Don't argue with my east warden often. But did on the way to the River Town public meeting. After 33 miles of arguing, it was silence.

Absolute silence for 28 miles. I clocked it.

She broke the impasse, and we picked the safe topic of how to fix broken furnaces.

Really.

And made peace over raviolli before the meeting.

A well attended meeting. Counted 41 folks in the audience at the high point, and some were coming and going. And full of good comments and questions (Well, except for the two that asked for 4-point seasons on deer. If you hunt, you know what I'm talking about. If you don't, it would take too long to explain. Suffice to say it is one of the stupidest management tools wildlifers have ever come up with, and they and the editors of huntin' magazines have done a much too good of a job selling it.)

Rather than the informal visits of our open houses, this is a standard public presentation. Stand up, explain what's going on with each herd, what the season proposals are, and why. Each and every herd, each and every season.

None of these folks are from our part of the state, and few hunt there. Almost no comments or questions about our seasons. As usual. Lots of discussion on their local hunts.

Afterwards one of the wardens local to that town suggested, half-seriously, that we have next year's meeting in our town.

So he can sit there quietly and have no one say anything about his proposals.

Our seasons were done by 20:45.

The meeting wasn't done until 22:30. Sit there up front and look attentive for almost two hours. Which wasn't hard for most of it, 'cause the conversations were interesting.

The boss boss had gone around before the meeting and asked everyone to keep it brief. Because his statewide stuff at the end would take a lot of time.

He apparently forgot to tell one guy. The one you don't call on your cell phone. Unless it's the end of the month and you've got a couple hundred minutes to burn by tomorrow.

Only a few snide comments about wolves and grizzlies. Apparently the Conferate rebels stayed away.

Left River Town at 22:45. Headed for the desert for a sage grouse lek.

Figured out many years ago there wasn't much point in driving past the desert, losing an hour of sleep in the process, just to get up a couple hours later to then drive that hour back into the desert.

Sleep hours are maximized by just stopping in the desert and sleeping with the grouse (who are not sleeping, by the way).

Only two vehicles in the 60+ miles of highway to the desert. One at the beginning, one at the end. Otherwise, empty, dark roads.

The county road had an informal temporary sign up warning of bad road "Next 10 Miles".

They weren't kidding. As often happens in spring, the snow all melted suddenly, with the runoff gouging dozens of steep ditches across the sandy roads. All exactly one truck tire wide, and a truck tire deep.

Fortunately, most (but not all) were marked with posts and red rags. Still hard to see by headlights at 45.

The sign did not mention that the ditches continued beyond the ten-mile mark. But by then it was a different county.

Still had a few drifts of snow left on the two-track into my usual overnight lek. And quite a few mud puddles (frozen on top... thermometer said 15^o and had been going down since I left the meeting. For once I was smart enough to put the sleeping bag in the cab ahead of time so it could warm up.)

Since I had a camera with me on this trip, I had resolved to park closer to the lek center than usual. In hopes of good pics at sunrise.

The grouse had other plans. They posted sentries:

So I got stopped even farther from the lek than usual. Don't know if they are getting wise to me, or if this is just part of Bush's increased security program.

Got there about twenty minutes into the next day. For some reason, it was harder to get organized, undressed and bedded in the expansive crew cab than the old bench cabs.

And I can state, unequivocally, that the cabs of the new Ford trucks are at least two inches narrower than the old ones. Absolutely impossible to stretch out. Even with the feet raised up against the window.

Spent the entire night with knees bent. Not very restful. May roll the window down and stick the feet outside next time.