I stopped by last week, as we were collecting wing barrels. It is so tiring, reciting the same description every year. Fresh tire tracks on the road. A spent, bright yellow shotgun casing immediately at the base of the hill, the numbers growing more dense the higher I climb, with pale blue and bright red plastic standing out from the dull red of the ground. Probably several per square foot at the den pit itself.

All was quiet at the den. Nothing but the steady whistle of the perpetual wind in this rocky gap. Every trip I have wondered what possesses someone to such useless slaughter. To be so archaic as to hate something simply because it lives. To be pleased with yourself for trying to wipe them all out.

This time, as I stood beside the quiet pit, much closer than I would ever dared when I first found this site and it had rattlers nestled in literally every nook and crevice, this time I had to ask...

Can't they hear the silence? Can't they feel how empty and uninteresting this rocky ridge is without the snakes?

Then, as I stepped past to walk the den ridgeline, I heard it. One, faint buzz. High pitched, a youngster with only a few rattles, and small ones at that. As close as I leaned, I could not see the owner of those rattles, and they soon faded, like sound effects in a bad movie, as the snake moved further back into the narrow slits that are their winter home.

Good move, snake. Might be the only reason you're still alive.

As I move uphill, I find more and more shotgun shells. All 12-guage. They've moved up from the child's toy .410. More and more grey splatter of lead pellets on the rocks. Sometimes scattered, shot from a distance, sometimes a dense grey cloud, the barrel close to the rocks.

Yeah, I admit I hope there were ricochets back to the gunner.

On a ledge, just below head high I get excited by a long, yellow-green shape. But there is no noise. A rattler, yes, but a couple days dead. I pull it to the edge and cut off the rattle. Six narrow buttons, working on seven. Probably a teenager in the snake life cycle, but older than the one in the pit.

Just around the small promontory is old Ninebutton's hole. Heavily coated with lead. But I am surprised to find a long, dark shape rapidly coiling up above it. A youngster, with only one button, the one they are born with. It coils at the entrance, trying so hard to sound fierce, when all it makes is a toylike whine.

And that was it.

Two snakes. Extinction of this population seems close at hand.

I stopped by again, after the long day's journey across the northern face of the mountain range, checking elk hunters and hunter camps.

No elk. I missed the six-point bull from the top of the mountain, hauled back to town first thing in the morning.

I knew I should have started with their camp.

But a couple hours before sunset, and I'm back at that rocky canyon. No camps in the usual spots, nothing to do but head home.

With one stop along the way. Making sure first that there are no hunters on high ridges nearby, to wonder about my hike up with a camera.

As expected, I snuck up on the youngster in the pit, catching the last of the sun's energy, emanating from the rocks.

My hope today was that, with the warm weather the past week or so, maybe not all the rattlesnakes had managed to get to the den site when the carnage drove up last weekend. But, with resignation, I found this snake alone in the pit.

Just above is the large rock where I petted a wild rattler (in some old entry I'm too lazy to link), slightly rearranged by the vandals with their sticks and metal conduit (all thrown down to the bottom of the hill last visit). Nobody under it. As usual, the wind was whipping through the gap, and I heard the faint rustling of dried leaves, shaking ever so slightly like rattlesnake rattles, only too slow.

Too slow for dried leaves, even.

I looked closer. And there, protruding from the far edge of the nearest rock, was...

A rattle. Attached to a tail. Presumably, attached to a rattlesnake.

Presumably hiding under the rock between me and that tail.

A brief, noise shuffle of positions, and soon I was facing the owner of the tail. a small but respectably adult rattlesnake.

Oh, joy.

No, I mean it. Oh Joy! Somebody they missed. And where there's one, there may be others. All of a sudden my senses are alert, the adrenalin is pumping, and I am very conscious about where I put my feet.

There be snakes here!

Moving up the stone wall, past the carcass from earlier in the week, I find a little one-button, stretched out on a stone ledge, soaking up every degree of warmth it can for the cold night. Takes it a while to react to me, and start climbing the wall.

I can't help it. They are so darn cute at this age.

Now, we're just around the rock from Ninebutton's hole, so this is probably the same baby I saw there earlier. Just the same, I peek down into that hole, to find a slightly larger, and certainly greener, face peeking back out.

That makes four.

And on another ledge, further up the ridgeline, another dark one-button.

Five. Certainly not the 14 seen two years ago, which is a pittance to what this population used to hold, but five is better than two. And maybe there are other late arrivers out there in the sage below.

Took the rocky way down, of course, on the chance of finding just one more rattler. And got ecited to see this.

Then immediately realized what it was. No diamond pattern on the back, no bulbous head. And a smooth-tipped tail. A garter-snake. Doing just as its cousins above, catching the last little bit of warmth before moving inside for the night.

Considered trying to catch it, but thought better of the idea. Shoving your hands and arms down chasing a snake in a rock pile which houses poisonous rattlesnakes...

Not a good survival strategy.

And like the snakes, it was time to head home for the night.