Sometimes I wish I weren't so anal.

And I mean that in the retentive way, not the physical.

Spent the morning finishing up the annual report for our little desert elk herd (the ones most of whom have never seen a tree). Had just finished writing the section on the age data we got from all our tooth samples.

Now, most hunters also fill in the blank for "Date of Kill" on their tooth envelope, so I also summarize those data, checking to see how harvest is spread through the hunting season. And in this case, also to see if anyone is taking advantage of the extra days we provide for antlerless (cow or calf) harvest.

So I'm checking off dates from the lab report, and I get something strange.

A male elk, taken on 10 October.

The season for bulls didn't start until 23 October.

So, perhaps it was a male calf?

Nope. Teeth annuli say the critter was three years old (or 3.3 years, as the stupid lab report lists it). Look at the hunter's name. Don't know the guy, but I know his Dad. Probably not poaching his elk 13 days early.

And even if he had, why would he report it?

Open up my database and check to see if it was a sample I had handled. And there it is... a typo.

Should be 10 November, not 10 October. Easy mistake for the technician at the lab to make.

Of course, the bull season closed 4 November, so I've still got a problem. Check my database again. And there it is. An 'f' under the "Sex" column (heh... "anal" and "sex" in one entry... should I expect extra Google hits?).

So, one of the four three-year old bulls I wrote up in my analysis was actually a cow.

Fixing this error requires rewriting the age analysis section of the report, going into the herd database and switching one three-year old bull into a cow, regenerating the age summary report, and firing that off to the boss with an explanation as to why he should throw the old report (delivered weeks ago) away.

Do I do it? For one elk?

Actually pondered that for about 26 seconds. But data is sacred (interpretations are not).

So of course I did.