Got woken up yesterday morning at 05:15 by the masked heeler.

Well, actually I was awoken by the grumblings of my wife, who was being trampled on by the masked heeler, who was trying to step across her to get to me.

You see, I overslept. Forgot to set the alarm. Things like that start happening near the end of strutting season. The fatigue takes its toll. And the masked heeler knew we had work to do.

Routines, you know.

So I jump up and start the water for coffee, and get prepped.

We're on the road by 05:44. With field mocha in hand. And the usual banana breakfast (the bed of the truck is covered with banana peels in varying states of decay). And we're off to the races.

Racing two things this am. First and foremost, as it is every morning during strutting season, is the sun. GPS says it will be up at 06:12. But this morning we are also racing construction.

The leks we need to check are on the other side of ten miles of construction. If we don't get through all that before the crews start for the day, we might as well turn around and go home. The delays would probably kill any hope of finding grouse.

In the event this diary is ever discovered by anyone in the outfit, I will not specify the velocity we traveled that morning.

Got to the construction site headquarters, just immediately on the other side of the Texas/Louisiana line (on the Louisiana side), at exactly 06:00. The flagger gals were out on the road setting up their signs. At least one scraper up and running, and drivers heading to the others.

Made it. Now to beat the sun.

Got to the first lek at 06:12.

Two cocks out strutting, and a third bird flushed off. (They strut on top of a rise. The only way to count is to drive right up there with them. They sometimes don't like that.)

Heelers sisters finally got a break at the gate. Then it's to the overlook.

From the overlook, you can look down a 100 meters or so on an old abandoned lek site. And two miles northwest is another active lek, on top of another ridge. And almost four miles west-northwest is Saltiel lek. If the sun is shining, you can count the white breasts on the flat sage-topped bench.

No sun this morning. Clouds.

But I can see there are no grouse on the lek two miles northwest. Which is unusual. Unless they've been flushed.

Can hear the construction equipment running in earnest now, three miles away on the other side of Cheyenne Ridge. And I hear something else.

An airplane.

I turn around in my seat, knowing where to look.

He always tries to sneak up behind me. My pilot, in his silver and yellow Cessna. A quick, low pass to wave hello, and he's off to the east. I wonder if he and his metal eagle are the reason there are no grouse on Coal Springs lek.

This is his ranch I'm sitting on. And he flies the leks on the place every year, just to see how the birds are doing. And seems to find me out there every year. Thought he might be out soon, since he called and asked for the coordinates of one lek he was having trouble finding.

But I can still see flashes of white on Saltiel. But not enough light to count. Need to drive there.

We are the first vehicle out this way this year. The small dunes of sand on the road, blown in from the major dunes trying to swallow Cheyenne Ridge, are undisturbed.

Virgin ground. There are no, and have been no, people within four miles of this place this year.

In fourteen minutes we are pulling up onto Saltiel, shuffling two cocks out of the way so we can park and count. 33 cocks. With the full moon, most are already quitting for the day.

Our arrival sets two coyotes into a panic, their yips and yowls from the draw to the east even enough to make some grouse duck and cover. Open the passenger window so the heelers can listen, and get off my lap.

As I take another sweep of the lek, I spot seven antelope peacefully bedded on the hillside behind the lek, on the left. On the right, behind the last few grouse, I spot a brown and tan body.

An elk. A bull elk, his ears also cocked towards the coyote valley, wondering what the fuss is all about. His new antlers are just fat, swollen nubbins of brown now, about as long as his ears.

He meanders to the hillside on the right, feeding on the tender new green grass as he goes. Eventually he is joined by five others, all with new velvet and empty stomachs.

For the next sixteen minutes or so, that is my lot in life. Listening to coyotes howl and complain, while counting grouse and watching elk feed, and antelope doze.

It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it.