One hundred and forty-three.

There are 143 elk in this photo.

So, Bonnie, I guess there were too many elk hiding as rocks. Or perhaps you, Melissa, Addie and Doug missed some of the small calves standing up beside their mamas. (And Melissa, I noticed your +20 elk confidence interval just managed to include the actual total...)

But, in fairness, I was able to count on an image four times as large as the one you had available. One of the unfortunate results of hosting your photos on Photobucket, where they reduce everything down to an 800-pixel width.

And I'm fairly confident in my count, since I counted that image twice, getting the same number, and had three overlapping shots from our second pass that also added up to 143 elk.

Should I tell you, when we were in the air, the pilot guessed 100-120 elk? And I and the warden behind me agreed it was closer to 80 to 100 elk?

No, I suppose I shouldn't.

After flying the length of the rim five or six times, we managed to find three of the four radio-collared elk that had we had found there three days before. But no beep from number 582, our gal who hikes across the Continental Divide twice every year.

Flew up to the normal winter range just to the east, and managed to find three more radios, but still no #582.

So back to the desert we went.

And there, finally, we heard her beeps. And tracked them down to find her standing, alone in the sage and snow.

We know this was her, because, one, the beeps got fainter as soon as we passed her by, but also because...

Two, this was one of those rare times when we could actually see her collar.