Oops, thought of another although it wasn't "roped" in the traditional way
Once again Methow valley back in the early 70,s. A friend of mine shot a HUGE 4 by 4 up in the north part of the valley that was collored and had a transmitter and a brass tag on the collar that said please report this deer if found or killed to the Game Dept. etc. etc. As I said it was huge and a perfect specimen and example of a healthy, mature, in the prime mule deer. I knew the Game manager over there at the time quite well and we drove up to his house and told him of the buck we had hanging and within hours we had an pretty good sized group of Game dept. folks show up at our camp armed with scales, clipboards, cameras etc. If I remember right the buck(field dressed and hide still on) weighed in at 290 something and had an outside spread of just over 29 inches. They took the collar, got my friends info(address, phone#)and told him that he would be hearing from them soon. Well I think it was a couple months later he received in the mail a handwritten letter and a VHS tape. The letter was from a young biologist who told the story of this buck along with a copy of video of the whole process. He said it was his first experience with the tagging of a mule deer and they had picked him out on the winter range up around Ramsey because he was a great looking, healthy good genetic looking 2 point that they figured would hopefully live long enough to get some information from him. Turns out he survived another 4 or 5 years if I remember right, the batteries only lasted 3 years and they had lost track of him because of dead batteries 2 years prior. They had no idea what his status had become, was he dead(natural, predation or hunters) or was he still roaming the hills? He said in his letter that they had tracked his migration up into British Columbia and during the 3 years they tracked him he would move 50-60miles on his migration to the Methow and would always return to the same winter range(Ramsey area) each winter. On the video copy was the whole tagging and tranquilizing ordeal. They shot a lasso/net looking thing at this buck, and shot him with a tranquilizer and went to work on him, when done they airlifted him with a helicopter down to the Chewuch river and every so gently dipped him in the cold water a couple times and released him on the hillside above the river, the bio included a picture of him and the collar hanging on his fireplace mantel. Sorry if this is a repeat story, I,m sure I,ve told it here before.
