Small predators

A few days ago I missed a chicken. A neighbor had told me that he had shot at and missed a coyote about a week ago, so that was the number 1 suspect. Last night, after dark, I heard a commotion outside, so I grabbed a flashlight and shotgun and headed outside to see what was going on. A skunk had dug its way into the pigeon coop and killed a bird. When I saw it, it squeezed out the way it had gone in and was trying to drag the dead pigeon out with it. I gave it a load of number 6 shot and figured that was the end of that. I didn’t want to deal with the smelly thing just then, so I left it where it lay and went back in the house. Sure looked dead to me. Later I went back out to take some garbage out, and the striped kitty was gone! I can still smell it pretty strong around the coop today, and can’t help but think it is laying dead around here some place and I just haven’t found it yet. Sure hope it didn’t get into my woodshed or under my hay stack. I’d have a heck of a time getting it out of either place. Today I filled in the hole where the skunk dug into the coop, and used the dead pigeon to bait a cage trap that I have sitting next to the coop; just in case.

Big predators

I received this in an e-mail from a friend today.

“I finally got a deer. First legal buck I have seen while hunting in the last three years in this area. Saw mountain lion tracks everywhere I went. The woods are full of them.Jess”

And that’s pretty much gospel! The northern states may have their wolves, but we have big cats. Two have been seen recently within 100 yards of where I hang my hat. Today I was hunting near home and saw a large track in the dust on the side of the road. It was badly dusted or I would have taken a picture with my pocket knife beside it for comparison. Big tom! I set up a couple of calling stands, but without luck. Nothing but blue jays showed up.

I did pick up a squirrel for dinner on the way home. I think I need a retriever! It treed right on the side of the road, but then fell down a gawd awful steep bank. Bear went down there and showed me where it was, but he won’t bring them to me. I sat on my butt and slid down there, but then I had a heck of a time getting back up to the road. Hey, it would have been tough when I was younger; but I ain’t young no more!

The fruit of my labor

The elderberries I brought home from the mountain cooked down to 1.5 gallons of juice. I used a gallon of it to make jelly. Twenty 12 oz jars and six 8 oz jars. I still had a half gallon of juice left over to put in the freezer for later use.

Normally when I finish this chore I pick a batch of blackberries for jam, but I still have a jar of processed blackberries and a jar of processed plums in the freezer from last year, so I think I’ll call it good for now. Besides, I’m running low on jelly jars.

Manis

Sometime back, maybe a couple of years more or less, I saw the first praying mantis that I had ever seen. I broke open a bale of hay to feed my horse, and lo and behold, a mantis popped out! I had seen pictures of them, so of course I knew what it was, but I had never actually seen one. Yesterday evening I was watering what is left of my garden when I felt something on the back of my hand. At first glance I thought it was a bit of a leaf or a twig and I almost brushed it off - and then it moved. Another mantis! I carried it inside and placed it on a neutral background so it would show up well and took this photo; then took it back outside and released it back into the garden area. They are tiny predators, good at catching and eating other insects, so they are good to have around. No wonder I haven’t seen more. With that green coloration they would be hard to spot among vegetation.

Not quite a dry run

Our cool weather was to nice to last. Temperature is right back in the 90's every day now. I took Bear over to Quartz Hill today and set up a couple of calling stands. Stayed a half an hour on each stand. On the first stand I started with a fawn distress sound and didn’t see anything. After 15 minutes I switched to a woodpecker distress and called in a few blue jays. I used the same sequence of sounds on the second stand and didn’t see a thing. Bear treed a squirrel in between stands, and we brought that one home for dinner.

Aside from the oak trees in my back yard, I haven’t seen any acorns anywhere I’ve been so far. There are manzanita berries, and that will furnish wildlife feed for awhile, but the closer it gets to fall and cooler weather the more the deer and bear will be looking for acorns. I’ve seen a little bear sign, but very little. Most are probably still in the high country, but when they drop down lower for the big fall feed I’m afraid they won’t find much around here.

Got hot again today, and there is smoke coming in from somewhere. Might be from a small fire right on the CA/OR border.

Opening weekend

Small game season (tree squirrel, mountain quail, and grouse) opened here yesterday. Normally it is hot on opening day, but Saturday dawned cloudy and cool with a slight chance of showers in the forecast. I had 2 things on my mind; the possibility of bringing home a little meat for the dinner table, plus it was time to check the elderberry bushes up on the mountain. The berries here at home had dried up in the summer heat and didn’t amount to anything. I put a big plastic bucket and some plastic garbage bags in the bed of the pickup along with the standard hunting gear, loaded Bear in the cab with me, and headed up the mountain.

Usually there are some squirrels active around the few houses I have to pass, and this was no exception. I saw 4 before we passed the last house, but once we started up the mountain we never saw another squirrel. I put Bear out in front of the truck and roaded him through some of the best squirrel country, but they just weren’t moving. After awhile I picked him up and headed for higher country and the berry bushes, keeping an eye out for grouse or quail, which were even more scarce than the squirrels. By now the clouds had dissipated, and the temperature quickly approached the more expected 90 degrees.

The elderberries on the mountain didn’t let me down. They are even more prolific than last year if that is possible. I could practically stand in 1 place and pick a bucket full, and in short order I had 2 sacks filled. While I was picking berries, a fellow I know came driving down the road. He had been farther up the mountain with his black lab in search of grouse. He said there were no goose berries or snow berries on the mountain, favorites of the berry eating birds, and grouse were few and far between. His dog had flushed a couple without him getting a shot. Quail are seed eaters, but they seemed to be in short supply too.

Having picked more than enough elderberries to keep me busy for awhile, I loaded Bear back in the truck and drove back down the mountain to a shady spot by a creek to eat lunch. Along the way I saw 1 lonesome quail run across the road, and that was all the game I saw the rest of the day.

Today (Sunday) dawned cloudy and cool again, but unlike the day before the clouds stayed. It eventually warmed up enough to be just comfortable in a T-shirt. I left Bear at home today and took old Sadie out, not that she would be of any great help. She is fast approaching 14 years old, and the years are telling on her, but she still likes to go. She still looks pretty good bouncing around here in the yard, but she tires quickly. I roaded her a little bit at first, but she soon ran out of gas and I picked her up; then just road hunted for a little while to see what might turn up. If game had been scarce yesterday, it was non-existent today. Even the squirrels around the houses weren’t moving. I eventually parked in the same place for lunch where I had been yesterday, having seen a grand total of 1 ground squirrel. I know the hunting will pick up as we move closer toward fall and hopefully get some rain, but this is about as poor as I have ever seen it on opening weekend. For now, I know what I will be doing the next couple of days. I have a heck of a lot of berries to turn into juice, which in turn will be turned into jelly and syrup, and maybe even a little elderberry brandy.

A new begining

Looking at the date of my last entry here, I see that it has been a little over a year since my last post. I suppose I could blame that on several things, but foremost among them would be the loss of 2 dogs so close together, and nearly losing another. It kind of took the wind out of my sails. Losing Kelly was to be expected, he was an old dog; but losing Dove and nearly losing Bear too to poison was quite a blow. I never found out who did that, and probably never will.

Now, over a year later, things are looking up. Of course Sadie is the old dog now. She will be 14 years old in December. For a dog her age she still looks pretty good here in the yard, but she tires easily. She will never see the day when she can go out with a horse again, and who knows how much longer she will be here. Bear will turn 7 years old in November, so it is time to bring on another pup. The photo above shows a litter, 3 days old when the picture was taken. They belong to a friend in Oregon, and are sired by a son of my old Kelly. I am told that 1 of the males has my name on it, so this will be a grandson of Kelly. It will arrive here sometime in November, about 3 months old by then.

I have done some small game hunting, and predator calling to the camera locally, but I haven’t set up a summer camp in the mountains in the last 2 years. This is largely due to losing a good partner to medical problems. I camped all one summer and part of the previous summer by myself, and then decided to stay home for awhile. I planted a garden as much to keep me occupied as anything else, but when the triple digit temperatures hit here in the valley I was really longing to be camped somewhere in the high country. I miss the mountains too! I’ve pretty much decided to scrap the garden next summer and head back to the mountains. Now my old buddy is making noises about doing the same thing, so maybe we will get back to the old way of doing things. At least that is the plan at this time.

As of this writing, this year’s garden is winding down. The tomatoes are still producing, and I have yet to dig my potatoes. Small game season is just around the corner, and that is time to pick wild berries on the mountain too, for my year’s supply of jelly, jam, and syrup. Cooler weather will mean time to do some predator calling. Right now there is a fire raging in some of my old stomping grounds in the Marble Mountain Wilderness Area, a supposedly “controlled burn” set by the Forest Service that got out of hand. Hopefully we will have some rain soon, enough to put it out.

I really don’t know who, if anyone, reads what I write here, and maybe I am just writing it for myself; but I will make an effort to keep this journal more up to date in the future. If nothing else it is a diary of sorts that I may enjoy looking back over in the future. To those who might actually read this, I hope you enjoy some of my scribbling.

Dog poisoning update.

I talked to the local veterinarian this morning, and I no longer think I was a deliberate target (personally) for this. There has been more of it going on than I was aware of. There was a dog poisoned in Etna, a town about 12 miles from me, just about a week ago. That case and mine are the first the veterinarian knows of THIS YEAR, but there was a lot of it going on all around the valley last year. Poisons of choice have been strychnine or rat poison. Could be anti-hunters, environmentalists who don’t like people taking their dogs to the mountains, someone who doesn’t like farm dogs running loose, or someone who just plain doesn’t like dogs. No suspects so far.

Talk about a bad week!

I’ve already told about the passing of old Kelly. That was on Monday. Kelly was an old dog, and it was his time to go. On Friday some miserable excuse for a human being poisoned 2 of my dogs!

Bear and Dove slept in the house with me. First thing Friday morning I turned them out in the yard to take care of business as usual. Thinking back, I remember hearing a slight scuffle around at the front of the house where my pickup and horse trailer are parked, and I yelled at them. That’s when they had to pick it up, whatever IT was. Someone had tossed a poison bait of some kind into my yard. Dove must have got the lion’s share of it, and that’s what the scuffle was about.

Thinking no more about it at the time, we went back inside and I took care of the 3 S’s and fixed breakfast. Suddenly Dove began to throw up all over the place! I ran both dogs out of the house, and once Dove had heaved up she seemed fine. Bear appeared perfectly normal. I tied the dogs outside and went back in the house to clean up the mess which took quite awhile. When I went back outside to throw everything in the garbage, I could tell from the way she was laying that Dove was dead! Bear had drank a huge amount of water and heaved it up. He is ok, and now 2 days later you would never know anything was wrong with him.

I called the Sheriff’s office and they sent a deputy out. We looked around my yard and found exactly what I expected; nothing. Of course the dogs had eaten whatever had been there. I asked the deputy if they had any similar reports, and she answered no, at least not yet. This is a rural area, and it is impossible to find a veterinarian over a weekend. First thing tomorrow (Monday) I will call the local vet’s office to see if they know of any other dog poisonings in the area. Right now I am racking my brain trying to think of anyone who could possibly hold enough of a grudge against me to do such a thing, and I come up empty. Am I the only one, or are there more dead dogs in the valley that I haven’t heard about yet. Was this a direct attack against me, for no reason that I can think of, or were they just out to kill dogs? Anyone’s dogs. If this was a deliberate attempt to kill my dogs, might they try again since they didn’t get them all. Aside from Bear, the only other dog here now is old Sadie. She was tied at the time this happened, so didn’t pick up any of the bait. Right now I am up a tree. I can’t think of anyone low enough to do this, or what their motive might have been.

Old dog down.

This photo was taken 14 years ago on Kelly's first of many trips to the mountains. He died on Monday, 2 days ago. Kelly was an Airedale, half of a team of brothers, but not littermates. Casey was his older brother by a year and a couple of months. Casey has been gone over 2 years now. Together with a good horse, they roamed the mountains with me for a good number of years, and looked up a tree at many a bear, cougar, and bobcat. They were hunting dogs in the true sense of the word! I can no more have those dogs back than I can have those years back, but I sure have a lot of good memories stored away. Rest in peace old friends. Will Rogers said it best when he said, "If dogs don't go to heaven, I want to go where they go". May we meet again sometime in a better place.

Smoked in!

It’s been a long time since I’ve made an entry here, but today is my birthday, and I’m just kind of relaxing, so I’ll spend some time at the keyboard. I made my 3 score and 10, and according to some that’s all I’m entitled to; but what the heck. I’ve made it this far, I’d hate to quit now! :)
I guess everyone is well aware of the fires in California since the news has been full of it. Most are well south of here, but we have plenty of smoke to deal with. This is the 3rd year in a row that smoke from forest fires has settled here in our little valley, but the flames are a long way away. The closest fire is a few miles from the small town of Happy Camp (again), on the far side of the Wilderness Area from me. A couple more are burning in the Shasta/Trinity National Forest. Don’t know just where our smoke is coming from. Could be from just about any direction, depending on which way the wind is blowing. The really big, and destructive fires, are far south of here.
I had a busy spring with normal chores of cleaning up around the yard and getting a garden established. The garden is to the point of beginning to pay off. Green onions in my salad every evening now, with lettuce, chard, and sugar pod peas coming on fast. Have green tomatoes about the size of golf balls. Judging from the plants, I’m going to be loaded with Yukon Gold potatoes, so I’m at least assured of salads and hashbrowns with onions. With a piece of some kind of meat on the side, I can deal with that. :) My flock of pigeons is well established now, and provides me with a squab dinner about any time I want it. I have 2 dozen baby chicks (Araucana and Cornish) ordered and due to be delivered here next week. I ordered "straight run", so I’ll have roosters to butcher for meat and hens to hold over for eggs and to replenish the flock next spring. Judging from the blackberry vines and elderberry bushes in my backyard, it looks like this is going to be a good year for berries.

Hogs?

I was fixing breakfast this morning when I noticed Bear and Dove (Airedales) staring out the window. Something outside obviously had their attention. My old eyes aren’t what they used to be, and it took me awhile to find it. Two animals were out in the field behind my house, and I couldn’t get a good clear look as there were a few bare tree limbs in the way. My first thought was that they were either dogs or deer, but they didn’t move just right for either. Their heads were down like they were grazing, which left dogs out, but they didn’t move just right for deer either. They remained in one area for several minutes, but I never could get a good look at them, and they were to far away for the old eyes anyway. They finally began to move off in a trotting kind of gait. PIGS! I don’t know of any of my neighbors who have pigs, and there aren’t any wild ones around here either that I know of; but I sure think that is what they were.

Surprise!

Due to the ever increasing price of gas I have been limiting the amount of driving I do; especially trips to town. There is no reason for me to go to town other than to shop, so the fewer the trips I make the better. I used to shop once a week. When the price of gas started going up I began to shop every 2 weeks. I now have cut that to every 3 weeks and sometimes longer. Won’t take much planning to get that down to once a month. I have a freezer and a pressure canner, and I make use of both.

Sure, I drive a truck; but the way I figure, it isn’t what you drive but how much you drive it. Besides, I need a truck for the things I do; like pulling a horse trailer around. When I shop for the long term I also need a truck to haul everything. You can’t fit a month’s worth of groceries, plus feed for the animals, in an economy vehicle. I put fewer miles on the pickup in a year than most people put on a small car. I alternate trips between 2 towns. The closer town just for groceries, and the farther town when I need to go to a feed store and large shopping center.

A couple of days ago I needed to stock up on dog food and grain for the chickens and pigeons, so a trip over the mountain to the farther town was in order. While I still have a foot of old crusted snow in my yard, the roads are clear and the other side of the mountain is practically in the banana belt! No snow at all over there, so the drive over the mountain was uneventful. I pulled into a parking lot and did some shopping in one store. Next stop was a store at the other end of the mall, so I got in the truck to drive over there. Surprise!!! I had no brakes, or practically none! I was only a couple of blocks from the Ford garage, so I limped on over there.

Turned out that something had hung up or otherwise got stuck in the brake assembly causing the brakes to drag. Not enough to be noticeable coming down the mountain, but darn sure enough to over heat the brakes in a big way. While I was in the store the brake fluid had literally boiled; the reason I had almost no brakes at all. The grease in the wheel bearings had liquified, but fortunately hadn’t ruined the bearings. Brake shoes on the rear wheels had to be replaced and the drums machined. The folks at the Ford garage furnished me a loaner, a little econo car, to drive home and return the next day to pick up the truck. Although there was no charge for the loan of the car, they handed me a bill for repairs that knocked a fair sized hole in my bank account. I’m just thankful that the brakes hadn’t failed on the trip over the mountain, especially on the down hill side. That could have been a lively ride to say the least!

3 second fox.

It was a cool crisp morning after a light rain yesterday, so I went out to play for awhile today. Called in a gray fox on the first stand. He didn’t see the injured rabbit, and it didn’t take him long to see everything else he wanted to see, and figure out that this was a bad place for him to be. He went back the same way he came, and I caught about 3 seconds total of video. Click here.

Bear hunt!

I was expecting a friend to stop by this morning, so when the 2 indoor dogs started telling me that something was going on outside I thought that he had pulled up in the driveway. I opened the front door expecting to see Jim on his way in, but no one was there. Instead I could hear someone talking just down the road, and saw a pickup parked there. I walked out into the road for a better look, and one of the fellows walked over to tell me what was going on.

Turned out to be a fellow who lives up on the hill across the road from my place. While he was eating breakfast this morning he happened to glance out the window and saw a bear busy at its own breakfast, raiding his garbage can. He told me that the bear had been a regular garbage raider at several of the houses on the other side of the hill, so this fellow promptly picked up a 30/06 and shot it, but didn’t kill it. The bear made a run for it on my side of the hill with my neighbor and a buddy of his in hot pursuit. It treed in a big pine tree right on the side of the County road next to my place. My neighbor assured me that he had a bear tag, and since bear season was open would I mind if he shot it? No, of course I didn’t mind; and since he had already wounded it I certainly hoped he would shoot it. Don’t need a wounded bear around here! He backed off for a good view, put a bullet in bruin’s head, and dropped it right on the side of the road. About a 150 pound bear, just the right size for eating, but I doubt I would want any meat from a garbage raider. Nice hide though, in good shape and coal black.

Bum luck!

A cool front has moved in here, and it sure is welcome after the run of hot weather we’ve been having. The archery hunting season closed here last Sunday, and the general deer/bear season will open tomorrow (Saturday). I wanted to get out with the dogs in this time between seasons, and this cooler weather made it perfect.

There are some old logging roads and skid trails that I want to check on, and see if they are passable with the horse. I know a couple of the old roads have become impassable to anything without wings due to washouts. Yesterday I loaded the mare in the trailer, took a couple of dogs along, and drove up the mountain to a place where I wanted to unload. An old road had been closed by the timber company that owns the land, and they had bulldozed a berm up to block the road. Sis went up and over it without a problem. There were a few down trees across the road, but nothing she couldn’t step over. Aside from a tight squeeze through some brush in one spot we had no trouble, and we made a nice loop back to the truck and trailer. Enough of a ride to make a good hunt, but not so much as to cripple up my old knees. Just about right. Saw a couple of old bear tracks, but nothing fresh. Feed is scarce in the mountains this year, and so is bear sign. I have a feeling that a lot of the bear are still up in the high country, but when they drop down there isn’t much to hold them here. They will probably just pass on through in search of better pickings.

Last night really cooled off in a big way, and this morning I awoke to an overcast sky. Even had a little sprinkle of rain while I poured down my morning dose of coffee. A perfect morning for predator calling. I loaded 2 dogs in the truck and drove to a couple of my better hot spots.

It was a short hike to the first stand. I tied Bear and Dove to a couple of small saplings, then set up my stool, and video camera on a tripod. The stool is becoming almost mandatory equipment for me, unless I am horseback of course. The little bit of added elevation, as opposed to sitting on the ground, gives me a better field of view and I can pan the camera much better. I know I’m going to like it even more this winter when the ground is wet or snow covered!

A few minutes into the stand, and I saw something move behind a bush; small, gray, and close to the ground. Could have been a gray fox or a squirrel. The color was right for either. It disappeared without ever moving out where I could get a good look at it, and aside from the usual gang of blue jays I saw nothing else on this stand.

I roaded the dogs for a little exercise, then set up another stand right on the side of the road and looking down an old fire break. I set up the stool and camera again, then placed an electronic call on the edge of the brush some distance down the fire break. I was back on my seat and a few minutes into the call when a fox started barking down in the brush. I switched on the camera just as a second fox came around the side of the hill directly below me and stopped behind a bush. I had my finger on the “go” button, but I couldn’t see much of the fox in the view finder. I was waiting for it to step out into the fire break where it would be in plain view.

Bear was under the camper shell in the back of the pickup, but Dove was up in the cab. She heard and saw the same things I did, and she couldn’t stand it any longer. She began to bark! Of course that blew the stand, so I turned her out knowing full well that she couldn’t run a fox under these dry conditions. She went looking anyway, but was soon back to me. Oh well, it feels like fall is right around the corner, and things will keep getting better and better; especially if we get some much needed rain. I’ll hole up for a few days now. Opening of deer season is a good time to stay at home.

Facing reality.

Home again after a few days spent in the mountains. I picked the particular camp where I intended to stay because it is the coolest spot I know of during a heat spell. I had about all I wanted of near 100 degree temperature. There is this nice little camp in a shady spot next to a creek.......... But as it turned out we had a general cooling trend with average temps in the 80's. This made my camp by the creek a little cooler than I had intended, and actually chilly in the mornings, but all in all it was pretty nice. A sweat shirt was welcome even in the afternoon in the shade, and tee shirt weather out in the sun. Higher on the mountain at a lake the weather was just about perfect. The only fly in the ointment were the yellow jackets. Every meal was a battle with the little meat bees. Even the rattle snake that I killed as it crawled through camp paled by comparison.

As a contrast to earlier camps this year, where people were coming and going practically all the time, I had the country almost to myself. During the time I spent in camp there were only 1 or 2 vehicles going by every day. Only 1 stopped at my camp, and that was a Forest Service fire vehicle. The crew reminded me that camp fires and BBQ grills were banned. Only propane or liquid fuel camp stoves permitted. There was only 1 vehicle parked at the trailhead, about a quarter of a mile up the road from camp. It belonged to a couple of back packers that I met on their way out when I rode to a lake higher on the mountain. It was a welcome relief from the hustle and bustle around some of the busier camps and trailheads. It won’t be so once deer season opens. There will be a truck load of road hunters going by at least every half hour!

I set up a snug camp with a tarp stretched out from the horse trailer for shade, and shelter in case of rain. There are no facilities at this camp, basically just a place to park off the road. No horse corral, so I set up the portable hot wire corral that I carry with me. The photo that accompanies this post shows how I like to keep a horse in camp.

This is a simple little outfit that runs off a battery that is charged by a small solar panel. I much prefer it to high lines or picket lines. A horse can lay down or roll if it chooses to without becoming entangled in a rope and possibly rope burning itself. You can set up an enclosure for 1 horse or a dozen, being limited only by the amount of "electrical tape" on hand. There have been times when I have been out with several other people when we completely encircled a mountain meadow, with even a creek running through it for water, and easily had a mixed heard of over a dozen horses and mules happily grazing near camp. Once broke to a hot wire a horse or mule will not touch that white tape.

After a day of lounging around camp with my nose in a book, the next morning I saddled Sis and rode to a small mountain lake. I am becoming disappointed with this lake. It used to be known for large fat brook trout. A couple of years ago there was a rumor going around that the Dept of F & G in their wisdom had poisoned the lake to eliminate the big brookies. I’m inclined to believe it, as lately all I can catch there are pan sized rainbows. I caught a few for the frying pan, then started back down the mountain. Although I had felt good going up the mountain, it soon became apparent that I had bitten off a little more than I should have. Sad to say, my old knees and hips aren’t what they used to be. By the time I made it back to camp I thought I was going to need help getting off the mare. Getting old is the pits! That evening I melted some margarine in a skillet, coated the larger trout with corn meal seasoned with garlic salt, and fried them to a golden brown. Opened a jar of home canned chili and heated it to go with the fish. Life was good. I saved the smaller fish to go with bacon and eggs the next morning.

After my ride down the mountain, the next couple of days were spent in camp nursing sore knees and hips. Oh well, I had brought along a good book to pass the quiet times in camp. There being almost no one around I was able to turn old Kelly loose to shuffle around camp as he saw fit. The old dog is 13 now, and no longer able to make it out on the trails. He would wander down by the creek for awhile, then come back and lay down beside me where we could reminisce about days gone by.

Finally I felt like getting back on the horse again, but I didn’t really feel like a ride back up and down the mountain. I saddled Sis, turned the dogs loose, and took a little ride up a trail behind camp. I tied Sis in a little grove of trees and set up a calling stand. A raven sailed in almost immediately, and a few minutes later something moved on the hill across the creek. Probably a deer. I heard it rather than saw it, and the dogs heard it too but couldn’t locate it. They ran down by the creek, but unable to hear or wind what had moved there, they were soon back to me. A short ride back to camp and I called it good for the day.

This could very well be my last campout for the season. I have several chores to get done around home, and hunting season will be here before I know it. My days of long rides are over, but I plan to use the mare all I can. It will be a simple matter to load her already saddled into the trailer, haul her to where I want to use her, and save my walking legs (which aren’t much better than my riding legs) for when I need them. Short rides are better than no rides, and I still have plenty of use for a horse.

Smoke smoke everywhere!

I returned yesterday from a little over a week spent in the mountains. Actually it was the smoke from the many lightning caused fires that finally drove me out.

We had been having 100F+ degree temperatures here at home, so I left for higher country on a Monday hoping it would be at least a little cooler at higher elevations. I have no idea how hot it was in camp, but the thermometer on my front porch registered a high of 105F degrees while I was away. After setting up a good camp, Monday and Tuesday were good for nothing but laying around in the shade trying to keep cool. Tuesday evening the thunder storm rolled in.

As a rule thunder storms begin to lose their punch in the evening as the temperature drops, but this time the main event came after dark. Not only noisy, but one heck of a light show! I later learned, via the portable radio that I had with me, that somewhere between 30 and 40 fires had been started in the Klamath National Forest. Most serious were the ones burning near the small mountain towns of Happy Camp and Oak Knoll where some homes were evacuated, but there were many smaller hot spots burning throughout the forest.

The temperature being cooler after the storm, I saddled Sis and took a ride on the various trails about every other day. One morning smoke jumpers could be seen from camp as they dropped from a plane to a fire on Box Camp Ridge. The next day as I was riding down from Red Rock Valley I could see smoke from that fire, and a helicopter made several runs that day and the next, to the river and back, dragging a bucket and dropping water on the blaze.

Depending on which way the wind was blowing, it was pretty smokey around camp in the mornings; but by afternoon it cleared so much that it was hard to tell that there was even a fire burning anywhere. Several back packers and horsemen began to arrive at the trailhead, most of them heading for Sky High Lake. A group of 25 back packers from Headwaters came out and another group of 15 from Sierra Institute went in. A commercial packer took a couple of groups in and out, packing their supplies on mules. Several small parties of horsemen and back packers went up and down the trail on their own, all coming and going to or from the same place. I avoided that area like the plague! I like a little more solitude in the mountains.

By the following Monday the entire area was socked in with smoke, and it never cleared out. I couldn’t even see the mountain across the little canyon from camp. Everyone who had packed in, both horseman and hikers alike, began to head out. By evening I had the whole place to myself, with the exception of the cars belonging to the Sierra Institute group who still remained in the mountains as long as I was there. By Tuesday morning it was no better. A Forest Service fire crew showed up at the trailhead and hiked to the fire still burning on Box Camp Ridge. Planes and helicopters were no longer of any use. The smoke was so think it was impossible to tell where the fire was, and to fly would have been taking a chance of crashing into a mountain.

I fixed breakfast and cleaned up camp while I debated on what to do next. As conditions showed no sign of improving, I decided that it was a good idea to break camp and head for home. As it turned out, I might as well have stayed where I was. It was just as smokey at home as it had been in the mountains. The whole valley was filled with smoke. Last night we got a break, and a steady rain moved in. Not the gully washer that I would have liked to have seen, but it cleared the air. This morning was fresh and clear for the first time in days. Now this afternoon there are thunder heads beginning to build in the west again. We don’t need any more lightning just now, thank you very much!

Thanks to those who have sent messages and comments to my blog. I simply haven’t had time to respond personally. As usual when I return from a trip, I have a backlog of both snail mail and email to wade through, as well as a certain amount of camp gear to clean up and put away. I will get caught up..........eventually.

Personal photos from a calling trip.

A few days ago I made a predator calling trip with a good friend to the high country east of here. This is really John’s hunting territory, and I’m not that familiar with it. The object of the trip was to try to call some coyotes to the video camera, and the cooler temperatures of the high country seemed a lot more appealing than the hot summer weather we have been having here in the valley.
As it turned out either the coyotes weren’t in the area or they didn’t want to play the game. We set up 4 calling stands in the same area where we had called 7 coyotes in a single day last fall, but with zero response this time. That’s the way it goes sometimes. Unknown to me at the time, John took a couple of still photos of me, and I will include them here. One is a photo of me on a stand overlooking a large meadow that we hoped to call a coyote across. The other is a photo of me setting the camera up on a calling stand. The dog with me is old Sadie, 11 year old Airedale Terrier.

First trip of the season.

I recently returned from a week spent camped in the nearby mountains. Much cooler up there than here at home, and I wish I was back up there. I had actually intended to stay a little longer, but I shorted myself on hay for the horse. No suitable grazing where I was camped, so the only alternative was to head for home until next time. A camping buddy indicated that he might be able to join me for a day or two, but as things turned out he didn’t make it.

Fishing was about as poor as it gets. I dropped a fly in some pools in the creek that ran by camp a couple of evenings, but couldn’t raise a fish. One day I rode the mare to Campbell Lake. Fished a baited hook about a foot and a half off the bottom. Had a couple of bites that didn’t hook up, and that was all. A couple of days later I saddled Sis and rode to Log Lake. Finally managed to catch a single brook trout. If he hadn’t been such a hog about it, and swallowed the hook, I would have turned him loose. As it was I dropped him in a frying pan along with some bacon and eggs for breakfast the next morning. From talking to a few back packers on the trail I learned that I did about as well as anyone. Nobody was bragging much about the fish they caught.

I had in interesting conversation with a llama packer that I am acquainted with. He is doing some contract work for the Forest Service and the Indian Agency. Specifically, he is collecting water samples from the creek and the lake it flows out of. He asked me if I ever had a bear tear up an inflatable boat. I haven’t, and I asked him if he had been fishing and if the boat had a fish odor to it. He told me that it was a brand new boat, and hadn’t even been in the water yet. Said a bear tore it to pieces! Funny critters, and they sometimes do strange things!

The closest encounter I had with some potentially “dangerous wildlife” was a wild mountain woman from the Salmon River country who popped into camp one evening. Ringy as a pet ‘coon, and obviously floating a little high on something. She had 2 horses with her, a filly and a stud, and wanted to put them in the camp corral with my mare. I told her that no way was she going to put a stud in with my mare. We made some arraignments, divided the corral, and put the mare and filly in one section and the stud in the other. She made her own camp, up in the back packer’s parking lot where the Forest Service would have written her a ticket if they found her there. Early the next morning she loaded her horses in her trailer and pulled out of camp.

I have some chores to do while I am home, most urgent of which is painting the top of my horse trailer. I hadn’t realized it was in such bad shape, but I had to stand up on a fender to spread my tarp out in camp, and discovered that the paint is cracked and peeling badly up there. Once I have that done it won’t be long until I am ready to go again. Far better to spend the hot part of the summer in the mountains than here at home.

Spring!

Spring has come to the Marble Mountains. I took the dogs along and drove up to a trailhead today to check things out. Dogwood is in bloom now, and Lupine is everywhere along the side of the road. The dirt road had been graded, so I won’t have to move any rocks to get a horse trailer up there. I saw the first bear track I have seen this year in the dust of the road.

There were a couple of cars in the parking lot, back packers or day hikers. There was a single set of horse tracks on the trail. For several years, not so long ago, it was a better than even bet that I would be the first person up there on a horse each spring, and possibly the first person on foot. Seems like more people are beating me to it lately.

I turned the dogs loose and walked up the trail to the first creek crossing. I didn’t feel like wading it, and in my best days I was never much good at walking logs, so that is as far as we went. The water is still to high for fishing, and the season opens on Memorial Day weekend, but it is a fraction of what it should be at this time of the year. The snow pack in the high country is way below normal, and what is up there is going fast.

Next time I go up there I’ll take the mare along and see what the trail looks like. There are a couple of other trailheads I want to check out too before I pull the trailer up the mountain.

Photo coyote hunt.

Yesterday my coyote calling friend John and I had a photo hunt planed on some private property where he has permission to hunt. This was to be a hunt for coyotes, and John has the coyote dog, so the Airedales stayed home. The rancher who owns the property isn’t particularly interested in pictures of coyotes. He likes to see dead ones, but we left the guns at home too. John took a still camera and I packed a video camcorder.

The first stand of the morning produced nothing but some coyote howls way off in the distance. John said he saw a coyote way over on a ridge when he walked out to put his electronic caller on a rock several yards in front of us. A few minutes into the stand I saw something moving way down below us, but I couldn’t make out what it was. The last I saw of it, it was moving away, not toward us. This is wide open country, unlike the timber and brush country that I am used to, and a guy can see way out there!

A short drive to another spot, and a hike up a steep ridge, and we set up on the back side of a rocky knoll. John has hunted this country for years, and he knows where the hot spots are.

Video #1: Click here.

John saw the coyote coming first from way up on the mountain. I didn’t see it until it topped a barren hill in front of us. It came about half way down the hill, then stopped to look the situation over. It didn’t look like the coyote was going to come any closer, so John sent Jiff the tolling dog out. The coyote didn’t like that at all, and it ran back up the hill for a little way. Jiff came back, but the coyote didn’t come with her. It looked things over for a bit, then started circling to pick up our wind, and there was a pretty good breeze blowing.

In the meantime John had spotted another coyote coming up the hill along a fence line. Coyote number 1 ran across and then down the hillside, circling to my left all the time, and I ran out of room to maneuver the camera. The 2 coyotes met, but by then they were out of range of my lens. They soon went out of sight behind a ridge, and the show was over. The coyote vocalizations you hear on the video are coming from John’s caller in a effort to stop the coyotes and possibly bring them back.

Video #2: Click here.

A drive to another spot, and a short walk to a calling stand. We backed up against some low brush on the edge of a meadow. A few minutes into the stand and I saw a coyote coming through a wide spot in the brush across the meadow. It came about half way down the hill, then just as suddenly it turned around and went right back the way it had come; out of sight. I turned my attention back to the area in front of the caller, and there stood a coyote right out in the open at the edge of the meadow! I hadn’t seen it coming, and don’t know how it got there, and neither did John. He had been looking in another direction at the time.

The coyote looked things over, then turned and headed back into the brush. John sent Jiff out, and she brought the coyote back into the open. On her way back Jiff stopped to pee, and you can see the coyote stop in the same place and lift a leg where Jiff had urinated. That is as far as the coyote was about to come. It stood there for so long that I actually turned the camcorder off for awhile. There was zero action! You can see the coyote occasionally looking back into the brush, an indication that the other coyote might be there, but out of our sight. Some magpies were attracted by the coyote out in the open, and you can see them flying above it and lighting in the brush. Finally the coyote just sort of wandered away, still accompanied by the magpies.

Called one in!

It’s been awhile since I’ve made an entry here, but I’ve really been up to my ears in spring chores. Haven’t had much chance to get out lately, but you know what they say about all work and no play. Today I decided to take a dog out for awhile and prowl around a little bit. I roaded Bear in front of the pickup for a little exercise, then set up a calling stand. You can CLICK HERE for a short piece of video. And it came to a Deer In Distress sound. Honest!

Looking around.

The last couple of days have been sunny and warm, and the snow is melting. Water is pouring off my roof like rain, and where the snow had been over my knees in my yard it is now only a few inches deep. I thought I would take a little drive this afternoon, as much to ward off a case of cabin fever as anything, but also to see if I might find someplace where I can at least take a little walking hunt. Wishful thinking!

I loaded a couple of dogs in the truck and started up the mountain behind my house. I got exactly as far as the road had been plowed to the last house. The plow had left a wall of snow across the road, and that was the end of the line. I turned around and drove down the County road to Mill Creek. I knew I could get up there at least as far as the intersection where an old logging road takes off, as there are a few houses farther up the main road and the residents there would have the road plowed out even though they don’t live on a County road.

I had in mind walking up the logging road with the dogs for a short distance, at least until the snow got to deep to bother fighting it. Again wishful thinking. Two feet of snow lay across the road at the intersection, and I knew it would only get deeper further along. Of course I could have strapped on some snowshoes at that point, but I knew I would pay for it over the next 3 days with crippled knees. There was a day when I wouldn’t have given it a second thought, and would even have called it fun; but those days are behind me. Today I keep a pair of snowshoes in the pickup through the winter just in case of emergency, but the truth is I hope I won’t need them. I turned around and headed back the way I had come, looking for tracks in the snow along side of the road along the way.

I saw were a few deer had bucked the snow, and where a bobcat had walked on top, only sinking in about an inch. There were a few old tracks that were probably fox, but they were to old to tell for certain. At the rate the snow is melting it shouldn’t be to much longer until I can find someplace to stretch my legs, and the dog’s too. The next couple of days are supposed to be warm, and there is even a chance of a little rain in the forecast later in the week.

Winter, February 2007

Winter has come to northern California with a vengeance. Been snowing for several days now. The white stuff is over the knees at my house, and I have no idea how deep it is in the mountains. It will be awhile until I can get a pickup off a plowed road, let alone get around much on a horse.

It takes at least twice as long as usual to do normal every day chores. Shoveling snow to get to the hay so I can feed the horse. I scatter scratch feed under the eves of my house where the ground is bare for the chickens and whatever else shows up. The wild birds have a tough time of it, and they appreciate the handout. Mostly Oregon Juncos, but also Stellar and Scrub Blue Jays, Spotted Towhee, and Varied Thrush.

I back the truck out of my driveway at least a couple of times a day to make ruts in the snow. Took a little drive down the County Road today just to look around. Saw where someone’s hay shed had collapsed under the load. I thought for awhile that we were going to have a mild winter, but right now it looks like spring is a long way off.

Photo fox hunt.

My good friend John came over this morning for a photo fox hunt. He’s been meaning to come over here ever since last fall when I went with him on a coyote calling expedition in his hunting grounds. He has plenty of coyotes over there, but hardly any fox.

I thought it was pretty chilly here this morning at 18 degrees, but he had me beat. He said it was 9 degrees at his place! Kind of frosty, but we warmed up hiking to a few of my good calling spots. Saw tracks made by several different fox in the snow, and one cougar track, but all a day or two old. The first three stands drew a blank, and we didn’t see so much as a blue jay. John set up a video camera on each stand, and I did the calling.

We ate lunch, discussed the situation, and decided to try one more place. While John got ready with the camera I walked across a small gully and hung an electric caller on the branch of a small oak tree. I walked back and sat down with two of my dogs, and just that quick a gray fox came trotting down the ridge to the call. Dove saw the fox but Sadie didn’t. I held off letting the dogs go to give John a chance to shoot some video. He got a little footage on tape, but not a lot. Cover was tight, and the fox didn’t stick around very long. As soon as I saw that there wasn’t going to be a chance for any more camera work I let the dogs go. Sadie never really got started good. Dove took the fox for a little run, but failed to tree it. Oh well, it was a good morning and fun to be out. I’ve got to get John started editing video with the computer so he can post some clips now and then.

The spook.

They say there is a nasty storm headed this way right out of the gulf of Alaska, so I wanted to get out with the dogs today before it arrives here. I had in mind hiking to one of my good calling spots, but I didn’t know if I could cross a creek that runs across the old logging road where I park the truck. The timber company has bulldozed a berm blocking the road to vehicles, so this is always a walking hunt. The creek was running higher than I cared to wade, so I put the truck in 4WD and drove across to the berm. I turned the dogs out there, got my day pack out of the truck, and started walking.

I had all 4 of the Airedales with me, and I let them run loose on the way to the stand. When I set up to call I tied Bear and old Kelly to a couple of trees and left Dove and Sadie loose. They know the procedure, and they laid down next to me like they are supposed to.

Down the hill several yards there was an old log laying on the ground in the timber. I had been calling with a mouth blown call for several minutes when I noticed a spot of brown just behind that log. It was about the right shape, and looked suspiciously like a bobcat’s head, as if a cat was crouched behind the log and peeking over it. I was wearing my glasses, and I gave that spot a good hard look. It was one of those spooks that frequently turn up on calling stands. Had it been there all along and I had just now noticed it; or had a bobcat or other predator just slipped in? For awhile I imagined I could see a pair of ears on that round spot, but it remained perfectly motionless. I decided it was just a brown piece of wood, and I went back to calling and scanning for incoming game.

Eventually my eyes were drawn back to that brown spot. No ears! I decided my old eyes were just playing tricks on me. I looked away for a minute, and when I looked back the ears were there again. Still no movement. It had to be a piece of wood. About then Dove keyed in on it, and she was up and running with Sadie right behind her. No doubt now. The cat was up and running too, and I unsnapped Bear and Kelly.

It was a pretty short race. The cat had the old choice of treeing or being caught on the ground. It got it’s little bob tail up a tree! I got the camera out of the day pack and shot some video. You can CLICK HERE for a link to a short clip. 3.4 mb download. The price of cat hides is way up, and it seems everyone is after them. This appeared to be a female, certainly not a large one, and poor color as cats go. As hard as they are to come by this year, the last thing I wanted to do was kill a female; so I put the camera away, called the dogs, and headed back toward the truck. I figure the hide was worth more to the cat than it is to me, and I might run her again some other day.

Video clip

Well, someone asked to see the video that I shot a few days ago as proof that fox really will climb trees. I uploaded the video clip to a hosting site and will post the link here.

This file is over 6 mbs, so if you have a slow connection you may not want to bother with it due to the poor quality of the footage, unless you just have time on your hands. :)

Fox hunt

I took the dogs out for a run on the mountain behind my house this morning. It hasn’t been cold enough to freeze yet, and the red clay roads are pretty slick in spots, but I put the pickup in 4WD and roaded the dogs for some exercise; then stopped to make a calling stand.

I few minutes into the call, a gray fox came trotting in. Sadie saw the fox so I let her go. Instead of running the fox froze in position; almost to long. It had to see the dog barring down on it, but it seemed undecided what to do. Finally it swapped ends and got under way, but Sadie almost had it. The fox picked a tree and got his furry tail up it.

I got the video camera and tripod out of the truck and shot some footage, but it was disappointing. It was very foggy, and the fox was backlit against a bright sky, almost shooting into the sun. When I got home and plugged the camera into the TV it didn’t look to bad, but the streaming video clip I made to post here is terrible. I may try to clean it up a little bit some other day, but it is doubtful at best. You win some and you lose some. You take your chances when you hunt with a camera. Wildlife doesn’t always pose the way you would like.

New sound.

Last night I uploaded 2 new sounds to an electronic caller. One is a distressed rabbit sound that a friend sent to me. The caller came with a rabbit cry installed, and I occasionally called in some kind of critter with it, but it was one of those sounds that made me grate my teeth to listen to it. The new sound at least sounds like a real rabbit!

The other sound is a distressed deer sound that I have on audio tape, that I have used successfully to call in both bear and cougar. I erased the rodent squeak that was installed in the caller, and which I seldom used, and replaced it with the deer sound.

This morning I loaded 2 dogs in the pickup and went across the river from my place. Parked the truck and walk an old road to an abandon apple orchard to set up a calling stand. About 2 minutes into the call with the new rabbit sound a gray fox came trotting in. I had a video camera mounted on a tripod, but the fox came in on my right and I couldn’t swing the camera around there. I had Bear tied on that side, but he was goofing off instead of paying attention to business. He didn’t see the fox. Dove saw it so I turned her loose. Of course by then the fox had seen the dogs and decided a change of location was in order! We have wet ground now and Dove took the track, but apparently didn’t tree the fox. I never heard her bark, and she was back in about 10 minutes.

I gathered up my junk and tried 2 more calling stands using the deer distress sounds, but aside from the usual birds I drew a blank. Judging from the way the clouds are building, I suspect it might be kind of wet around here by tomorrow morning. Turning colder too, which could put snow in the high country.

Close call.

I was working on some indoor chores this morning. Two dogs (Airedales) were in the house with me, and two more were outside but tied. I suddenly became aware of something screaming bloody murder! The outside dogs went into orbit, and the inside dogs wanted out.

I do a lot of predator calling, and am very familiar with the sound of an animal that has been caught by a predator of some kind. So are my dogs. I have a bunch of free range chickens running around the place, and my first thought was that something had caught one. I didn’t take time to go for a gun, but opened the door and the dogs and I headed outside.

The sounds were coming from a spot across the creek that runs through my property. The dogs jumped the low wall and crossed the bridge at a run. My neighbor’s hogwire fence stopped them. He keeps both goats and sheep, and has the place fenced to keep his stock in and dogs out; although there were neither goats or sheep in the field at this time. I climbed over the low wall and followed the dogs.

As I approached the spot where the dogs were running back and forth along the fence I saw two deer, both does, run off into the timber along the creek. A large bird took flight from the ground. I didn’t get a real good look at it due to the trees, but from the size alone I could tell it was no hawk. It had to be a buzzard or an eagle.

The ground on the other side of the fence was fairly open, and I could get a pretty good look without walking around to a gate to gain access there. I saw no sign of anything lying there, or of the feathers that should have been scattered if a bird had been caught. My guess is that an eagle caught a fawn. This year’s fawns are getting pretty big by now, and the big bird must not have been able to kill it, at least not outright; but the young deer was making plenty of noise about it! Hopefully it survived to grow a little older, and wiser.

A hunt with JJack.

I got an e-mail from John a few days ago. Deer season was set to open September 16th and he wanted to get in a varmint hunt before the woods filled with deer hunters. John is a long time photography buddy and a long time coyote hunter. 78 years young, he has been calling coyotes and other critters for 58 of those years. He wanted to hunt the high country over his way, and invited me along. We would be hunting his country and using his dog. Thursday morning we gathered up cameras, tripods, and dog, and went a-huntin’.

It has been a long hot summer, but we had a change in the weather. At around 5,000 feet elevation the morning was decidedly chilly. With the opening of deer season just 2 days away, there were already several hunting camps set up. There was logging activity in a couple of places, and logging trucks running the main roads. We were not alone in the woods!

Instead of posting one long video of the hunt, which would make a very long download for anyone with a slow Internet connection, I have broken it up into 3 video clips.

Video 1: We parked John’s pickup on the side of a logging road and walked down the bank to the edge of a meadow. We settled in backed up against some aspens and John began a series of calls. It didn’t take long! Within minutes we had a double. A pair of coyotes came loping in. We started to roll the cameras, and John was about to put the dog to work, when a pickup passed by on the road above and behind us; blaring his horn for all it was worth. Coyotes exit the scene and end of stand number 1.

Video 2: Self explanatory.

Video 3: This is a 5.8 mb download. So if you have a slow connection it is going to take awhile. We set up the second stand on the edge of another meadow where cattle were grazing in the distance. We separated a little from each other, each backed up against some trees, and John began the stand with an electronic call. For once I was sitting in the right place while John could only wish he was sitting where I was. Another double! Jiff, the Border Collie tolling dog went to work, and I got it on tape.

Stand number 3 was a considerable distance from the first two. This was John’s hunting country, and he knew where the hot spots were. We set up on the edge of a very large meadow this time, and again John did the calling. I called it another double, but John said later that it was a triple! There was a 3rd coyote that I hadn’t seen. It was a ball, but luck was against us this time. We both screamed and squeaked and pleaded, and Jiff did her best, but these coyotes hung up and just wouldn’t come within camera range. It was a great morning, and we walked back to the truck to have lunch right at noon. We called it a day and headed back to John’s home to harvest some goodies from his garden.

Slow start.

Hunting season is off to its usual slow start here. Small game season (squirrel, mountain quail, and grouse) opened over the weekend. It is still much to hot to give a lot of thought to serious hunting, but it is a good time to scout around, see which roads are open, and check for game sign. Saturday morning I loaded Bear and Dove in the pickup and headed up the mountain.

While it was still cool I worked the dogs ahead of the truck for some exercise. Dove treed the only squirrel we were to see all morning, but as happens more often than not in this big timber country, once it was up I couldn’t find it. No meat for the pot today.

The morning quickly heated up and I began to see some bow hunters. This was the last weekend of the archery season. I picked the dogs up and just went looking for tracks. I checked a couple of good crossings and found where a cougar (mountain lion) had passed through recently. I photographed the track, and you see it at the top of this post. Anyone who has trouble differentiating between dog tracks and big cat tracks should take a good look at it. The photo plainly shows the three lobed print of the heel, which identifies it as a cat track. No dog leaves a track like this. There is also a deer track visible in the photo for size comparison.

Farther up the mountain I found some elderberry bushes loaded with ripe berries that begged to be picked. In about 10 minutes I filled 2 grocery bags with berries to be cooked down for their juice and turned into jelly or syrup to go with hotcakes this winter. A free gift from Mother Nature that I am happy to take advantage of.

Day 2:

Sunday morning I took the old timers, Kelly and Sadie, and went up a road farther around the side of the mountain. I wanted to check a gate on timber company land. As I did the day before, I ran the dogs ahead of the truck until I started to meet traffic coming down the mountain. I picked the dogs up, found the timber company gate open, and continued up the mountain. Manzanita berries were ripe here and I began to see bear sign; quite a lot of it, but none real fresh. Plenty of old tracks in the dust on the side of the road, and piles of bear dung containing recycled berries, but mostly already dried out. I set up a couple of calling stands with a video camera mounted on a tripod, but the only responders to the call were a few blue jays. I found a shady spot to eat lunch then poked along home.

I’ll get out a couple more times during the week, before the general deer and bear season opens this coming weekend. That is generally a good time to stay home! According to the weather forecast we are due for a cool down in the middle of the week, so maybe I’ll get on the horse and prowl around on some washed out logging roads that are inaccessible by pickup. The thermometer on my porch topped out at 90 degrees today. More like fishing weather. I stripped the elderberries and cooked them down over the last couple of afternoons. Today I canned up 10 pints of delicious elderberry jelly. With the juice that was left over, and more that is stored in my freezer, I have enough left to make maybe another 12 pints; or I may save some for syrup.

The Trinities.

The Marble Mountains are still closed due to wild fires and extreme fire danger. I decided to head to the south end of the valley and up toward the northern tip of the Trinity Alps Wilderness.

I chose this particular spot, and a camp on Fox Creek, because it is the coolest hot weather camp I know of. A trailhead into the Trinity Alps is only about a 1/4 mile up the road. What I hadn’t counted on was a sudden drop in general temperatures. We were suddenly running 20 degrees below normal for this time of the year, which made it a really cool camp! Actually chilly at night and in the morning. I didn’t entirely escape the smoke from the fires which have been burning literally all over northern CA. It would clear out at night, and the stars were shining. It was clear in the morning, but as daytime temperatures began to warm up the smoke would drift in again. From the ridge above camp I could look down into the valley where I live, and it looked like it was socked in with fog. It was good to be in the mountains.

The first few days I had the country to myself, and it was great. An hour and 45 minutes on the yellow mare and I was at Mavis Lake. The fishing was hot, but the fish were small. Rainbow trout of about 6 - 7 inches. They were biting so fast that there wasn’t a chance to catch a really decent fish. This used to be a really good brook trout lake, but it seems the powers that be have decided to plant rainbows everywhere. That is sure all I caught. They fit nicely in a frying pan, but I’d rather eat a brookie any day!

By the middle of the week the weather began to warm up again, and on Thursday morning the trailheads began to show activity. The archery deer season was set to open on Saturday, and with the Marbles still closed a lot of people had the same idea I had. They started flocking to the Trinities. Several parties packed in either on foot or with horses and mules. Several people checked out my campsite to see if it was available, but I already had squatters rights. I stayed in camp Friday to “hold down the fort” and several people set up a camp farther up the creek. Saturday morning resembled the opening of rifle season! Bow hunters in full camo and war paint, road hunting in pickup trucks and ATV’s. Toward evening someone did open the rifle season about a month early, as there was a single gun shot on the ridge above camp. I had about enough, and I began to pack up such items that I wouldn’t need in the morning. Sunday morning, after breakfast, I tore down the camp, loaded dogs and horse, and pulled out for home. I’m back in a hot smokey valley again and hoping for rain.

The ranch.

There is a ranch across the valley that is fast becoming a favorite place to photograph wildlife in a mostly undisturbed and natural environment. Yesterday I drove over there at the invitation of the caretaker. I saw several deer laying in the shade of some oak trees before I even reached the caretaker’s trailer. One doe (picture above) had an unusually small fawn for so late in the season. I doubt that it was more than a day old, and was busy at the "lunch counter". I stopped the truck and took a quick grab shot with a still camera, hoping for the best as I shot at high telephoto without any kind of a support. I reached for the video camera and a window mount, but Mama wasn’t going to stand still long enough for that. She moved off with her youngster in tow.

After picking up the ranch caretaker, we took a drive on the hillsides above the ranch. The place was alive with deer, bucks still in velvet. The trick as usual, was to catch them in a suitable spot for pictures, and hope they would stay put long enough to shoot some video footage. This link http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v610/BobMc/Video%20clips/?action=view&current=4448ffdb.flv
will take you to some streaming video that I put together. This is a large file (5.88 mb), so if you have a slow connection you might as well go have a cup of coffee while it downloads. Maybe two cups!

I have a friend, a summer caretaker on a ranch, who calls me from time to time when conditions are right to photograph the wildlife found there. I recieved such a call recently, gathered up a couple of cameras and a tripod, and drove over to his place.

These turkeys didn't give me a chance to mount the camera. They were running along the edge of a field, and I ran along with them, snapping pictures as I ran. Only 1 was worthwhile, the others being just a blur.

We cruised around the ranch and found more turkeys and a few deer. If you click on this link, it will take you to some video footage that I shot that evening.

Fire!

I spent two and a half weeks camped with a friend at a trailhead near the Marble Mountain Wilderness. For awhile I averaged a trail ride every other day and gave the dogs some exercise, then spent a day around camp where I photographed and shot video footage of the deer that hung around the horse corrals. The weather was generally hot and humid. That is until the thunder storms rolled in.

The first storm arrived late in an afternoon, and was wild and western with wind, rain, thunder and lightning. The following day was a repeat except for the high wind. I learned from a Forest Service packer, via the Forest Service radio, that 21 lightning caused fires had been reported.

Fortunately none of the fires were close enough to present any danger where we were, so we decided to stay put for awhile and see what developed. The area became quite smokey from fires on the other side of the mountains, but the fires themselves were a long way away from us. After two days of sitting in camp we decided to pull up stakes and head for home.

The little valley where I live is now polluted with smoke from several fires, most of which are still uncontained. The worst fires seem to be near the small towns of Happy Camp and Orleans, on the opposite side of the Marble Mountains from where I sit, and near McCloud and the Pit River Country. Fire crews have been blessed with cooler temperatures the last two days, but breezy conditions continue to fan the flames. Rain is sorely needed, but according to the forecast there is none in sight. It looks like it is going to be a long dry summer.

Pre 4th of July campout.

The tail end of June, and the high country still closed by a lingering snowpack. Trails still blocked by downfall. It was a heavy winter.

I’m usually in the mountains before now, and I wanted to get in at least one trip before the holiday week set in and camps filled with people. Back packers and horsemen come from all over to hike and ride in our Wilderness Areas and the surrounding mountains, and the Forest Service would be directing them to the areas that are open. A phone call to the local Forest Service headquarters, and I was informed that the trail out of Lover’s Camp to Sky High Lakes was still closed. The trail had been cleared to the old cabin in Marble Valley, but snow still lay along the trail on Yellow Jacket Ridge and in pockets below the lakes. Hikers could make it, but horsemen would have to wait awhile.

I called an old friend and we decided on Shackleford Trailhead. Jim is an old hunting and camping buddy. 75 years old now, he spends most of his time puttering around camp, but he was ready to go. I gathered my camp outfit, loaded the mare in the trailer and the dogs in the pickup, and I was finally on my way to the mountains.

It didn’t take long to discover that the trails up the Shackleford Creek drainage were still in pretty bad shape. A group from Oregon, the Northwest Youth Corp, was clearing trail and doing general maintenance above our camp. This was my first encounter with this particular organization. I am familiar with the CCC’s, the YCC’s, and of course the Forest Service trail crew; but I had not heard of this group before. They did a fine job on the section of trail where I saw them working. A commercial packer took their tools and a camp outfit up the trail for them on Monday morning.

It was hot, and generally dry, during the 9 days we spent in the mountains. I don’t know what the actual temperature was, but I rode past Campbell Lake at an elevation of 5745 feet with sweat running down my face. Back home, the thermometer on my porch registered a high of 102 degrees while I was away. On 2 nights we could see lightning flashing farther north in Oregon, but we only got a few sprinkles. Not enough to settle the dust.

I fished Campbell Lake twice. It was slow, but I caught a few trout that went well with bacon and eggs for breakfast. Just not enough of them. Pretty brookies though, with nice pink meat; about as good as mountain trout get. I talked to a few people who had fished both Calf and Cliff Lakes, and no one was bragging much about the fishing.

I took the spillway trail down from Campbell Lake where it dumps into the creek. I found it still clogged with deadfall, but nothing I couldn’t jump Sis over or work around. The trail to Cliff Lake was open, and I heard that the trail to Calf Lake was accessible to horses for most of the way. Snow still blocked the upper part of the trail.

The trailhead was a busy place the whole time we were there. Day hikers and horse groups were in and out every day. The commercial packer took a party of 7 people to Cliff Lake for an extended stay on Thursday, and brought the Youth Corp out on his way back. A horse group from down south packed in to Summit Lake, or tried to, on the day we broke camp. I hadn’t heard anything about the condition of that trail, and I don’t know if they made it or not.

With all the activity around camp and up and down the trail, not a lot of wildlife was seen. A black tailed doe crossed the road just below camp several evenings on her way to the creek and water. Then there was the rattle snake that was entirely to close to where the dogs were tied on the edge of camp. Neither Jim or I tried any predator calling. We thought it would be a futile attempt under the circumstances.

I’ll sit out this holiday week at home and catch up on a few chores. I prefer some solitude when I set up a camp in the mountains, and it wasn’t to be had on this trip. In another week or so things will begin to settle down, and more trails will be open as this heat melts the snowpack.

Checking trail.

We went from an unusually wet spring (or extended winter) right into abnormally hot weather. In fact it has been breaking records for this time of the year. 95 degrees at my house yesterday; way to hot for so early in the season.
The dogs have really been feeling it. I sent my clipper blades away to be sharpened as I don’t normally give the dogs their summer haircuts this early, and I haven’t got them back yet. I’ve been due for a change of scenery anyway, so I thought today I would burn some gas and take the dogs down river and up on the mountain to Lover’s Camp and Trailhead. See if I could gain a little altitude and beat the heat. I would have gone to Shackleford Creek Trailhead as it is closer to home, but I’ve heard the road is washed out and I can’t get there from here!
One section of the river road almost fell into the river last winter, and it is still unrepaired. The County crew erected a barricade of sorts and called it good until sometime in the future when they can get to it. The river itself is running high and muddy from snowmelt in the high country. Some of the kayak groups that show up here in the summer to run the river could have a wild ride right now through the rocky stretches, but sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.
Soon after I left the river road and started up the mountain I saw a pile of bear scat. There are a few around now. This is big timber country. Pine, fir, and cedar, with some oak, chincapin, and madrone. Maple grows in the damp places along creeks, and dogwood is in bloom. Most of the rocks had been removed from the road, and I saw a Forest Service truck and lowboy parked at a wide spot, so I knew some sort of heavy equipment was working farther ahead, but I never saw it. I saw a pair of mountain quail on the drive up the mountain, and farther along I saw a deer on the down hill side of the road. I drove into Lover’s Camp without incident, but I wouldn’t have made it a few days earlier. There was a spot where a mud slide had blocked the road, and it was obvious from the color of the dirt that it had been removed just recently.
The place was deserted, so I turned the dogs out of the truck to run around while I walked down to check on the corrals. They looked to be in good shape, and the water had been turned on to the water troughs. Water is piped to the corrals from a spring, and it is turned off in the winter to prevent breaking the pipes. I didn’t see any bear sign around the corrals which surprised me. I would expect to find some there at this time of the year.
It was still plenty warm even up here, but not as bad as at home. I decided to hike up the trail about 3/4 of a mile to the fork to check things out. The trail is well shaded along this stretch, and there is a trickle of water crossing the trail every 100 yards or so, so the dogs could get a drink or even lay down in it anytime they want to. Trillium was beginning to bloom in places next to the trail.
I get a kick out of Dove and Sadie. I really thought that Dove would have to whip Sadie before now, which she could do easily enough if it came to that. Dove doesn’t want to fight, but at home Sadie is so jealous of Dove that she can hardly stand it. Out hunting or on the trail the two are inseparable. If you see one, you don’t have to look for the other. She is right there, within a few feet, or yards at the most. They are together all the time.
I’ve been wondering how Kelly, now 12 years old, is going to get around in the mountains this year. He’s really been feeling the heat with the heavy winter coat he is carrying, but when we started up the trail he lined out just like old times. I think once I get the hair off him he is going to do alright. Bear has youth on his side, and a lighter coat. It’s hard to slow him down.
About 100 yards up the trail I found the first down tree across the trail. I could step a horse over this one with no trouble. Where the trail intersected with one from the backpacker’s camp there was a single set of boot tracks. There wasn’t another human or horse track on the trail, so it was plain that the Forest Service trail crew hadn’t been there yet.
I hiked along the trail until I came to the fork where one trail goes on to Marble Valley and another crosses Canyon Creek and leads to Red Rock Valley. Right at the fork a down tree blocked both trails. I could climb over it easily enough, but the trail is blocked to horse traffic. With an ax and some work it would be possible to clear a way around one end of the tree to get a horse past it, but the Forest Service frowns on such things. Better to wait for the trail crew and let them earn their keep. They’re going to have fun with this one. It’s about 3 feet in diameter and will likely have to be cut in 3 places. It will take a team with a misery whip and a come-along to clear it from the trail. This is within designated Wilderness Area, so no chain saws allowed!
This is as far as I hiked up the trail, so I don’t know what lies ahead, but you can bet there are more down trees. Probably lots of them. It was a hard winter. I walked down to the creek and took a break while the dogs waded around in the water. I would have to want to get to the other side pretty bad to ride a horse off into that right now. Running high and swift. After a little while we headed back down the trail to the corrals and the pickup.
Back at the truck I got out an electronic caller and set it down by the corrals, then backed off to a shady spot at the camp where I have spent so much time over the years. I could sit in comfort while I ate my lunch, with a slight breeze blowing while I watched for any action. Usually there are a few ravens around to provide entertainment, but all that answered the call this day were a few Stellar Jays which lost interest after a few minutes.
When I finally decided it was time to head back down the mountain I looked around for the dogs. Dove and Bear were laying next to me. Sadie was down by the corrals poking her nose into whatever she could find to interest her, but I didn’t immediately see Kelly. The old dog knows his place in camp! I soon saw him bedded down in the shade under the low branches of a tree, exactly where he is normally tied when we camp at this spot. It was home to him.
According to the folks who make a living guessing what the next few day’s weather will bring, we have a major cool down coming. Supposed to be back to more normal mid 70's by the weekend. I think I can handle that.

Cabin fever.

Here we are well into the month of March, and winter just won’t go away. We had a short false spring, just enough to encourage some of the trees to begin to bud, then winter came right back to us again. One storm after another rolls in from the coast. I’m still very limited as to where I can go with the pickup. The mountain roads are still closed due to the snow pack, and anything other than a plowed County Road is pretty much out of the question. That limits me to a few roads right here on the valley floor.

I’ve been coming down with a powerful case of cabin fever, and made up my mind that I was going to get out and away from home for at least a little while today. I decided to take a short drive over to Mill Creek Canyon and cruse an area where deer are commonly seen wintering. It started to snow before I got away from the house, but I hoped it wouldn’t amount to much. I loaded a couple of dogs in the back of the truck and kept a video camera on the seat in the cab.

I drove through the wintering area in low gear, watching for deer on both sides of the road. It was snowing pretty good by now, and I didn’t see any kind of wildlife moving around. Walking in the snow doesn’t get a guy wet like rain does, so I decided to take a short hike up a road toward some timber company land. The last time I walked this road there were the tracks of a big bobcat in the snow. There were still a couple of inches of snow on the road, so I parked the truck and turned the dogs out. We hiked up to a bad washout in the road without seeing any fresh sign at all, so I retraced my steps, loaded the dogs back in the truck, and drove back through the deer wintering ground.
I was just about back to the main road when I saw a small herd of cattle bedded on the edge of a field up next to the timber, and there were 2 deer feeding almost next to them. The deer were feeding along, oblivious to the falling snow. I parked the pickup and secured the camcorder to a window mount support for stability, and shot several minutes of footage. You can download and view a short piece of streaming video by clicking on this link.
http://photos.imageevent.com/bobmc/video/Deer%20in%20snow..wmv
Be aware that this is a 3.4 mb download, so if you have a dialup connection it will take quite awhile.

Old dog - old horse - old friends.

A couple of weeks ago I had to say "Goodby" to an old dog. Casey was my first Airedale, and 100% hunting dog. Over his lifetime he looked up a tree at many a bear, bobcat, and cougar; as well as lesser game. In his last couple of years he began to fail badly. I think it was his heart that finally gave out. One evening he was fine, and the next morning he was near death. The stout heart that had carried him over many a mountain had given out. He was about 3 weeks short of 13 years old.
Smoky was a little Appaloosa that I purchased from a friend when he was about 11 years old. For a small horse, he was a walkin’ son of a gun, and he carried me over many a mountain trail for the next 10 years. When it became obvious that the longer trips with bigger and younger horses were beginning to tell on him, I let him go to a good home were he was well cared for through his retirement years. I learned yesterday that the old pony had passed on. I was not informed immediately, and as near as I can tell he must have died at very nearly the same time that Casey did. Smoky must have been nearly 30 years old.
Will Rogers is credited with once saying that "If dogs don’t go to heaven, I want to go where they go". I would like to say the same about good horses. It would please me to think that maybe a good dog and a good horse are keeping each other company somewhere while they wait for me. I hope so anyway.