They continued a good distance up the meadows, but soon needed to turn back to make camp by dinner time. They elected though to keep going for seven more minutes until their designated turn around time arrived. With only a couple of minutes left one of them glanced over and saw what turned out to be a stomach plump with vegetation. Upon further investigation they found the remains of a mule deer, freshly killed. The heat and dryness of the area seems to dessicate things fairly quickly, and while the body was no longer warm, it did still have soft meat and wet body fluids in the chest cavity. Needless to say, they ended up being a little late getting back to camp.
Of course everyone was excited by this discovery and most elected to head up the meadows the next day, looking for new sign and seeing what changes would occur in the kill over night. We didn't have a live sightings of any wolves, but a couple of hours into our trek, we were awed to again hear wolves howling. This time seemingly coming from the meadow and/or ridges immediately in front of us. We were a little spread out and depending on where we were standing, some people heard the howls coming from a single direction and others heard them coming from two or three directions - perhaps some echoes playing tricks. I don't know if any of us were expecting to see wolves that day, but I'm pretty sure we all had it in our minds that it was a possibility, and the howling (which went on for several minutes) just reinforced that.
One aspect of the day that I really enjoyed was the quiet intensity we had. Before we started up the trail we spent a couple of minutes talking about the day ahead and how we were entering the wolves area and agreed that we would try to move quietly, not speaking much above a whisper and keeping talk to a minimum. I was impressed that a group with as many people maintained such a state as well and as long as we did. With this quiet intensity (renewed by the howling of the wolves) we set off across the last meadow before the kill site. The energy was palpable as we entered the woods with the kill site just ahead, only relaxing as we got to the kill and saw that there had been no apparent activity since the preceding day.
There had been changes in the kill though.
The eyes had become clouded and sunk in, the body fluids dried and the remaining meat had become hard. I felt the meat between the ribs and it was almost like plastic.
I was a little surprised that the carcus had not been bothered more since the previous group had been there. Even without the wolves returning to it I thought other animals would have. The report I heard from the following weeks classes were that it did eventually get further consumed. Perhaps the wolves had just eaten their fill but were in the area and smaller predators were giving them some space. Or perhaps other predators had just not found it yet.
Our trip back to camp was much more relaxed. We had to make pretty good time so didn't stop a lot, and while we did see some cool tracks and sign along the way, much of the time was spent just walking and talking.
I didn't really expect to have one day of the trip be so amazing, so to have two incredible days in a row like that made me really happy. I'm very grateful to have been in such a beautiful place with wonderful people and having amazing experiences. I highly recommend it.
No comments:
Post a Comment