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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

22 April 2010 - 18:44

rain on the divide

(Okay, for those of you who keep checking in here hoping for something new...)

I'd never checked this strutting ground before. Driven right past it on many occasions, even stopped and listened for grouse there at least once. It just seemed like a likely spot for a lek, but I never found one there.

My neighbor did. Last year. First time he looked.

'Course he had to look from the air to do it...

But it's a new strutting ground, in my desert, so I figure I oughta go check it. Who cares if it's technically on the wrong side of a line on a map (or shapefile). I plot it out on the GIS (along with two other new leks he found on his flights), and it looks fairly easy to find. Just seventy miles down the interstate, make a right for three miles, and then another right for another mile or so. Then look on your left.

The weather forecast calls for rain, turning into snow. It's drizzling when I leave town just after five o'clock. Not much point in checking strutting grounds in the rain. Male sage grouse don't like to get their bare skin wet. The temptation to back in the house and crawl into bed is horribly strong, even if the bed is cold and empty (save for a blind heeler).

But the lek is seventy miles away. Who knows what the weather is like fifty miles on the other side of the Continental Divide?

I go.

I'm too early for most of the gas field traffic, but the interstate is still full of enough semis to keep me company.

I cross the Atlantic branch of the Divide, and the rain quits. I'm hopeful this all isn't a waste of time, gas and sleep. But fifty mile later I cross the Pacific branch, and the drizzle starts again.

And turns into snow.

Three and a half miles further on I take my exit, and the snow turns back to rain.

I've been down this two-track a few times before.

It's not a good place to be when wet.

But the rain is new here, and the dirt barely damp. I watch my GPS and stop at the right spot, an hour and six minutes after I left home, and throw up the scope.

They should be right here...

And they are.

They're right there, in those small clearings in the sage.

Can't you see 'em? There's at least 18 cocks strutting out there. Too dark and drizzly to see any hens.

Sixteen minutes later, the GPS says the sun has risen, but you can't prove it by me. The rain has picked up, and already 3 cocks have flown off the lek. Three minutes later all I can see is three cocks still on the lek, and they're looking around like "This is stupid."

The rain starts turning into snow, and four minutes after sunrise, the grouse have all quit.

And I do likewise.

There's another strutting ground two miles down the road, across the creek and two miles north. After driving so far, logic says I should scout ahead and see if they're still strutting. But that's four miles of muddy road, and a questionable creek crossing.

Screw logic. Back to the interstate I go.

(I should mention I couldn't resist trying to check one more lek along the way home. But again, discretion and mud turned me back. But on a whim, I took a short little walk. And yeah, they're just laying out there.)

Or they were...

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