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blizzard warnings - 13:52 , 03 October 2013

heelerless - 21:32 , 18 August 2013

Red Coat Inn in Fort McLeod - 11:38 , 23 June 2013

rushing into the waters - 09:53 , 21 June 2013

choosing a spot - 17:43 , 27 April 2013

12 October 2009 - 04:43

check station too

Ordinarily, when this south elk season opens, I would wander in the field through the morning, checking hunters and their game as I went, until roaming back towards town around noon to set up a check station for the afternoon. But with all the extra gear along for taking chronic wasting disease samples, bouncing in the country didn't seem too wise.

The 4cm of freshly fallen snow was an added incentive to stay out of the muddy high country.

So I started the day out at my usual check station spot.

I was surprised, then, when the first hunters out reported we in town were getting the worst of it. There was less and less snow the further south you went, and 25 miles south there was none at all. According to one couple, in the National Forest it was a fine and beautiful fall day. Those with truck thermometers reported hunting in temperatures just below freezing, while here on my windswept, snow-covered gravel lot it was 16 degrees.

I was regretting not drying out my boots from their soaking on Saturday. Spent much of my idle time sitting astraddle the transmission hump, so each boot and freezing foot could get its own blast of drying warm air from the heater.

The first harvest didn't come through until almost ten o'clock.

And yes, they snickered about their stereotypical display of the dead critter on the roof. But it was either that or the back seat, or the hood. Next year he says he'll have a rack to put in the receiver hitch.

The first of three bull elk arrived a little over an hour later.

A nice six-point, the two young men had to haul him out in pieces. Lots and lots of little pieces. But if you want the big ones, sometimes you have to hunt in the hard to get places.

One of the other bulls, though, came out whole.

I'm sure the ATV helped. As I admired his harvest, the hunter asked...

"How do you like my nuts?"

Not your normal, macho, heterosexual conversation. Then I noticed he was nodding towards his truck's nuts.

There is quite an industry devoted to making and selling different plugs for receiver hitches (if you've never had to chisel frozen mud out of your receiver so that you could actually hitch something up, you might not understand the value of such devices). There are plugs for sports teams, truck logos, universities, different wildlife species, what have you.

This fellow has his plugged with a pair of nuts. Six-inch hex nuts, to be exact. He says he has the idea patented.

Make any money with 'em?

"Not yet."

A buddy requested a pair of nuts for his truck, which this inventor supplied.

Only he gave him a pair of 3/4-inch nuts.

Made them to match the equipment, huh? I asked.

He says the guy put them on his truck anyway.

So by noon I was parked in a field of snow.

An hour and a half later, I was sloshing through puddles and mud.

Doug stopped by, as I hoped he would. But I still didn't know what to say.

Sorry I missed your wife's funeral.

"That's okay. I know you had to work." The simple Western acceptance that hunting seasons take precedence over so many other things. But over 400 other people did make it. "It's humbling to know you were married to someone who touched so many other lives," he said.

I got to hear the details, not the shortened version her son-in-law gave me last weekend. No one knows why she tipped her four-wheeler, but she broke her neck and died instantly. "She died doing what she loved, out in the country herding cows," he said. "The only way it could have been better was if she was on a horse, instead."

It was a long visit, fortuitously with few incoming hunters to interrupt. Those who did saw who was in the truck sidled up to my window, made their legally obligatory checkins, and moved on.

One of the last vehicles of the evening was the uncle and aunt of the truck-nut inventor. No home baked cookies this time. Instead, I was handed a thick bar of chocolate covered cereal nougat.

"Your Special K for tomorrow morning," he said.

And off they went.

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