It has been horrifically windy all three days of check station this weekend. A fact I learned Friday morning as I tried to wire my first metal sign up on the highway reflector post, and found it whipped up in the air and slammed against the side of my wrist.

Hurt all day. Just grateful for having a coat on, lest the narrow metal cut my wrist.

"Well, Your Honour, it looks like he just couldn't stand the thought of another eleven hours of sitting along this boring highway, and just slit his wrists instead."

On Friday and Saturday, the wind lessened as the day went on. Maybe not so in the opinions of the nonresidents that passed through, but those of us who live here could tell it was a lot nicer. The last hour before sunset was almost calm.

But not today. Winds were just as wicked, and a lot cooler, when I carefully pulled my signs down as it was when I put them up. Even a few locals were complaining.

Me, I found it kinda hard to wash my surgical tools when the water came out of the tap sideways.

The stainless steel instruments stayed where they were supposed to on the tailgate, but the pens, toothbrush (for cleaning said instruments), sample cooler, Sharps container, scalpel blades and cap to the sterilizing acid all tried to leave for Nebraska several times.

Some of the first people at check station weren't hunters. Two small trucks, their camper shells packed to the ceiling with belongings, came out from town and pulled off the highway just up the road. With animated discussion between the two drivers.

As expected, they turned around to visit with me. Unfortunately, no one in the two couple spoke English. And I still kick myself for taking French, instead of Spanish. But eventually the woman from truck #1 gets her map of western North America laid out, and I can see handwritten arrows highlighting their path following the highway to the south.

Only, we're on the highway going north. The south one doesn't turn off the interstate for another 35 miles further west. I quickly point out where we are, on the north-bound highway, and there is considerable excitement and satisfaction on her part, and on the part of driver of truck #2.

Driver of truck #1 is not yet willing to admit what I perceive was his error. So, I draw an expanded version of her large-scale map. And we find "west" is an English word they know. Finally driver #1 concedes defeat.

And off they go.

One of the first hunters out was driving an ancient Jeep Wagoneer, a vehicle more rust than steel. I would have sworn his accent was German, but seeing as how his plates were Minnesota, I guess it could have been Swedish. But he was a bighorn sheep hunter, returning, still exhilarated, from a successful sheep hunt.

"I'm looking forward to doing it again," he said, "in 29 years."

"Since that's how many years of applying it took to get this license."

Yeah, I know. The demand for sheep hunts vastly exceeds the supply of surplus sheep. By about a factor of 25 or 30 to one. It might really be 29 years before he gets to hunt one here again.

Two fellows came by whilst I was preparing to excise lymph nodes from an elk head that was brought out from town for that express purpose. All they had was chukars, and they'd been checked once already. Did I want to look at 'em again?

You bet!

Not 'cause I don't trust you, but because I haven't set eyes on a chukar, alive or dead for probably three or four years.

Twp pheasant hunters on their way home to California from their hunt in Nebraska pulled in, not knowing if they needed to stop or not in our state. And actually, since they're transporting wildlife or wildlife parts, yeah, legally they do.

But I thanked them, just the same.

Sitting on a main highway like this, eventually just about everything comes rolling by. Yet there are still opportunities for something new. Just a year or two ago, I checked my first ever wild turkey. But I see moose and bighorn sheep just about every year, an occassional bear or mountain lion, and even a caribou once. (Yes, really. A caribou.)

But I have never before checked a lawfully harvested wild bison.

Until today.

Taken in the first hunt in several years, just across the border from one of the parks we visited last month. As with most bison hunters, this fellow brought friends with him. One, because there are so few bison hunts these days, most friends will jump at the chance to participate, and two, bison are big. As in, big. Took five of them to gut, skin, quarter and load the animal.

Masked heeler got quite excited about the new smell to check out on my fingers.

A first for her, too, I'm sure.

The heeler was content for maybe the first five to ten minutes of check station, curled up on her sleeping bag in the back seat.

Until the gunfire started in the hills to our west. Over a dozen rounds, just someone getting their weapon sighted in. But the damage was done, she was nervously on alert the rest of the morning.

After lunch, and my rush of hunters around one o'clock, we did relax enough for a game of "glove keep-away".

She won, of course.

And shortly after, a shiny new truck pulled up and parked at the gate not 70 meters behind us. Just as it has every Sunday I've sat here for the past two years. And, as on every other Sunday, a woman got out, let her dogs loose, donned her backpack, and headed off into the sagebrush prairie.

A little less than an hour later, after traversing at least a mile and a half of country, they came back. And loaded up, back to town.

There's a nice walking/biking trail in town. But I guess I, too, would prefer this solitary scenery.

Since traffic was so slow, I broke station a little early. (But alone. Wife had come out to rescue the heeler from her boredom mid-afternoon.) And managed to get home while there was just a trace of daylight left.