Another slow day sitting alongside a highway, waiting for hunters to stop by.

After last winter, I knew this fall would be slow. We dropped antelope licenses down to make up for losses during the winter, and while most areas would have roughly the same number of deer hunters, they weren't going to kill many deer.

And deer seasons opened on Wednesdays this year, instead of close to a weekend, which really slows down the opening hunting pressure.

So, I knew it'd be a slow day.

But geeez!

Had another volunteer come down to help cut deer throats to get samples for CWD. This fellow had missed the training session (but he knew about all you'd want to know about the fisheries in the area). So the plan was, he'd come down, I'd show him how to extract samples from the first couple deer, and then he'd be able to work on his own.

'Cause it's not really that complicated.

He showed up around ten o'clock in the morning. Only because I told him there wouldn't be much point showing up any earlier.

I finally, finally got to show him how to cut a deer's throat to extract the retropharyngeal lymph nodes...

At five o'clock that evening.

Yeah. Seven hours of sitting there without a deer to sample.

Now, that's not saying we had no deer come through. We did.

But most of them were good deer. Bucks nice enough the hunter wanted to save the cape to get the critter mounted.

Which means they would be none too happy with us if we ruined the cape by slicing the deer's head half off.

And we had an elk or two come through, but it was the same story. Too nice to ruin the hide.

We even had a couple pronghorn come through. No CWD samples to be taken (they can't get the disease), but I at least thought I could write down some data.

But no, the harvest gods were against us.

These two pronghorn...

were from Montana.

Had someone with a wild turkey come through, too.

But it was from South Dakota.

So a slow, slow day.

We got to watch pieces of wind turbines roll by on the highway.

And we had three (yes, three) semis pull in because they thought we were a highway check station, instead of one for hunters.

However, my partner learned the other function of highway snowfences.

And the heelers learned there was no wife coming to rescue them from their boredom.

The newspaper even sent their photographer out to get photos of us slicing deer necks to go with their fall story on CWD. With almost no traffic, we had plenty of time to compliment each other on our mutual work in that publication.

And ponder the mental logic of a hunter who would not let the photographer take photos of his deer unless he first confessed who he was going to vote for in the election... McCain or Obama.

The photographer professionally declined.

The weird hunter?

From California.

The camera guy came and went three times, with no other deer coming through, before he finally settled on a shot of me looking at the teeth of one of the deer we could not cut.

C'est la vie.

After I was finally able to demonstrate how to extract the lymph nodes to my novitiate precisely at five o'clock, it was almost a full hour later before another deer came through that allowed my apprentice to practice the newest skill for his resume.

And then it was time for him to start the two-hour drive home.

Along about sunset...

one of our newest highway patrolmen stopped by for a visit, and to give drivers on the highway a brief respite.

And ended up holding the flashlight for me whilst I cut the third and final set of lymph nodes from the last deer of the "day".