As much as the wife wanted her sleep on Saturday morning, I had to wake her before sunrise.

The heeler sisters needed their blaze orange bandannas for check station duty, and only the wife knew where she put them after washing them last winter.

The maskless heeler's face and ears fell when I put her bandanna on. She knew what it meant. A whole day of sitting in the truck alongside a highway.

Doin' nothin'.

Bo-ring.

The check station did not start as well as it could have. I set up on a county road at its junction with a major highway, and often have a full bag of trash collected within the first hour. Had to clean out a huge brush pile one year, and spent most of a morning shoveling away a pile of surplus gravel another year (that, at least, was useful).

Apparently spmeone else is tired of folks using this pullout as a dump site. Got there and found three metal punji sticks set in the middle, effectively preventing parking.

It would not be good to have some hunter complain about getting a pipe rammed through his radiator at a check station.

So I spent almost an hour trying to jack them out with the handyman and a tow chain.

No luck.

Finally just attached the chain to the truck. Took a couple pulls, but number one punji was out.

The second was 3/4" pipe. It stopped the truck. Three times! Hard enough to throw the heelers into the dash. Had to take it out with the handyman.

The third was aluminum, so just broke it off and hammered the edges down.

Whoever set these in did accomplish one thing... hardly a third of a bag of trash.

First antelope came through at 08:15. I love the smell of antelope, so the first of each year is always a thrill. Bucks have scent glands in their black cheek patches, and actually produce a grease-like covering that reeks of sage and musk.

Potent enough to tingle your sinuses like menthol.

Surreptitiously rubbed my fingers through the buck's cheek patch before they pulled out.

Wonderful.

A couple from Ohio came by with their first ever antelope. Regular hunters, just never killed an antelope before. Last hunted caribou in Quebec.

They had called our outfit for advice, and had carefully followed it, putting the carcass in a large cooler (it was 80+ degrees out) with ice jugs inside the ribs.

But someone had neglected to mention skinning the carcass first.

You want to cool the meat quickly, and that will not happen with the insulating hide on it.

Especially when driving all the way back to Ohio.

So helped them skin the thing on their tailgate. He did all the work, with just a pocket knife. Could tell they'd done that a lot before.

Check station can be really boring, but not today. Got visited by one of our local hermits, an ex-Marine hiding from the world on his little ranchette (drives with a 10mm on the seat beside him), but he and I get along well.

One of my former neighbors and his wife stopped by, enroute to a wedding.

And, of course, the wife and sons stopped by on their way to eldest son's college. Knew wife wanted to leave by noon, but expecting the usual delays, I made a mental projection of them coming by about 15:45.

They pulled off the highway at 15:45.

To the minute.

The Oregon hunters were back, a two-day drive for one morning of fun, and then back to the west coast.

Some Missouri hunters were also back, last here two years ago. Happy to see the same heelers, with their orange scarves. One tried to buy one of the sisters.

He doesn't have enough money.

Nobody does.

Each of my wardens will, through the course of the fall, stop by to spend an hour or so at the check station, hoping to scare up a ticket or two.

One of the trainees stopped by and got two violations on the first truck.

Beginners luck.

Last ones out, well after dark, was the convoy of falconers. A mixture from Colorado, Utah and Virginia. Don't remember all the birds they were hunting with (sage grouse season for falconers opens early), but they had a peregrine, gyrfalcon, and a gyr/peregrine cross.

No sage grouse.

Heeler sisters and I came home to an empty house. Except for their mother. Little maskless heeler took it the hardest, barely eating the Wendy's junior bacon cheeseburger on her dinner, and skipping the dogfood.

Her sister and mother slept in bed with me as usual, but she stayed the night in the living room.

Waiting for her family to come home.