All I could see was hair.

Dark brown and reddish hairs, all tapering down to a shimmering blonde at the tips. And I could feel other, longer hairs stiff against my right cheek. The left side of my face exposed to the cold, bitter wind coming across the snow-covered flats. My neck and chin gently warmed by the heat rising from the body below me.

Not as warm as a young moose, but close.

Each breath I took brought in the pungent, musky, wonderful smell of elk.

I was on my knees, bent over an ungulate again. This one easily two to three times my mass. My right arm crooked around her neck, my elbow under her jaw, my face pressed against her neck so that I won't get a smash on my jaw from a throw of the cow's head. Her right ear tickling the nape of my neck. Holding up her head, flexing her neck slightly up and to the right.

All the better to bleed her.

One veterinarian is kneeling on the other side of the elk, taking blood samples from an artery in her neck. The second is on my left. He had started to use his hands to help hold her body down, but soon found that was unnecessary. All she could move was her head and neck. The rest of her body was immobile. Soon his hands were caressing her back, feeling the bony ridge of her spine.

Not in great shape. No fat. Looks like she's been losing muscle mass, too. The winter may not have been that hard, but this gal was not doing that great.

The vet up front is having a little trouble drawing her blood. It is unusually thick, hard to pull into the syringe. Presumably a result of her dehydration. As he works, he talks to his patient, in a calm, soothing voice. Apologizing for the prick of pain.

I feel the elk's gullet spasm, and realize my elbow is cutting off her air. I relax my arm, and just concentrate on using my right hand to press her neck against mine, my arm keeping her chin high.

The vet fills two or three vials from the first syringe of blood, and then leans in to draw another sample. Again he apologizes to the elk as she flinches, and tells her, in a sad, cheerless voice, "It'll all be over soon."

And that's when I lost it. My eyes water over, and I hope the vet standing above us thinks it is just because of the wind.

The second syringe is filled quickly, and the three of us pull back to fill and label smaller tubes of dark red fluid, the caps colour-coded for the various tests that will be run on the samples. We are several meters behind the elk, and she has a moment or two of peace, to shake her mane hairs back into place, and stare up at the sage and snow covered ridges where her kin are resting and feeding.

Then one vet walks up behind her, a pistol in his hand. And in an instant, a .357 slug in the neck converts a warm, breathing, beautiful but dying, elk...

into a lab specimen.