Wild Things Unlimited

We were, after all, in Montana’s Big Belt Mountains, a place where, to our knowledge, grizzlies have not been found in years. That’s how Betsy and I came to be having this rather silly conversation about bear spray. Having sensed that I was once more about to be walked into the ground, I was looking to eliminate every possible ounce of weight and had about convinced myself that spray was superfluous. Betsy said she was carrying hers, so, apparently not satisfied with how dumb the original idea was, I decided to go it one better. I pulled my spray out of the shoulder holster and dropped it in the top of my pack.

Deb and I had driven up to Bozeman from our cabin in Silver Gate to help for a few days with the Y2Y corridor survey. As with the rest of Wild Things’ work, this is a project we believe in, plus it gave us time to just roam around the mountains with two of our most favorite people in the whole world. We had camped the night before on the east slopes of the Big Belts, and, as is our custom, had split into two teams for the day’s work.

We were only about an hour or so into that day’s work, hiking a faintly marked, seldom-used Forest Service trail along a narrow brush-choked creek. We had stopped to locate ourselves on the map when Betsy pointed at the brush 35 feet away and whispered, “bear.” Almost simultaneously, we discovered that there were two bear. The brush was so dense we couldn’t immediately sort out what we had, but whatever bear were in that brush had plenty to say to each other.

Now, there are not many circumstances involving black bear that would unnerve me, even at pretty close range. In fact, about the only situation I can think of that would actually strike fear in me would be surprising at truly close range a dominant boar in courtship mode. Odds are he has already had to chase lesser bear away from his lady-love and might mistake a human at close range for an interloper.

Turns out, of course, that’s exactly the situation we had just found ourselves in. This is the kind of situation that makes you appreciate good field companions because several decisions need to be made in seconds without benefit of conversation, so you pretty well go on instinct, and mutual trust and respect surely helps. This wasn’t exactly new for us; the last time, it was the four of us together in Yellowstone and it was an up close and personal grizzly.

So, here we were again on autopilot. The first thing I did was a slow hunker, giving Betsy a chance to fish the bear spray out of my pack. Although I’m not sure why she would want to arm someone dumb enough to be carrying bear spray in his pack in the first place; desperate, I suppose.

Anyway, here’s the deal. These bear are in and out of the little creek but moving slowly downstream, which is where we are. So, what is already too close is getting closer. We do not need to discuss the fact that we don’t want to be discovered at this stage of the game. There’s some maneuvering room behind us, so, whenever we sense that the bears can’t see us, we take a few steps back, eventually putting another 30 or so feet between us. The slight breeze is, fortunately, with us, allowing the amorous pair to pass right by us and slightly downstream, where the female manages to slip out of his sight.

Everything became dead quiet for two or three minutes, and I had just begun to think they had both moved away when the boar, who was hidden from us at the moment, decided to attack a clump of willow. With all the roaring and breaking brush, I first thought there must be a fight. Turns out, it’s just a thoroughly frustrated bear burning off some pent-up aggression. After a brief but thorough whipping of the willow bushes, he left in hot pursuit, ending what Betsy and I hoped would be the highlight of that particular day.

The rest of the day was somewhat more normal. We climbed a few thousand feet, met up with Steve, Deb, and Pearl (our dog), bushwhacked back down a few thousand feet, collected hair and scat samples, made notes, soaked our feet in an ice cold stream and wished we could just do this forever.

I’ll always wonder what would have happened if we’d walked ten steps farther before stopping to check the map. Wouldn’t it be the perfect irony for the two of us, who spend half our lives walking with grizzlies, to go off and get ourselves whipped by a black bear? Actually, both of us would have kinda deserved it: me for putting bear spray in a pack and Betsy for letting me do it. Come to think of it now, I’m beginning to wonder if I should even hike with her anymore.

It was a sunny day in mid-February when Steve Gehman and I set out from Bozeman, Montana at 8:00 am. We headed south on route 191 into Gallatin Canyon, our destination the trailhead for Dudley Creek, about ½ mile north of Big Sky.

Along the road was quite a bit of sign of ungulates: feeding ‘craters’ in the snow, and day beds. The lower part of the drainage is a mix of open meadows, Douglas fir and lodgepole pine, great habitat for elk. There was evidence of elk and moose, and on the steeper, south-facing hillsides bighorn sheep often graze during the day.

We parked the Wild Things’ 1977 GMC pickup at the trailhead and walked ¼ mile up the private road to the beginning of the trail. We put on our skis with our climbing skins attached and set off. Climbing skins are made of either plastic or goat hair, and enable a skier to climb much steeper grades without slipping backwards. They slow forward glide to some degree as well, but the trade-off is worth it! We headed west, following Dudley Creek, and looking for two sites to place remote cameras. As we went, we traced our progress on a 7.5 minute topographic map of the area.

The snow was pretty good considering how warm it had been, as there had been a fresh dusting of about 2 inches the night before. We followed an older ski trail along the south side of the creek as we went, climbing steadily through a mixed forest of lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) and subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa). There were numerous sets of red squirrel tracks as well as snowshoe hare tracks. In a few places we even found tracks from pine martens (Martes Americana), a distinctive two-print, bounding pattern in the snow.

After about a mile of climbing above the creek, we found ourselves in an old spruce-fir forest, and came upon a set of tracks that were larger than others we had seen so far. There was fresh snow in the tracks making them hard to read, but the larger footprint, longer stride and uneven gait indicated they might have been made by a wolverine.

We decided that a narrow, flat bench about 100 feet above the trail would be a good place for the first camera. We climbed through the trees and found a spot with two well-spaced trees to set up the transmitter, receiver and camera. I set up the camera system while Steve hung the bait which consisted of a deer rib cage which had been ‘fermenting’ in a tub since October – nice and stinky to draw in the critters. Steve also applied small amounts of commercial trapping lure to trees in the area to add to the scent attractants.

From that site we continued to ski west along the creek, about 100 feet above the creek itself. We went another mile or so, then dropped down steep slope, through deep snow and thick trees to the creek bottom. Continuing on westward, we crossed the creek and looked for a site along the north side of the creek. There were steep avalanche chutes coming down from the ridges around us, areas that had been swept clear of trees by the action of snowslides. Giving these areas a wide berth, we found a good site in a group of lodgepole pine. Again, I set up the camera system while Steve hung the bait. This time he used a towel that had been soaked in blood and guts that had been fermenting since last spring and it was really ripe smelling! At both sites we also set up lynx hair snaring devices in an effort to procure evidence of lynx in the area. The hair snares consist of a 4” X 4” square of carpet with sharp tacks poking through from the backside. This gets nailed to a tree with the tack points facing out. Special ‘lynx attractant’ lure is applied to the carpet square as well as catnip. The goal is to lure in a lynx and take advantage of the natural tendency of cats to rub against objects of interest. Once an animal rubbed against the carpet, the tacks would snag some hairs, which we would later collect and send off for DNA analysis. The DNA analysis would tell us not only which species had left the hair, but could also tell us which individual animal is was. To add to the attractiveness of the set-up we also hung another carpet square (without the tacks) from a nearby tree by a wire about 5 feet from the ground, with an aluminum pie pan hung on swivel underneath to act as a visual attractant. Cats are very attracted to visual stimuli.

Once the set up was complete we struck off east along the creek heading back to the trailhead, staying on the north side this time. By now the sun had been shining on the snow for most of the day and the snow had gotten VERY soft in some places, causing us to go crashing through the crust periodically, and fall head-first into the snow. Between bouts of falling and racing down hillsides barely in control, we found another interesting set of tracks. These were definitely wolverine, probably the same animal. We followed them for a while and came to a big hole dug in the snow. Using its amazing sense of smell, the wolverine had discovered an old carcass buried under about 3 feet of snow. It then dug down to the carcass and chewed up several of the bones left at the site. A nice bonus for a hungry animal.

We finally reached the truck at about 4:00 pm, tired and sore from our hard work, but it was worth it. We had placed two remote cameras, 2 lynx hair snares, found evidence of a wolverine, and been out in the mountains on a beautiful day. Not a bad days work.

On January 15, I made the seven hour drive over hard-packed and icy roads from Bozeman to west Glacier, Montana, to spend a few days with WTU biologists Meg Hahr and Amy Edmonds on our Flathead carnivore surveys project. Meg designed and initiated the study in Fall 2000, and we adopted it as a WTU project shortly thereafter. The purpose of the project is to assess forest carnivore presence and use patterns in the North Fork Valley, which lies just west of Glacier National Park and east of the Whitefish Mountains. Upon arriving in West Glacier, I picked up Jud Parsons, an avid outdoorsman from Oregon and a generous supporter of WTU, and we met Meg and her husband Sydney at their home for a fine meal and a delightful evening. Jud and I spent the next three days helping to conduct track transects and set up camera stations with Meg and Amy.

Wednesday, January 17 was a particularly exciting and memorable day for me. After a breakfast of oatmeal, muffins, and elk sausage at Amy and partner Lee Secrest’s home on the edge of the North Fork river, the four of us looked at maps and made a plan for the day. We would split into two groups, with Amy and me surveying a nearby tributary drainage where she saw a set of lynx tracks in December, and Meg and Jud doing the same in an adjacent drainage that also contained good lynx habitat. In addition to conducting track transects, each group planned to set up a camera station along their route.

Amy and I planned to ski a six to seven mile loop along logging roads that encircled an area of lowland, relatively flat, moist forest habitat that included some 20- to 40- year-old timber harvest units and patches of uncut mature forest. After skiing approximately three-quarters of a mile on a road that also served as a major snowmobile route, we encountered the large tracks of a cat that climbed upslope through deep powder snow just off the side of the road. Amy’s first impression was that they were lynx tracks, but we wanted to follow them, examine them more closely, and take numerous measurements to be sure that they were not mountain lion tracks (general appearance and measurements can be very similar for the two species when tracks are in powder snow). Our excitement grew as our observations and measurements pointed to a confirmation of lynx tracks. Upon closer inspection, we located faint tracks from the same animal on the hard-packed snowmobile trail; after examining and measuring these prints, we were 100% sure that we had found lynx tracks. The lynx had wandered along a narrow untracked road through mature forest, then came onto the snowmobile route and walked along this road for approximately 200 yards, before bounding upslope into a 40+ year-old timber cut that supported lodgepole pines and larches.

Just beyond the point where the lynx had come onto the main road, Amy and I turned off onto an un-used (by humans) side road to continue our ski circuit. Now off of the hard-packed road, travel became more strenuous, and we took turns breaking trail through eight to twelve inches of powder snow. Tracking conditions were excellent, and we observed many tracks of snowshoe hare, red squirrel, and moose, along with less frequent looks at pine marten and weasel tracks. After another half-mile, we started to find lynx tracks again – first, a single lynx crossing the road, then sets of tracks indicating two lynx traveling together, on the road, off into mature forest, and back onto the road again. We stopped and set up a camera station just inside of a patch of mature coniferous forest through which the lynx had walked, in hopes of capturing a lynx on film.

As we continued on our ski route, we found more and more lynx tracks, and the afternoon slipped away as we dutifully recorded notes regarding the movements and habitat selection of the lynx. We were about halfway around our loop with less than two hours of daylight remaining; we decided we would have to keep moving and not make any more stops to record data, if we were to make it back to Amy’s truck before dark. We skied less than a half-mile after making this decision, and hit an impasse – a dense alder thicket now choked the road. We fought our way along the side of the thicket in an effort to try to determine its extent, but were unsuccessful. After some debate, we agreed to turn around and follow our tracks back the way we had come, rather than risk a possible slog of a mile or more through the alder with darkness approaching.

We arrived back at the truck as twilight came to an end, and made the short drive back to Amy and Lee’s place to find Lee preparing to come looking for us. We recounted our day, and listened as Meg and Jud told us about theirs (they also saw lynx tracks). A jovial evening among friends was followed by a fine night’s sleep.