They're done.

The 2003 hunting season proposals. Complete with justifications, expected harvests, five-year data summaries and graphs, and herd population estimates and projections.

They're due tomorrow, at the ten o'clock meeting in Lander, so this is good.

I even included the summaries for the partial herds that I share with my neighbors, even though those won't really be needed for another week or so, so I'm actually a little bit ahead.

And the annoying 30-30 forms are done. So named because they came out with this form when the outfit was busily renumbering all our other forms, and someone thought it would be cute to name a form after a caliber of firearm, rather than just another number in sequence.

And the name stuck.

A good and simple form, true enough, but still annoying.

You see, the point of the five-year graphs (which are actually seven-year graphs, but I digress), and the accompanying five-year data tables (which are, you guessed, actually seven-year tables), is to summarize our reams of data so the administrators don't have to spend so much time trying to figure out what is going on in each herd.

But some are still overwhelmed, hence the creation of the short, one-page 30-30 form, which summarizes the summaries. Often by requiring one to retype the same five-year summary tables, just in someone else's preferred, but different arrangement.

Got that?

Anyway, they're done. For another year.

Sunrise is supposed to be around 06:25. Hope to check a strutting ground or two on the way up, since I haven't been out at all yet this season.