Checked my emails this evening and was surprised to see that someone from our outfit had been working today.

The lab results from last fall's elk teeth.

Downloaded the huge database, sorted out my areas, and printed the results. Then, as I was looking at what seemed to be woefully few sets of data, I noticed one of my neighbor's elk teeth weren't there.

The only teeth I collected on the day the masked heeler got run over.

Kind of hard to forget that day.

So I compared the lab's database to mine.

They're missing all the teeth I sent in on the first, largest batch. Almost half my elk sample!

And since they were in the same box, I'm sure they will be missing most of my deer teeth as well.

Shit.

We meet to set our season recommendations next Monday. And we will have to be working with only half the age data from my deer and elk areas.

This is not good.

Not disastrous, since many folks don't bother with tooth data at all, relying mainly on the harvest survey results. These should arrive tomorrow or Wednesday. But after all the hours spent collecting and cataloguing these teeth, I'm worried about what happened to them.

Did somebody between here and University City spill some tan powder on the box, so it got set aside and safely burned?

Or, more likely, is it sitting in some forgotten corner of the lab?

On the more interesting stuff, in the half the data I do have, the oldest bull was 12 years old, off the Ferrises. That's pretty remarkable for elk. There were 1255 elk in the statewide sample, and the oldest bull was 14 years of age, from the desert just to the west of my country.

Oldest cow from my areas was 16 years, also from the Ferris area. (Oldest statewide was 26 years, from the high country east of the Tetons.)

I see my game warden's bull was five years old. And my retired game warden filled his license again this year, with a six-year old cow.

Of the 25 bulls, none were yearlings, or spikes. In most areas, a third to half the hunters will settle for a spike bull. Having no spikes means that either 1) you lost all your calves the year before and have no yearlings, or 2) you have so many older bulls running around that almost no one needs to settle for a spike.

Since we had 3 out of 20 cows being yearlings, we know we didn't lose our calves in 2000. So our supply of bulls must be pretty good.

Now I have to figure out who to call to start tracking my missing teeth. Even if they are found, it will take weeks to get them processed.