Spent better part of the day 8am until 1130pm on a marathon walk about with a buddy this week. Exploring the fire damaged terrain looking around. It took us 5 1/2 hours to hike out to our truck from the furthest part. Needless to say we scoured then main drainage we were in. I won’t divulge which one, if you would like to just pm me I will share. We glassed for hours and covered a lot of country. Here are a few take away from our trip.
- we saw 7 mule deer, 3 whitetail, 2 beautiful bears, which were eating the only elk we saw. Zero elk, - one turkey, one lone chukar trying feverishly to locate a willing mate. I now know how the dodo bird felt.
- the burn was savage, I was impressed with the resurgence of grass/food and return of wIldlife (other than big game). We saw lots of small birds, rodents, the environment was alive. The wildflowers were gorgeous and plentiful.
- Now, I won’t say there isn’t any elk in the area, as we saw plenty of fresh sign, and my buddy has seen some recently, but the shear lack of numbers was very telling.
- Lick Creek has been wounded and will take a long, long time to recover. Unfortunately, as long as the predation issue goes unaccounted for, and there will never be an effort from our state to address the Native American harvest. These two factors and the burn are gonna have a generational affect.
Poll
