Week 11 - Bambi, is that you?!

 WARNING: This weekend I volunteered at the Hunter Check Stations in Darby, MT, as part of one of my classes. The animals posted in the pictures have been killed, but there isn't any blood in the pictures. If you don't want to see these please don't read my posts for Saturday and Sunday.


Monday November 3rd


Today we had to discuss our assignments that we did over the weekend. I was in the first half of the alphabet so I had to do the assignment on the relative brain size on dinosaurs, while the others in the class got to do the assignment on the Irish Elk and it's antler size. We had our Vertebrate class where we discovered our next exam is this Wednesday week. It seems to be never ending with exams and assignments here. In our vertebrate lab we were looking at the respiration and digestive systems of our cats today. Kris also told us that we could cut up whatever organs we wanted to, which got me excited! We looked at the kidney, liver, spleen, stomach and small intestine! As well as finding everything else we needed to of course!

The insides of a Kidney, pretty damn cool yeah?!

This evening a group of us went bowling in Five Valley Bowling Centre, we had decided last week we were going to go. On Mondays they do $1 bowling and they charge $2 for shoe rentals. So we played 3 games of bowling and got it all for only $5! How class is that?! It was a great night! I won the first round, lost the second round by 2 or 3 points and in the 3rd round I taught Fiona how to bowl properly (she was complaining that I was too good - I'm not! :P ) And then she ended up beating me by 1 point! Teaching me to never teach anyone, anything ever again! :P

Five Valleys Bowling in Missoula

Tuesday November 4th


Today is election day so we have no class. Kris told us she'd leave the cat lab open for us to study our cats if we wanted to, so Fi and I got the bus in at 9.10 am and got to campus only to discover that all the doors to the building we wanted to get into were locked. Every single one! So we just decided to head home on the next bus back, a little bit pissed off but what can you do.
I got back home and FaceTimed my Mom, Dad and sister and my brother popped his face in for a few minutes too. After getting off the phone to them I FINALLY got to catch up with one of my best friends, Karen, from home. We were on the phone for ages before finally hanging up to both go and try do some assignments.
This afternoon, after both doing some work, Fi and I headed out to North Reserve street to book our tickets for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1. It's on in two weeks time and incase we don't have enough time to head out and grab them we said we'd get it out of the way now.
We got back and I went straight into trying to sort out my Grant Proposal Application assignment that has turned out to be the biggest pain in my ass ever. I literally have no idea how to go about doing this, and the internet in my damn bedroom doesn't work properly either. Leaving me going slightly insane! Jurassic Park was also on tonight so I watched the second half of that while doing some research on my Proposal where the internet actually works. I called over to Dave and Elliot's for half an hour to grab Elliot's hard drive so we could watch a documentary Fiona had on domestication of dogs. Interesting enough documentary but they didn't actually use wolves....they used huskys.. Nevertheless, it was a really interesting documentary :P


Wednesday November 5th


Today was basically spent trying to do my Project Proposal that's due for tomorrow at 12pm. Everytime I saved the document it changed the formatting of it and would move text around if not delete it. It wasn't fun. Spent hours researching it and finally got it done while watching the second Jurassic Park movie, yeah productive I know. Printed out my three copies and started preparing the stuff I need for my weekend in Darby. This weekend is our Hunter Check Stations class, the one class I took this semester that apparently doesn't translate back to anything at home.. Something I reeeeally didn't appreciate finding out until I got here and got registered for classes but hey, that's life I guess.


Thursday November 6th


We handed in our proposals. We had to print out 3 copies, one for Vicky or Charlie, and two for our classmates to correct. We each got handed two proposals belonging to other people which we have to go through and correct and also give them a marking scheme back with spelling/grammar mistakes and/or other mistakes they made in it. Kinda cool, I like reading through and correcting other people's work :P
I booked our Motel in Darby this afternoon and got all my washing done before making a start on yet again another writing assignment that's due in next week. This assignment is an annotated bibliography on 5 papers we will be using in our habitat conservation issue review paper. I am not looking forward to this whatsoever. I'm telling ya, once I go back to UCC next year, I'm going to be able to spit out a whole assignment in one night. Over here, you're given a whole review paper and only have a very little number of weeks to write it, no extensions, no excuses, nothing! And this isn't the only assignment you will have at this time as well, as an example I also have another review paper due the same week except we can't even start that yet because we haven't got our results back or even the general format of the paper. So we'll basically only have about two weeks to right up a full review paper as well as make a 15-20 minute presentation on the same subject as well. Not cool America, not cool.



Friday November 7th

Happy 21st Birthday Nicole <3

This morning I started packing for my weekend away in Darby at the Hunter Check Stations. I packed up my bags and headed to class at 11am, I posted a postcard home and returned a library book for Fiona too seeing as she had forgotten, and she had work. Had my Physiological Ecology class and we got our results back from last week, I got 88% which I'm really happy with! Except for the point that I was one point off getting an A, again!! I maaay appeal it but I haven't decided yet. This is the second exam in a row that I'm 1point off getting an A...

We went straight out to the Field Research Station to do the analysis on our Bird research paper with the Diamond Doves.  Fiona and I finished up our part really quickly, we had a system and we stuck to it. While the technology wasn't exactly co-operating with Sadie and Nathan, they only got three of their landings done while Fiona and I got all 15 of ours done!


We got home from our lab which seemed to just take forever, Fiona ran around packing while I went and grabbed us dinner. We shoved our food down and packed up the car and left for Darby! An hour and 20 mins of driving later, we arrived in Darby and checked into the Inn we will be staying at for the next two nights, The Mountain Spirit Inn. The owners of the Inn are so incredibly nice! We were chatting to them for a solid 20 minutes about the amount of Mountain Lions and Wolves that pass through the area and even just outside the Inn itself! The owner carries a small little self defense gun around in his pocket just incase.
We got settled and started working on assignments and blogging for the evening.

Incredibly comfy King Bed.

Our cute little kitchenette!

Our bathroom.

Saturday November 8th

Our day began at 8.45am, we had to be at the Check Station for 10am. We slowly got ready this morning and before we knew it, it was 9.45am and we had to leave. We loaded the car with our schoolbags, food and blankets.
We met Dylan, who later turned out to be our neighbor in Lewis and Clark, and also met Mark and Becky the two people we would be working with today. Essentially our biologists for the day. Becky and her family have been hunting in the area for years and are pros at aging deer and elk. On our first day we had a range of different animals come through, we had Elk, Mule Deer, White Tails, a Bison and even a Black Bear all come through our Check Station. There were two lanes to the station, the 'loser' lane and the successful lane. Anyone with game (that had successfully harvested an animal) came into the lane closest the trailer we were in, we aged Elk by their 'ivories' (their canines) and we aged White Tails and Mule Deer by cutting their cheek back and checking the sharpness of their teeth and whether certain teeth had two or three points to them. I didn't cut the cheek today I was recording the animals we got through and also manning the loser lane at the same time to keep the flow of traffic going.

Our shelter for Saturday and Sunday.

We wrapped up tonight about 7.30, Fiona and I were starving and decided to head to a place called The Blue Joint in Darby for dinner as recommended to us by Mark and Becky. I got a bacon cheeseburger (like father, like daughter) while Fiona got the swiss cheese and mushroom burger, a little more adventurous. We literally ate up every last bit and headed back to the motel we were staying in, both as full as butchers dogs! We browsed the internet for a small while and I was so shattered I was ready for bed at 10pm. Exhausted from our day! We chatted about god knows what and then fell asleep after 11pm sometime, the earliest I've been able to go to bed here in the longest time.

Our first animal of the day, a Bull Elk with a club antler.

Lovely Male White Tail packed up nicely into the boot of a Jeep.

Two lovely White Tails that were both harvested by children.

A huge Bull Elk that came through from Nevada.

Sunday November 9th


We got up at 8am this morning to pack up all our belongings from the motel room, make our food for the day and check out before heading to the check station. We left and arrived at the check station at bout 9.30am, early but they were already opened so we were off to work straight away. An incredibly slow morning.
We had a good few for the loser lane that had absolutely nothing. Becky's husband Jerry rang her and told her traffic was backed up by about 30 cars in the canyon because a fisherman was after being hit by a telephone pole and had died. We had a bad storm hit us today which knocked down a number of trees in the area which broke telephone poles and had live wires around. So naturally, we had no body come through the check station so we were preparing for a rush. We got wrapped up in coats, hats and scarves while the wind and rain battered us. I manned the loser lane noting down where everyone had hunted and how many hunters were in the car. I had the traffic moving at a nice fast pace in the loser lane, while the others aged the animals that came through and checked to see if all the tags were legit. We soon got quiet again. Becky's husband and daughter had come down to give us a hand and to speed things up a bit. Hunters tend to get a little cranky if they haven't got anything. Some could be out for two weeks and come extremely prepared and get nothing. Others though are very nice and welcome you with a smile and say 'hello there young lady, how are you doing today?', oh the simple pleasures.
 Seeing as today was incredibly slow and also incredibly nasty we were allowed leave the check station early. We filled out our sheets and left about 6.30 and we decided to stop in McDonalds in Hamilton on the way home. We grabbed our bite to eat and I drove home ever so slowly and carefully while again, the wind and rain battered the car and I was also on the look out for deer, that was something I did not want to hit with my Dad's car.
We got home and headed straight out to Walmart to get some meat before the cold comes and hits us. Very wet, very cold and very tired we got home. Elliot came over to see how our weekend went and once he left we went to bed.

A stunning Mule Deer that came through our Check Station.

I know a lot of you may not be okay with the fact these animals have been hunted and killed, as I did too before I got here. But here in Montana, there is great conservation efforts going into maintaining the numbers of these animals by issuing 'tags'. Hunters have to pay money for these tags, and this money goes to Conservation Efforts which helps to maintain a future for all of these animals. These tags also only allow hunters to hunt a certain species and age of an animal in a given area and are essentially a permit. This allows Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks to maintain steady numbers of Wildlife in these areas. The Check Stations are put in place to monitor these and make sure the hunters are using their tags in the right areas and to also put a stop to poaching. Poaching is the illegal hunting of animals whether it be wolves, deer, elk or bears. I didn't include the picture of the Black Bear that came through because he was pretty bloody and I didn't want to freak anyone out but if you wouuuuld like to see him, you can ask me and I'll happily send you the picture :P



Thank you so much again guys for reading my blog! I really do appreciate all of you who take the couple minutes out of your day to read it. Just goes to show my efforts going into this aren't going unnoticed, cause it does take a lot of time and energy into it. I know some days are boring but I don't want to exclude anything so everyone can say up-to-date as it's hard to keep in contact with everyone! I only have 5-6 weeks of blogging left before I leave Montana and go home for the Christmas Holidays so I'll be taking a break from blogging for then until I come back here for my second semester!

'Til next week,

- Shannen.