"It's the police," the eldest son says as he enters the bedroom.

"For you."

Once again the wife's and my plan of spending an entire morning lazily doing absolutely nothing in the brand new, warm, soft bed with three heelers (Yes, count 'em! There are one, two, three heelers in our bed again!) are thwarted.

'Course, this holiday morning has already been interrupted by two long phone calls, each dealing with the elk situation on one of our winter ranges. The first being early in the day, for a holiday, from a warden with a report of yet another elk being down. A bull this time, supposedly shot and crippled, but most likely suffering from the same malady we have been finding for over a week, now.

At least a visit by a town cop will be something different.

I was wrong. Although we have managed to keep the phone line open all morning, allowing eldest son to get online only in the past fifteen minutes, the cop's visit is simply to relay a radio message from the game warden.

She's stuck.

Well, yeah, I warned her about that. We had wind yesterday, which would have blown snow into all the ruts through the deep drifts, and then warming temperatures followed by a freezing night that would have made the reformed drifts as hard as concrete.

So, I get dressed for the cold, yet again. Both heeler sisters are eager to go, but the wife vetoes taking the little maskless heeler along. Mainly because the little thing had a major hyper hissy fit when the wife took her to the community to the west on Saturday, driving along the interstate past where she spent her four-night and four-day ordeal lost out in the cold.

Once they drove past her billboard, the little heeler settled down fine. Best we can gather, she thought the wife was taking her back out to dump her off.

But she also needs to stay home because she still chills easy. Not much insulating fat built back on those bones yet.

And because the wife's not yet ready to let her out of her sight.

So, it was just the masked heeler and I, for the fifth day in a week.

Had a good idea where the warden was stuck, and I was right. A big huge drift that I had barely managed to bust through at least ten times in the past week. A half dozen jerks with a long string of chains and tow rope, and she and her volunteer were free.

But they hadn't found the downed bull elk yet. So around the drift we went, up higher into the winter range. Another six miles of easy road, until the impassable drifts at the southern end.

No bull.

Cell reception is poor, and a series of conversations through the radio dispatcher are so awkward that finally the RP offers to simply drive out and show us where the elk is.

In less than an hour we are all walking the draw where the bull elk was bedded yesterday, unable to rise. I'm feeling ambiguous. If the vets are right, and the preliminary look at what they saw during the field necropsies on Saturday suggests that they are, some of these animals may be able to recover from this problem.

If they're not in too bad of condition, if they're not down too long.

So, what do we do when we find the elk? Put it down, to satisfy a citizen who thinks it's the humane thing to do? Or leave it to Mother Nature to decide, possibly with a long, painful death, but with a slight chance of recovery?

But the question never comes up. We find the bared spot in the snow where the immobile bull had been laying.

He's gone.

Got up and walked away. Elk tracks all over the place. Apparently a herd came through, and he simply got up and left with them. Despite being unable to rise for a man and his two dogs the day before.

Alriiiight.

Perhaps the missing bull was in the herd of 92 elk that passed us earlier in the day, heading south into the wind-bared hills.