He looked a little disappointed.

The pilot did, last week as we finished the paperwork for the flight we'd just flown. I'd just informed him of my decision to wait two weeks before looking for our collared elk again.

You see, like everyone else, this project is on a limited budget. So we'd prioritized when we wanted data on these elk.

For management (i.e. setting our hunting seasons), it was important to know when the migration starts. We've got late hunting seasons for cow elk, designed to harvest some of the migrants when they come out of the high country.

It would be nice to know if the migrants are even there at the time.

And then there is the coalbed methane fields, soon to be expanded ten-fold (or more). One of the standard measures taken to reduce project impacts on wildlife is to limit the amount of work done in the winter, when the critters can least afford to have stress added to their lives.

So, just exactly when are the elk in their winter ranges?

Hence, the flying every week during the fall and spring, trying to find out exactly when the migration starts, and when the elk finally get to winter ranges, and when they leave.

This takes up most of the flight money, only leaving enough for maybe two flights a month during the rest of the year. Just to make sure everybody is still walking on all four feet, or hasn't wandered off.

So. As of last Thursday, all 10 elk had made it to winter range. Hence my decision to switch to flying every two weeks.

Until I plotted the locations this weekend.

We got eight elk on the winter range. Two of 'em, well, they're close, but they're not actually there yet. Each has a few miles to go. Heck, they may be there by now.

But we won't know that. Which means we can't tell the companies when they need to worry about elk migrating through, or when they can figure all the migrants have arrived.

Unless we fly.

So, I called the pilot yesterday.

He's always surprised to find me calling to ask for a flight. He knows how my stomach enjoys no longer being connected to the ground.

We go up tomorrow. Or Thursday, depending on weather.

And yeah, me being on vacation all this week doesn't factor into the equation. At all.