One of the many things I’m thankful for is work that changes somewhat with the season. Not to mention play, of course, which has been scant around here although not quite nonexistent. I took Monday “off”, and went for a hike in the southern Madison Range. Just scouting, and didn’t even bother to take my bow. I had misgivings, as I figured that would guarantee I would come upon the mightiest stag in the forest, sound asleep, but no. I shoot a recurve, and haven’t even strung it let alone been practicing for months, so ventured forth with only the camera. Oh, and a 45/70. A Canon and a cannon! Our bear spray is way out of date, and it would not be impossible to run into a grizzly in this spot, and better safe than sorry, etc. A last resort, for sure, and I make every other effort to avoid grizzly encounters, but there’s worse things to carry than a relatively light & compact big-bore. It worked for the Indians against Custer!

As mentioned, this was mostly a scouting venture, as the elk don’t move into this area in numbers until the snow flies, more than it already has. And yes, I did hike in snow, at least in the north timber, and found it a most welcome change of pace from fire season. But what really caught my attention was an elk bugle wafting out of a canyon!
For sundry reasons, I don’t really bowhunt anymore (although Cody harvested a muley doe the other day), and haven’t heard an elk bugle in a while. I really must get out more…
I couldn’t hardly believe my ears, and wondered if it was a bowhunter, but no one else had been parked down below. I had the wind in my favor, dropped into this little pocket and was closing in on a pretty vocal bull with camera in one hand, rifle in the other, when I stepped on a wet log and just biffed it. Smashed both items and various body parts against hard objects, and my subsequent exclamation resulted in departing crashing noises. Good thing I wasn’t really hunting!
With no damage sustained I circled up and around, and was quite surprised when the neighborhood vocalist started in again. That time I closed in from above, and as luck would have it ran into an assortment of smaller bulls and cows. If I’d had a bow, calls & camo & such… who knows? But this way I didn’t have to pack meat, and so it’s all good.
As was harvest, although not particularly in terms of bin-buster yields. This was one of the hottest, driest summers I can recall in recent years, although fortunately what rain we did get came at most fortuitous junctures. As I mentioned in last month’s column, we wound up cleaning our camelina as we harvested it. It had just enough green weeds in it to be problematic. Swathing could be called for, although that’s not foolproof either, and in this case the 40’s vintage seed cleaner I bought at Cliff’s auction last fall proved invaluable. In fact an uncanny number of things fell together, and once again problems were solved with the tools at hand. As bin rentals just don’t exist in this neighborhood, we wound up bagging our camelina and golden flax in 2000# nylon tote bags, which worked bally well for suspending off our buffalo hoist, from whence we could drizzle a stream of high Omega-3 oilseeds (plus some weeds) into this vintage seed cleaner, and gravity the cleaned stuff into yet more bags. Once we had it figured out, we could clean about 1000# per hour, which depending on your perspective is not too shabby or just excruciatingly slow. I went back and forth on that viewpoint, but we got ‘er done, although it shot most of a week.

These bags also resolved our temporary lack of a grain truck. The buddy I cut for has a gooseneck trailer with a grain box, which I initially planned to use for ours also, but since we had to bag the stuff anyway, we actually got through harvest without a truck, by filling bags in the back of my pickup, directly out of the combine. And hey, I only had to go the emergency room once, for my first stitches ever, in spite of leading a fairly active lifestyle for what’s getting to be a long time now. A minor thing, just sliced a knuckle on a lurking sharp edge, and it’s a handy thing we added that accident rider onto the new health insurance…

Anyway, it was with some relief we wrapped up harvest, although I still have some lentils I should go look at, but I pretty well know the answer. They were seeded late, got basically no rain, and I doubt I’d even get my seed back, and would abuse my combine header in the process. One must really roll lentil fields, if you have rocks and hope to harvest the things as they only get about 8” high. Alas, the roller we rented early this spring wasn’t available, as its second loss of control in transport mode (not by me thankfully, I go slow on back roads with the thing) rendered it immobilized and unavailable. That’s OK, the deer can eat them, and I’ll plow the remainder under next spring for a nitrogen boost. I’m about over farming for this year anyway, as I was used to being done harvesting about a month earlier. In fact, if I can wind up a couple of fencing projects, and a bit of fall plowing, I might call it good.
The schedule fills rapidly from this point. As if it hasn’t been busy enough, but as mentioned at least it’s different things, including some recreation. Just fired off my antelope access permission letter, which means next weekend we’ll be in the Big Open continuing our quest for record book speed goats. The weekend after that is our anniversary weekend at Chico, and then it’s big game season, and a few weeks later buffalo skinning season arrives, which it appears will be considerably stepped up this year. Plus we just picked up another web design job, bookings are picking up, and we’re heading out momentarily to finish picking up our camelina bales and we’ll see what else picks up. Yes, we’re bullish on picking. I hope that includes a couple of truly gargantuan bull elk, if my scouting proves productive.