The weather forecast called for 62 percent cloud cover, and a 45 percent chance of rain.

Most of the remaining pronghorn flight would actually be in my neighbor's part of the world. And he had kindly volunteered to serve as the observer. But was a real skeptic about our chances of actually getting into the air.

"I don't think there's much point in punching through the clouds, just to get it done."

Oh, ye of little faith. Have we not already seen that Mother Nature favors either us or her pronghorn?

The morning was sunny and calm. A few clouds, yes, but mostly they were small, and stayed out of the way.

We flew.

It has been an incredible spring, with our part of the world already receiving more moisture than we normally get in an entire year. The pilot and I made frequent comment to my neighbor about how green their valley was.

But then we also got numerous opportunity to comment on how red their mountains were.

Pine beetles.

What I remarked upon a few years back as we spotted scattered dead trees while tracking collared elk has reached the full blown, predicted epidemic. Without long periods of bitterly cold winter weather, there will apparently be nothing to prevent the beetles from killing all the adult conifers. What is red now will be grey and dead next year, and what is green will probably be red.

Another major problem in his valley is the subdivision and loss of their deer winter ranges. Including this batch of new homes.

The new one directly below belongs to one of the newest hires of our outfit...

One of our lines took us over one of the swankiest country clubs in the state:

A few other random shots of the flight...

As with yesterday's flight, we found tons of pronghorn in the southern country. But in the north, where we had such a terrible winter kill in 2007-08...

Darn few.