It was bitter cold when we left this morning... -1^o F. And had warmed up to a balmy 4^o by the time we got home.

Supposed to get down to -9^o tonight. (Shall we have a freezing contest, Herworship?)

Wife was smart and kind enough to get the extension cords out and plug in the Explorer and pickup when she got home from work.

The same extension cords that I had coiled up, hauled inside and put away last weekend because there was no way we were going to need them anymore this winter.

Should know better by now.

Sisters came along on the trip to Landertown. So they spent 13 hours in the rig. With seven breaks. Two in the country on the drives up and back, and five in the field by the horse corrals. Had fun drag racing on the county roads, but they didn't stay out too long.

It was an enjoyable meeting, but not a lot of notes for the journal. Too much real work to discuss. And to be honest, the best laughs wouldn't be understood by someone who's not in the biz. A couple things I do want to remember.

Had a long discussion with the grizzly folks about the Forest Service's latest proposal to apply grizzly avoidance regulations on storing food and game to the entire forest, not just where grizzly bears are.

Backpackers want to know how they are supposed to store foodstuffs 30' in the air when camping in the alpine (above treeline).

Balloons?

One new alternative that is available to them is kevlar storage bags. Yes, backpacking food bags made out of the same material as bullet-proof vests.

The comment was made that this proposal is so controversial, "you may want to wear one of those kevlar sacks in your pants when you got to the meeting."

Several of the folks in the room have had near-accidents in the wilderness while setting up bear poles to keep their food and game high in the air. And there have been cases of other folks actually being seriously injured doing the same.

The fella in the room who lives most with griz commented that it may be more dangerous to build bear poles than to live with the bears.

Apparently at least one outfitter camp has constructed log bear platforms up in trees, much like burial platforms of some Native American tribes, for themselves and their clients to sleep in. A violation of wilderness regs. But according to the grizzly expert, "if I was camping there, I would sleep in a platform."

Had to arrive early for a pre-meeting meeting, to discuss the possibility of trapping and transplanting some more bighorn sheep into my country. Remind me to go into the hairy politics of bighorn sheep management here sometime.

And we have our hunting season proposals lined out. After prolonged discussion on a few herds, one of which was mine. Now to do all the paperwork to justify those proposals...