I have a new number.

The number is 1,439.

Counting my time, it cost over $1800 to acquire this number.

And the map that I had all the little numbers written on, that was worth over $1500, is now just a map with little numbers written on it.

1,439.

The number of antelope we counted in the North Ferris antelope herd during the flights at the beginning of this month. Not including two newborn fawns.

That's 133 fewer antelope than we counted three years ago. An eight percent drop.

Not a great change, except that we have had practically no harvest at all from this area in the intervening years. Theoretically, if we haven't been killing any does, the population should be going up. Fawn production has not been good, which is the story for almost all of our antelope herds. But the big question was "What did this past winter do to us?"

Had this been an average winter, I would have expected a count of around 1700-1750 antelope. But we're about 15-20 percent below that.

It was hard to judge the past winter in this area. The western quarter received a lot of wind, which increases wind chill effects, but also bares off forage for the critters to eat. Same with the southeastern corner.

But the middle portion, in a swath from the Ferrises to the northeast corner, got hit with deep snow early in November, snow that crusted over and didn't bare off until April. All the same killing wind chills, but with little or no food available.

Back before the advent of GPS, we used to carve areas up into smaller count blocks, areas that could be flown as a unit in one flight (or less). I still mark the old blocks on the maps, so I can compare new data to old.

The greatest decrease was in two count blocks along Sand Creek. Right in the middle of that swath of snow. Counts were down 18 percent.

So that's half of what the winter did to us. An eight percent loss in population, most of it in the high fawn production area along Sand Creek.

The other half?

"What did the winter do to fawn production?" When antelope does are nutritionally stressed, they will often absorb their fetuses, and the end result is that a tough winter gives a double whammy. Increased losses during the winter, and little recruitment to replace them the summer after.

Won't really know about fawn production until August, when the fawns are up and running with the herds, but so far it isn't encouraging. Only saw two fawns during the flight, which was made at the peak of fawning time.

I anticipated the extra losses and poor fawn production in April when we set this fall's license quotas, and we dropped the quota. So far, it looks like it was the right thing to do.

We'll see in August.

Only saw one coyote this year. That's not to say there was only one out there. Those grayish-brown canids do not show up as well as the bright white and red pronghorn, and we know we don't even see all of them. But all things being equal, the number of coyotes we see should change in proportion to the number of coyotes that are actually out there.

This area is part of a research project to determine if intensive coyote control (i.e. killing) can increase antelope fawn production and survival of livestock calves. Received lots of aerial gunning this winter, which should have been effective in areas with good snow cover.

We saw seven coyotes during the count in 1998, so it appears they were effective.

Now I need to add the numbers on the other map.