an act in Consciousness that each and every one of us must make. And that Conscious Act will translate into our Approach to all of Life itself.

Filed under: Practice of The Wild | 4 Comments »

A farewell to a wonderfully curious wolf pup of the Hoodoo Pack

Posted on October 9, 2012 by Leslie

I have been randomly calling the Wyoming Mortality Hot Line or going to the online link to find out how many wolves have been killed (let’s not call it by the euphemism ‘harvested’). I am especially interested in my Area (area 1). As of today, 3 of the quota of 8 have been taken.

Today, I just found out that one of those wolves was the yearling pup I’ve seen many times over the last year.

Yearling pup this spring

He was born a year ago spring. I first saw him with his mom last fall. She is a black alpha female (not sure if she’s still around) and she was harassing a cow as her pup tried to help. The cow didn’t run, but just kept turning around and chasing her down. Finally she gave up. If prey don’t give chase, wolves usually get confused. They can too easily get kicked and hurt by confronting large prey from in front.

The pair seemed inseparable and the next time I saw the pup was around January. He was with his mom loping up a nearby ridgeline. Mom turned, looked, and sprinted off. But the yearling was curious and watched me for awhile. We shared a moment from afar on that cold winter early morning.

The last time I saw him was this spring. I was hiking down a draw, following a cougar track. Koda lagged behind. I was above a creek on a thin deer trail when I spied something odd behind a tree about 20′ ahead. I stopped and his grey head peeked out. He’d been curious, watching Koda and I. When he saw that I noticed him, he ran off to join his mom in the meadow a few hundred yards away. I sprinted up beyond the trees to catch a glimpse again of the Alpha female. (I was able to snap the photo below of her). She eyed me warily for a bit then took off with her pup.

Alpha female; mom of yearling pup killed this week

Last spring I went to a WY G&F information meeting about the hunt. It was clear that it would go through, starting this October 1. The quotas were already set, with my area having the largest. Immediately I knew that this curious youngster would be amongst the first to die. Wolves have been hunted by helicopters around here for years, but not by hunters on foot. Although these wolves were wary, they were not yet scared of humans. The opportunity I’ve had over these last seven years to see wolves over and over again fairly close (I’ve had at least three occasions where I’ve seen wolves 25′ away, eye to eye, both of us curious about one another), has come to a close. It will be better that way for the wolves. Within a year or two of these hunts, wolves will not be seen casually in these parts.

Predators by nature and design must be smart. They need to think and strategize. Wolves cooperate when they hunt and that takes smarts. Prey are given the gift of speed. They look, listen and run. But predators must be more cunning than that.

If you share a moment with one of these magnificent creatures, you realize how intelligent, how full of Life they are. They embody everything that is wild and free. When they look you in the eye, they see right through you, much deeper than you see into them. In the end, though I am saddened by the loss of these wolves in Sunlight, the hot button issues surrounding wolves is not really about wolves at all.

I am reading ‘Shadow Mountain’ by Renee Askins, one of the spearheaders of bringing wolves back to Yellowstone National Park. I highly recommend this engaging, personal and well-written book. I end this entry with a quote from Askins book and a fond farewell to that magnificent and curious pup who shared with me not only his inquisitive nature, but his wild and free spirit.

“It soon became clear that in most discussions wolves merely provided a pretext to talk about much deeper and more personal political views, invariably those having to do with control–control of land and control of animals. Who controlled the “rights” to the animals, who could kill the elk that the wolves would prey upon, who could kill the wolves that killed “too many” elk, who could control which prey species and which predators and where and when and how. In truth, all of it was a discussion about killing and control veiled in the professional shibboleth of “wildlife management.” Wildlife management is, of course, an oxymoron. Animals that are truly “wild” are, by definition, not managed. Yet I would discover…over the next several years a troubling trend toward complete control or manipulation of many “wildlife” populations even within national parks.

Alpha male of the Hoodoo pack

Filed under: Wolf | Tagged: Renee Askins, Shadow Mountain, Wolf, Wolves, wyoming wolf delisting plan, Wyoming wolf hunt | 3 Comments »

Ernest Hemingway, Bears, and Sunlight

Posted on September 18, 2012 by Leslie

My neighbor who was born in the valley in 1924 told me the other day that September 16 was his cut-off day. “Usually snows on that day, or anytime soon afterwards”, he said. Well, things are definitely a’changin because it rained, hard, on Sept. 16.

Besides the climate, Sunlight has changed a lot since my neighbor homesteaded here. In 1929, when he was just 5 years old, Ernest Hemingway came to the Basin and stayed at a ranch called the L-T, owned by the Copelands. Hemingway, with his wife Pauline and their young son, came to write, rest and hunt in these mountains intermittently over the next 10 years. Apparently, he wrote “The Green Hills of Africa”, “Death in the Afternoon” and “To Have and Have Not” here in a small cabin.

But these facts are findable online. What interested me was a wild story I heard from a reliable local; a story that apparently is famous around Cody. Here’s the tale I was told:

Hemingway made a bet with some friends that a grizzly bear could take on an African lion. In order to prove it, he concocted up a scheme. He hired one of the Crandall locals to catch him a live grizzly. Being that this was in the 1930’s, there were of course no tranquilizer guns nor other easy methods to catch a live bear. So the hired fellows dug a very large and deep pit; threw in some attractive bait, then covered up the pit and waited. Soon enough a griz appeared and fell into the pit. The question now was how to haul the bear up, and keep him alive. One of these locals was an excellent roper. He roped the bear’s front and back legs, and after a lot of pulling, they got the bear out of the pit. They tied a rope around the bears neck, and apparently easily led the bear to a waiting cage. This poor unsuspecting grizzly was then transported to Las Vegas, where an African lion awaited him. The griz was led into the ring with the lion, and within seconds killed that lion. So Hemingway won his bet.

What happened to that grizzly after the match? That part of the story was omitted, but I suspect he was made into a rug which lies somewhere now.

This is such a wild story that I’d love to hear from any locals that can add tidbits or fill in with details.

Grizzly minding his own business

And it is the season to tell bear stories as the bears come low down, in hyperphagia and getting ready for winter. Here’s a cute grizzly cub I caught on my trail camera the other day–way too small to take on a lion.

Filed under: Grizzlies | Tagged: Hemingway, Sunlight | 2 Comments »

Summer backpack in the Winds

Posted on September 6, 2012 by Leslie

If things work out, I always try and spend some time backpacking in my favorite granitic peaks at the Continental Divide–The Wind Rivers or Bridger/Teton National Forest. This year I wanted to fill in an area that I’d never been to: the middle Winds through a trailhead called Scab Creek.

First off, if you’ve never been to these mountains, it turns out this is not the first trailhead you should seek out. There are other access trails that head more quickly and directly into the alpine reaches of the Divide. From the Scab creek trailhead, it’s approximately 18 miles to the alpine tundra. Also, the Divide in this area is accessed through a series of wide drainages that had no easy connecting routes.

Middle Fork Lake…the Divide

Although both trailheads offer fairly direct entrance into the Middle Winds, I chose Scab Creek over Boulder Creek because I understood that Boulder Creek trail ran through a large burn area. The summer has seen above average temperatures every day. Scab creek would be more pleasant.

Scab creek is a dry trail for over 5 miles. It’s also quit an uphill slough. The first lake, Little Divide, is about 6 miles in. I recommend that you stop there for the night, because after that you’ll be going another 5 miles to the next set of lakes. Little Divide is a pleasant, though usually crowded lake with a few groups as it’s a stopover lake, not a destination.

Firehole Lake

Dream Lake would seem to be the logical next lake on your second day, but I found it to be not a pleasing place to camp at all, so I hiked the extra 1.5 miles to Sandpoint Lake, a wonderful gem surrounded by conifers with several large beaches of sand. From there I took a day hike to Middle Fork Lake, an east-west drainage with access to the Divide passes. Because I was anxious to camp in alpine country, and I wanted to see North Fork and Europe Canyons, I packed over to Prue Lake, a beautiful alpine lake.

My entire 8 days in the Winds was marked by smoke from fires. In fact, there was a fire just on the other side of the Divide on the reservation. The basin around Pinedale was completely obscured by smoke. One depressing note was the noted increase of dead Whitebark Pines since even two years ago. I would approximate that 40-50% of all the ancient Whitebarks were dead or dying.

Dead ancient whitebark pines

There still are few grizzlies in the Wind Rivers. I heard of a sighting over at Pole Creek this year, and last year there was reported a sow and cubs hanging around New Forks all summer. Grizzlies mostly head over to the Green River area north, where they get into trouble with sheep and then are relocated. The Wind Rivers, Bridger-Teton Wilderness is NOT in the Grizzly Bear Recovery zone. I am not sure what the forest’s policy is, but it seems they look the other way as long as the bear is not making trouble.

Europe Canyon was the high point of my trip.

At Europe Canyon

An incredibly beautiful, yet remote high drainage with several lakes, I met some new friends from England and hiked with them all day.

Took a break for some blueberries

Eight days in the Scab creek entrance is barely enough to get you to the Divide and back. I met a few groups that were doing shuttle hikes out of Elkhart Park through Pole Creek and out Scab. If you do the middle winds and can swing two cars, I’d recommend that as your itinerary. Otherwise, choose a route on the north or south end to enjoy more time in the high alpine country. The best thing about the Middle Winds is the lack of people. There were days when I saw no one. A fellow camping at Europe Canyon told us we were the first people he’d seen in 7 days. Although Little Divide can be crowded, there is plenty of solitude up the canyons in the high country, and for experienced backpackers, a lot of cross-country opportunities.

Koda takes a dip in glacial fed Middle Fork Lake

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The GLORIA project in the Beartooth Mountains

Posted on August 5, 2012 by Leslie

I was in the Pryor Mountains last month on a BioBlitz. What’s a Bioblitz you might ask? It’s an appropriate name, because in the span of about 24 hours people group up and find as many species as they can. I of course signed up for the botany group, but other areas included bats, invertebrates, birds, or mammals. There was even a ‘spider’ category. In that 24 hours, we hiked and drove from desert to alpine environment, documenting every plant we could find. Those we were unable to identify in the field, we brought back to camp to identify where a nice shade tent with tables, microscopes, and plant books was provided. It was a lot of work and a lot of fun.

At the BioBlitz I met Professor Lyman who is the botany teacher at Rocky Mountain College in Billings. She had other projects going which were near the Sunlight area that I offered to help on. First we met up on Bald Ridge where she had a camera on Shoshonea pulvinata, a rare plant that appears on only a very few sites around the Cody area. She wanted to discover what the pollinators were for this plant. I offered to check the camera, but the plant had already finished blooming. We hiked the ridge and discovered several pockets of this plant, mostly on cliff edges where the scree is thick and the drainage is perfect.

Rare plant at Bald ridge

Shoshonea pulvinata green plant not blooming

Where Shoshonea grows on Bald Ridge

Her next project began last week. The GLORIA project was to be set up on four high peaks in the Beartooth Mountains. This is a worldwide project that’s been going on for about 10 years and started over in Europe. The idea is to monitor climate change by detecting changes in the plant life at these mountain summits. The set-up is very detailed, pain-staking, and specific. The peaks must be 50 meters minimum distance from each other and at least 50 meters elevational change from each other. A formula is used to measure off distance down the slope at 5 and 10 meters North, South, East, and West; then a grid is installed at each bearing. At the grid-mark, plants are counted and identified. A heat sensor is installed which will record temperature changes. Every five years the same exact area is recounted as to the plant material and the percentages of species change.

View from one of the GLORIA summits

The project set-up was a lot of work but very interesting. One day I helped carry supplies in to the summit and measure off the grid.

Marking the grid for photographs

Another day after completing a second grid area, we hiked the afternoon looking for another appropriate summit. The top of the Beartooths is a beautiful location to spend the day, especially with the heat down lower. One afternoon we got run off the mountain by fast moving thunderstorms. The highest bare summit is no place to be in a lightening storm.

Counting plant material within the grid

One day in surveying the summit, which is treeless and fairly shrubless, we actually found a bird’s nest with chicks in it. I would guess there are few predators up there.

Bird nest on summit with chicks

A possible summit

The Beartooths contain some of the oldest rock in the world. Professor Lyman’s husband is a geologist and he pointed out some pure quartz veins to me. Here’s a giant that I wished I could haul home (the rock not the dog!).

Quartz on the summit

Domestic sheep were run on these mountains until the early 2000’s. Domestic sheep, when they intermingle with Big Horn Sheep, cause our natives to develop diseases like pneumonia to which the native sheep have no resistance. These old sheep allotments have been retired–a good thing. But I suspect these summit cairns are left-overs from sheep herders.

Sheep herder cairn on a summit with quartz

On the way home one evening, right near the Top of the World store, a fox was in the road chowing down on a road-killed ground squirrel. Oddly, he didn’t move for the traffic and I got some good photos. Even when this motorcyclist was right bye him, he continued to eat for a long time. Fox are considered predators in Wyoming and can be shot on sight at any time of the year. Good thing none of these motorists were on that kind of a mission, just a sightseeing mission.