Dogs – Lessons from a Stone

My Kelpie, Kelpy

IMG_20190116_091335316 — Kelpy *(RIP 2021),* Roughly Two Months After Being Bitten on Our Central Texas Property by a 5 1/2-foot Western Diamondback Rattlesnake

Post Edited February 16, 2026

In this recently taken photograph (January, 2016) of my Australian Kelpie dog, Kelpy, there is a discernable scar running almost five inches from a point just below the left eye down to just underneath her left lower jawline. This scar of hers, something I can’t help myself from seeing everyday, is a constant reminder of her life and death struggle from a single, full-on rattlesnake envenomation and of the innate toughness of our beloved canines relative to us, mere human beings, as their compassionate caregivers and forever faithful companions. She took the hit delivered by a five-and-a-half-foot Western diamondback on Christmas night, 2016. I recall the event as if it were yesterday. I was in our upstairs loft quietly playing acoustic guitar with Kelpy lying at my feet. It had been a chilly, rain-filled Christmas day here in Central Texas. I’d spent the entire day at home alone with the company of our two dogs. My wife, Genie, had been visiting her relatives at the family farm in Cibolo, roughly an hour’s drive from our place. We have a beautiful house and a couple of outbuildings on some property seven miles west of the small town of Lockhart. Genie had gotten home earlier that evening and we enjoyed a late Christmas dinner. Afterward, she’d gone into our main living area to watch some TV while I retired to our upstairs loft to play guitar. The rain had let up perhaps fifteen minutes before the big event and I remember checking my phone for the temperature outside, which was 58 degrees and the time was 8:30 PM. A moment later I heard Sage, our wonderful Chow-mix, barking outside in the kennel which is connected to the back room of our house by way of dog-door. Sage is an extremely proficient watch dog and has a vocabulary of various growls, woofs, and barks ranging from a mild, low growl to a full-on, high pitched, three alarm bark! She continued on for perhaps five seconds before Kelpy rose from the bed, sailed down the steep wooden staircase…just about leaving sparks in her wake. At a full run I could hear her fly through the dog door as if it had all been done in one grand motion. It wasn’t five seconds later that I heard a shrill and troubled yelp and Kelpy reappeared in the house, frantic. She’s a rough and tumble alpha female if there ever was one, chock full of outdoor life experience at her then age of ten years. I’d never heard her in her life yelp in pain, nary even a slight whimper. I looked her over closely as two streams of blood had begun to pool just below her left eye. Like tears of blood, the crimson colored fluid began to trickle down the left side of her face and, on closer inspection, I could see two tell-tale puncture wounds a good inch and a half apart. Sage was still out in the kennel barking furiously when I ran out into the night after quickly flipping on the back porch light. Standing her ground just eight feet to my right, Sage was trying hard to point out the threat. But it was dark and the porch light left a surreal presence in the muffled fog as I looked and I listened for what was by now just a faint rattling in the leaves. It was cold and I’m certain the snake was by now tired and feeling every bit of the chill. Naturally, I was being cautious as all get-out but there had been no time to don my snake boots so I was tip-toeing around in an old pair of Merrell clogs and shorts. Aha! I spotted the snake, a big one for this locale and opened-up on it with my 9mm Ruger. After shooting the snake full of holes and removing its head with a five-foot garden hoe we keep on hand for precisely such duty, I finally had the chance to check Sage over. I turned again to make absolutely certain the snake wasn’t going anywhere without its head as I brought Sage inside to both better inspect her in the light and settle her. She was frothing at the mouth, lathered from the effects of adrenaline and salivary glands gone postal, but I found nothing…not even a scratch. In all that excitement she’d managed to keep both her head and her distance. It dawned on me that by the time Kelpy showed up the snake would have been completely riled. I feared that this was far more dire than a partial envenomation or dry bite warning snakes sometimes give.

By now, we, all the four of us, were inside with the headless snake left outside to be cleaned up later. Genie was on the phone with our vet who lives several towns distant and turned out to be unavailable. It was Christmas night, after all. After listening to his voicemail message we decided to call our secondary vet, a larger operation just eight miles away and in town. Amazingly, a live person picked up the phone and said they had one particular vet who’d been placed on on-call status for the holiday weekend. The answering service gave us the name and cell number of the vet and Genie immediately dialed her up. We were in luck and, while knowingly interrupting her own Christmas dinner, we were consumed by feelings of good fortune. A vet on Christmas night! Someone was smiling down upon us from on high. The vet, new to the clinic but a Baylor Veterinary School grad, met us thirty minutes later at the main clinic in Lockhart. Keeping Kelpy calm and as motionless as possible was easy…she knew full well where we were going and that papa was now in charge. Having spent ten years with this wonderful dog, she and I had crafted a way to communicate through body language, gentle and firm commands and, from early on, the uncanny ability to know what the other was thinking and going to do before doing it. Genie drove while I sat in the back seat of our SUV smoothing-over Kelpy’s coat and using gentle words in a soothing tone. Keeping her calm would help save her life.

We arrived just a few moments after our dedicated vet, each of us knowing it was going to be a long night. Amazingly, (because of the cold weather) there were two other dogs being treated for snake bite who’d arrived just an hour before we rolled-in. I carried Kelpy to the emergency room area of the clinic and walked along with the vet providing her with every relevant detail. From the moment of envenomation, just forty-five minutes had elapsed. We were darned lucky and we knew it. After I got Kelpy settled the vet and an assistant took over while I watched them go to work. While new to this clinic, our vet was moving deftly as if she and her assistant had been partnered-up for years. Once transfer of care had taken place I was told to corral my wife and head home for the night. The clinic doesn’t carry insurance for people in the emergency room on-site, only their beloved pets. I understood the rule but it would be the most difficult goodbye of my lifetime. They were doing all they could and viscerally I knew my dog was in good hands, but mentally I just didn’t want to leave knowing my dog might not make it through the night. Then logic began to take hold. It was now hovering around 11 PM and Genie and I, and Sage, could do no more for our sweet Kelpy. She was in the hands of professionals and what little time I did spend at the clinic that night, that fact had become abundantly clear.

Sleep came slowly but we were, the three of us, exhausted and I eventually drifted off. The vet had indicated that she’d be there all night by Kelpy’s side, administering antivenin, IV saline, and horse plasma. Over the millennia, horses have developed a tolerance for rattlesnake venom, so plasma taken from the blood of a donor horse has within it certain antibodies to quell the damage the venom would otherwise do. This is Texas and this clinic had been weened on snakebites.

The next morning came quickly and I drove up and ran into the clinic at precisely 6:30 AM. I sat and waited for what seemed a lifetime but in reality was less than twenty minutes at which time I was called back into the ER to see my dog. I was astonished at the size of her head and the open, gaping, and draining wound around her neck a full seven inches from the bite zone. The vet said that she’d taken a really potent bite but that the worst was over. Kelpy had made it through the hellish night. We talked and I conceded to leave Kelpy there for two more days and nights of round the clock care. The vet believed if we did so, if we gave her the best of care for a couple of days she’d pull through. The vet then allowed me to walk Kelpy outside in the neighboring grassy area to “go to the bathroom”. My poor dog. My heart sunk as I watched her once bright but now lackluster eyes meet mine. I could only hope. Hope was all I had. I took pictures of the gruesome sight which, to this day only a few others have seen, but I’ve never had the heart to show to my wife. Brutally grotesque. Though different, her bond with Kelpy is as strong as my own and they can be inseparable at times.

On day four I awoke early…somewhere close to 4:30 in the morning. I was anxious to see my dog for today was the day the vet had anticipated her release and I’d be taking her home. Again, I arrived at 6:30 AM and by 8 AM Kelpy had been discharged into my care once more. This tough, wonderful, creation of a dog had pulled through. I never doubted her…not for a minute. I put her on her favorite blanket in the passenger seat of my truck and we headed home for a joyous reunion. I’d cleaned up the snake’s remains before I’d gone to get Kelpy and tossed them in a cow pasture to be eaten by vultures just up the road a half mile from our home (the mess was gone by the following day). I pulled into the driveway, letting Genie and Sage out at the gate and Kelpy and I drove in. I helped Kelpy out of the truck and within seconds she ran through the house and out the dog door headed straight to where the nastiness had gone down. She sniffed around at the remaining blood spots and with Sage yielding her alpha sister a wide berth, Kelpy turned and as if nothing had happened and casually marked the spot. You’d have to know our beloved alpha female, Kelpy, to understand the significance of that mark. It meant that whatever happened during those four days after Christmas of 2016, not once did she forget who she was! And aside from the yelp when taking the bite, I never heard her whimper. She is thirteen now and is as tough, dominant, and willful as ever.

Kelpy – About a Year Prior to Tangling With Her Rattlesnake on Christmas Night, 2016

Edit: After living her sixteen adventure-filled years, we were forced to have Kelpy put down. She’d been treated for some form of liver cancer over the previous couple of years and had taken well to the medication. She remained happy and healthy until we could finally see that she was in pain and made the decision to have her euthanized, right here in our home. Her ashes sit alongside those of Sage, who passed at fifteen years of age, just a year later. The two dogs had grown up together in Colorado and had forged a powerful bond that goes beyond words. We enjoyed hundreds of trail runs and many other adventures together.

Backing Down: Not on my Worst Day!

Recently, I was forced to relearn an important lesson, a lesson that originated from within my DNA and reinforced many times over from numerous life experiences. I am sixty-four.

It began innocently enough while my wife was out walking our three dogs on a trail we’ve made that follows our fenceline on all four sides. She came in and told me of a fellow who was mowing the property just across the road. I had just had abdominal surgery to rid me of an undiagnosed infectious mass of fluid that had been growing behind my liver and had hospitalized me several times over the past two and a half years. I was just getting to the point where I could walk around with a cane but I hadn’t been able to walk outside for over a month and was unstable and still in a lot of pain.

Some Context Leading Up to That Day

The surgery I am referring to was the last stop on the train to resolve a serious illness that I had been battling for over two years. To say the least, it was an invasive surgery and involved shifting my organs to look for more infectious material, some of which had to be cut away. I lost a liter of blood and required a transfusion, both things unforeseen in anything the surgeon might run into while being able to finally view the extent of the problem. I did not know how it would have been possible for me to acquire such an obscure illness unless it was connected to an emergency gall bladder surgery that I had gotten several years before.

The gall bladder surgery was performed at one o’clock in the morning, sometime back in 2019, and not by a surgeon qualified to perform that type of surgery. After weeks of trying to get me to go, I was literally on death’s doorstep by the time my wife was able to get me in the truck and en route to the closest emergency room. It was only then that I learned of how bad off I truly was. My gall bladder had turned necrotic and the surrounding area was gangrenous. This led to an advanced case of sepsis. I didn’t know who or where I was and couldn’t name the president of the United States. After that woefully messy surgery I was hospitalized for nine days until my blood was cleared for release. As bad as the surgery and overall experience had been, I was thankful. There was no doubt that they had saved my life. It was my fault that the problem was allowed to progress to such a state.

Not long after returning home from the gall bladder surgery, there had been some signs that my innards were still in distress and my wife called the hospital surgeon’s office on a number of occasions to inquire about the pain and bloating I was experiencing again and was told that those were normal symptoms after a surgery like mine. After six months had passed, the pain had lessened but the bloating gradually continued until it looked like I was pregnant in the week leading up to an emergency, twenty-one day hospitalization in January of 2023. That stay included pumping four liters of nefarious, infected puss from my abdomen and then an “all hands on deck” rush to diagnose the root cause. By the time I went home, my blood had been studied ad nauseum, a cornucopia of cultures had been grown, I’d undergone every type of imaging there is, and still, I remained without a diagnosis. In other words, it was still with me and would be returning.

I was assigned to a lauded infectious disease doctor and went on a two year odyssey to diagnose the problem and, with some luck, save what was left of my life. Sooner or later , this infection was going to kill me, the bacteria were that pernicious. Without knowing where the fluid was coming from, there was no way to stop it from leaking into my abdomen inviting another round of infection and accelerated fluid buildup requiring three more trips to to hospital to chase down the infection and drain the fluid. At one point, I was married to an external fluid drain (an ugly bag and a catheter) for four months. There were three other drain installations but for just one to three months. During this time but unrelated (I think), I was diagnosed with high-grade bladder cancer. For the cancer, it’s been sixteen months and three surgeries and I’ll be in treatment for what looks like some time to come. It looked good for seven months, but I’d been told of its return just days before the incident.

It is all of this that I was carrying on my shoulders that day.

The Incident

Effectively, I had been unable to attend to our country home and property for about four years. For a perfectionist who’s always taken pride in taking care of my things, I’d begun to lose my mind. Because we have three wonderful dogs and an inordinate number of rattlesnakes on our Central Texas property, my biggest priority is in keeping the grass cut. If I don’t get to it in a few weeks, the brush begins to take hold and the native grasses will grow to three feet. It had been over a month since I’d been able to mow it with the field mower. I was about to bust with anxiety over not getting to it. But I’m the type of person who’s grown highly accustomed to doing virtually anything and everything myself. If you live in a subdivision, mowing isn’t that much of a chore, but on four acres of Texas brush country, it can be. You need the appropriate (expensive) equipment and there are lots of potential hazards to pay attention to.

I asked Genie to run over and see if the guy had time to swing by to discuss our place when he was done with his current job. I had a pit in my stomach and I hadn’t even spoken with him. It was in the heat of the day and there’s no way I could hobble around and show him everything. The main thing was whether he had a mowing setup that could handle tall grass and undulating, somewhat rough terrain. Though it looks pretty when mowed, it’s not a golf course. His equipment checked out and, since I knew he didn’t have insurance for his one-man business, I asked him “If you’re out there and you somehow have a failure with your equipment, does that come out of your pocket, or mine?”. He said what I was hoping he’d say, “Mine…I would never…”. Since I couldn’t show him the property and the potentially now hidden obstacles, I showed him pics of the various sections of the property so he could see what it looked like just after a mowing. This is where he grumbled something like “I don’t need to see no stinkin’ pictures”. I quizzed him on it and, in an aggravated voice said “I’ve been mowing for ten years” and yada yada. I told him that “that had nothing to do with it and that he’d realize the relevancy after he mowed over one of three old, six inch stumps obscured by the now tall grass…stumps that I had pointed out clearly”. He grumbled some more as he walked towards his truck. I almost put it to an end there. He sat on the tailgate of his truck wasting time. I said, ‘do you want the job or not?” He said yes but that he’d first have to run the few miles down the road to get gas. It was 99 degrees and I could see the signs of heat exhaustion creeping up on him. I suggested that, since he’d just done that job across the way that I’m sure he was feeling the heat and probably pretty tired and that he show-up in the morning, fueled up and ready to go. I asked him again for a price, either a not-to exceed or an hourly rate so I could figure out how much I was willing to spend. He got in his truck to get gas and said he’d give me a price when he got back and drove away.

With the surgery and ridiculously painful recovery, I hadn’t been out in the mid-day heat (approaching 100 deg that day) and I could feel my strength waning, but I think I was the better off between us. I went into the house to wait and it was right at an hour when he got back from gassing-up just three miles down the road. I didn’t mention it, only asked for a price. He still didn’t have one so, without wanting to over-expose myself with this guy, I offered to pay him $120 for three hours and we’d take a look and adjust things if necessary. I showed him my rig and said that it takes me between three and four hours to do the whole property. His machine had a heavy duty deck and actually had the same engine as mine.

After two and a half hours he came back and loaded his machine before we did our agreed upon walk around. He said he was done and had been out there for five hours. This wasn’t the first bald-faced lie I’d heard that day. No one had ever been brazen enough to look me in the eye and expect me to acquiesce to such a lie. That was it. My patience, which had already been tested to its absolute limit that day, left my body and I felt something very powerful take its place: immediate and unadulterated adrenaline-assisted anger. He’d already been speaking to me in a much louder, more aggressive tone for the past twenty minutes. I kept my tone cool and unflustered, with each word being spoken firmly and measured in terms of not elevating the sound of my voice to match his. I kept my wits and readied myself for what was coming. “That’s the third of three seriously bad lies you’ve told me today and all I want from you now is to pack up your shit and get the fuck off of my property…NOW!” He approached me so that his face was no further than six inches from my face. He started to scream something and no sooner than his spittle hit my face, I shoved him so hard that he barely stood, backpedaling at speed to keep from falling until he slammed into the open driver’s side door and crumpled to the ground. The distance from where I shoved him to where he now lay was between twelve and fifteen feet. I don’t know where that power came from. It was a power I had known during my more youthful years but power that shouldn’t have been there before the stitches from my surgery had been pulled and I was still half out of it from the immense abdominal pain which remained. At first, I thought I might have opened the surgical wound or tore an abdominal muscle, but there was no time for that now. I heard “I’d come right back at you if you didn’t need that cane and hadn’t just gotten out of the hospital!”. I replied “don’t let that stop you!” He threatened me by saying “I should go home, grab my gun. and come back and put some holes in you!” I laughed and said “try me! Or, how ‘bout the one that I’m sure is in the glove compartment of your truck, eight feet away.” This is one of the poorest counties in Central Texas, and both open and concealed carry are legal here. You can bet that people of all persuasions either have a gun on their person or, if they don’t plan on being far from their truck, there’ll be one under the seat or in the glove box. He didn’t respond but just sat there, propped up by his truck door huffing and puffing until I walked over to him “Now, unless you want to continue, I told you to get the fuck off of my property!”, but, I added “I don’t ever want to see you out here again, you dumb son-of-a bitch!” After getting into his truck, I gave him $140 because it was hot, and he was very hot, and I was still happy to have the mowing checked off my list for a week, or two. Plus, temporary emotions aside, it was the right thing to do. If he had finished it, I had planned on giving him $200, which is the amount he said he would have changed as he peeled out of our driveway, flipping me off and screaming obscenities as he went. This was a sixty-eight year old man acting no differently than a four year old. Somewhere during the scuffle, he yelled “twenty years ago, me and some brutha’s used to kick serious ass on white boys like you!” I had not wanted to bring race into the conversation, so I let it go unchallenged. But I couldn’t help myself from laughing in his direction.

After all was said and done, I went inside only to have my wife castigate me for “losing my cool”. I told her that I wouldn’t consider myself a man if I hadn’t. My insides were churning over what had just happened. She hadn’t been able to hear my voice but had heard his as she watched from the front door. I said “that ought to tell you something.” When he got so far into my personal space, yelling at the top of his lungs, that by itself was enough for me to legally defend myself. He obviously didn’t realize it, but getting that close to me had put me at an advantage and being up against my chest gave me numerous options and some strong leverage. The danger had grown to be imminent and there was no more time for thinking, only acting by giving him the hardest shove I could muster in the condition I was in.

As a younger man, even into my fifties, I’d had more confrontations than I can count. A few were pretty serious, but, because of my back problems and health issues like I just described, my body has paid a steep price and I had lost more than half of my strength and mobility. For an athletic, forever on the move, and well conditioned guy, this has been very difficult to handle. There is no way to describe what your body and mind go through in the seconds before an imminently dangerous encounter with another human being. Every fiber of muscle is receiving all the adrenaline your adrenal glands can pump out. Primal chemicals are released from your brain and mind and body come together in a vastly heightened state, so much so that it would be impossible to not react with all the resources you can render. For me in my condition, I had no choice but to hold my ground, dispense with the cane and repel this person, hopefully hard enough to put an end to things and “defuse” the situation. It had been a long time since I’d experienced that kind of adrenaline rush and it felt damned good to feel so alive and in control! I actually told him as much and thanked him for his contribution.

After things settled and the house quieted, I told my wife that I was proud of the way I handled myself and wouldn’t change a thing except for listening to my gut during those hours earlier and asking him to leave before he even got started on the job. This was the lesson I was reminded of that day and will be my only regret from the day of the incident. After collecting herself and hearing me out, my wife apologized, said that she was proud of me, and thanked me for protecting our home and family, particularly in the condition I was in. Our family is comprised of she and I and our three wonderful dogs, whom I’m sure would have been only too pleased to have gotten a piece of this guy. All I had to do was call out to my wife to let them out. They would have heard the entire thing and been chomping at the bit the entire time. It never occurred to me because I’m sure I was wanting to keep them out of harm’s way. If there were a time for him to go for a gun, which I am certain was just a reach across his seat away, that would have been it.

What is that old expression, “all’s well that ends well”. That’s what it had boiled down to. Of course, it crossed my mind that he could very well show up at any time only this time it would have been with sons. buddies, or both, But, in the course of our not-so-friendly dialogue, I had left him with something to think about, and that was that nothing would make me happier than for him to come busting through my front door on the darkest of nights. He knew damned well that I’d be lying in wait with my own arsenal and dogs at the ready. I never mentioned having guns of my own. That wasn’t necessary. Everyone in these parts is well-armed. On top of that. I grew up around guns, hunting, and shooting. We were taught to never let-on about the family guns, even to good friends. There was no reason to and it only provides fodder for that information to fall into the wrong hands and gives those of the criminal sort a reason to break in and steal what you’ve got, and what they want. In the 70’s, long before people would do anything to get their hands on prescription drugs, gun theft was the root cause of many a break-in.

It’s over now and with any luck, I will never again have to deal with such an event. We live a quiet, extremely rural life and I intend to keep it that way.

Kelpy Reconnoitering Hermosa Canyon

Originally Posted on Quora

Circa 2008 Canon G-10

My beloved Australian Kelpie, “Kelpy”, as named by my then six year-old daughter. Kelpy and I were spending the 2013 archery elk season (end of August through end of September) in our favorite place, up high in the “Middle of Nowhere”, Southwest Colorado. Our camp was just 30-feet behind where this picture was taken.

What role do zoos and conservation groups play in helping increase the Dhole population, and are there any success stories?

Originally Written for Quora

I’m going to use this question about the dhole, a wonderful but little known animal that inhabits parts of Asia but is 75% absent from its original habitat, to make a point that no one seems to want to hear. The first thing I noticed in this National Geographic story are the words used to define the story category: “Photo Ark”. To me, that’s a great way to think about endangered species, particularly the ones that have little to no chance of recovering from their current status and made the Endangered Species list decades ago. To send out the message that Nat Geo is compiIing a photographic ark obviously means something. I have posted a couple of screenshots so you can read the basics on the dhole and see what they look like. Like most caniids, I am drawn to their handsome, wolf-like features. Though wildly different upon initial inspection, the dhole has similar features to all sorts of wild dogs found all over the world. I must admit that while I have at least a general understanding of most canids, sort of a “working knowledge”, other than the name “Dhole”, I knew very little about them as a species.

Of course, the second thing that struck me was just how few of them remain, 4,500 to 10,500 individuals. This is roughly half the number of African Wolf Dogs which, as the name suggests, can be found in South Africa and just a handful of countries to the north. It’s historic range was throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Dozens of creatures are down to similar numbers, numbers that have been holding onto existence using tooth and claw and every bit of their instinct to thrive when conditions are stacked heavily against them. How would we view our own chances if there were just 20,000 of us remaining following what could have only been apocalyptic events to bring our kind to the knife’s edge of being? With this and other posts, I’m trying my darndest to wrap some “shock and awe” perspective around what’s happening to the planet. It is abundantly clear that even with biological scares like (in recent history) HIV, Influenza, COVID, Ebola, Bird Flu, Hantavirus, West Nile, and on, that we’ve become numb to the potential for something as big to come along as the Black Plague (aka Black Death, 1346 – 1353) which killed 25 to 50 million people in just seven years. Granted, times have changed, but COVID should be a reminder of how we had to enlist the help from doctors and scientists from all over the world to bring to bear their collective knowledge to come up with a solution while the clock was ticking on something which quite easily could have been much worse. This clearly reflects the extents to which we will go to save ourselves but, even then, nothing seems to shake us as we look to others to save our lives.

Credit Wikipedia

Credit Wikipedia

If that same effort, say, over a six year period, were put into saving threatened and endangered species, I believe we could have turned things around for some of the most ecologically important species. It’s amazing what we can do when pressed hard for results.

In the mid-60’s, my grandmother took me the one of the larger zoos back East and even as a child of preschool age, I was imprinted by seeing what were clearly wild animals stuck in cages and steel and concrete mini-habitats. I went some thirty years before I took a chance because my girlfriend at the time had never been to a zoo and had a strong desire to visit one. I really liked this girl and thought I could set my feelings aside for one day. I know that most people don’t feel the same way I do on many fronts. Besides, I was just a young child during that first ill-fated foray. Who was I to stop her from having an experience that millions of others enjoy every year?! The Denver Zoo was known for having a very good wolf exhibit and I had been fascinated by wolves for my entire life, reading numerous books and catching every documentary I could find on the subject. I thought I could “tough it out” for one day at one of the most progressive zoos in the country. But almost from the get-go as we were buying tickets, I began to get “cold feet”. I had lied to myself in an effort to make someone else happy. I managed to fake my way through the other exhibits (as I did not wish to have a negative impact on her experience) until we got to the wolf enclosure and, as much as I wanted to spend a few moments admiring them, I began to shed some uncontrolled tears while doing my best to quell my reaction and keep her from seeing it (I must be a decent actor because she didn’t notice).

What got to me the most was due to simply knowing too much about wolves to see them in captivity. They are an iconic symbol of everything that is pure and wild. The alpha male was probably around six years old and 120 pounds of sheer and magnificent masculine beauty. Predominantly light grey and white (grey wolves, aka, timberwolves come in a variety of colors from various shades of grey to reddish brown to all white, and all black) he was what most people think of when they hear the word “timberwolf”. It was just my girlfriend and I at the exhibit and he and I locked eyes as I watched him pace back and forth on a 6″ deep x 12″ wide groove the wolves had cut by pacing along the fence line at the front 30-feet of the enclosure. These are animals that have home ranges of up to 500 square miles and regularly travel between 20 and 50 miles in a single day. Talk about pent up energy which leads to stress, anxiety, and depression. His angst was palpable as was, I’m certain, my own. Today, some thirty years later, I can still sense his pieycing, highly intelligent eyes looking straight into my soul. I distinctly recall marveling at his masterfully efficient gait as he paced. I honestly believe he could feel my sadness and empathy for his situation. I require a lot of personal space to be comfortable and mile upon mile of open space in order to recreate and live happily. As much as I wanted to stay and observe both he and his incredible pack, we were there for just ten or fifteen minutes. When we were done at the zoo, we spent the evening having dinner and talking about a new class my girlfriend was about to start teaching. She was a chemistry professor at a Christian college in Denver. I do not remember what it was that ended the relationship other than the fact that I’d soon be moving to Durango but we weren’t together long enough for her to hear of my aversion to zoos. She had had a good time and that was all that I had cared about. The someday for telling her my genuine feelings never came. My current and by any and all means, final wife, and I feel almost exactly the same about wild things and wild places and our mutual love of nature is one of our primary connections. We prefer dogs to kids.

It has been another thirty-plus years and I’ve not been to another zoo, not even to take my daughter when she was young but all too impressionable. She’s twenty-six now and I don’t believes she’s gone to one of her own volition. She is her father’s daughter. The same goes for aquatic theme parks, though her mother once took her to the grand opening of a Sea World, near San Antonio. While knowing of my feelings on the subject, she took our then seven year-old daughter without informinng me of her plans (taking her out of state without informing the other parent was a clear breech of our parenting plan). Suffice it to say, it had the desired impact on me. What some people will do in the name of pure vindictiveness.

Between zoos and many of the conservation programs which work with them, we have literally researched many important species to death (or, followed them as they made their debut onto the threatened or endangered species lists) with just five to thirty years remaining on their respective clocks. Make no mistake, I am all for research and education, but when it comes to the treatment of the creatures involved, there must be limits.

I want to be clear. I am certainly not opposed to conservation programs. That would be nothing short of just plain stupid. They need to continue but without a reliance on zoos. Almost like the separation of church and state, they should continue on parallel path with more aggressive conservation efforts put in place to expedite the issues around key species that are almost gone and putting a real end to poaching and outright slaughter, and habitat loss as it relates to prioritized species. As an example, the American Wild Horse and the African Wild Dog. rhinos, highland gorillas, the Big Cats, wolves, elephants, and, of course, the dhole. These are but a few of the species that can still be salvaged but action needs to take place in the present, not after we’ve researched these animals for yet another ten years. I’m sorry, but they may no longer be here to study. Education and study efforts should be ongoing but targeting the next wave of species that are clearly in trouble, mostly having to do with loss of habitat. Establish new programs surrounding the next wave of creatures that will one day soon require intervention. I see it as a two-pronged approach. Long-term research and education on creatures not yet in their 11th hour, and short-term aggressive conservation measures to provide absolutely necessary aid to species in dire need of our help. In the end, we cannot save every species but we can still save many. We just don’t have the kind of conservatiion programs in place to ramp things up as it becomes necessary to save the most endangered species today. And last but not least, these programs must be afforded “teeth” so that when it becomes necessary to fight for the animals they’re trying to protect they are able to react with more than just words.

For the sake of discussion, let’s say that my childhood reaction to zoos and what I think of them is valid. I realize that zoos have enabled us to study many species that would otherwise be diffucult to study in the field, but for how long and at what cost? After so many decades -long studies have aready gathered the necessary information surrounding the long-term survival of many keystone animals, I believe we’ve got to put an end to zoos. We are long past the point of diminishing returns. If we take all of what I’ve said above as fact, we need to take an urgent look at this huge and amorphous issue and put some definition around it. To take a sound, pragmatic approach to mitigating the vast expanse of damage we’ve already done. We need to set worldwide protocols and place definitive timelines (deadlines) around the species that are at the highest risk but could still be saved. And. we need to be able to fire back when fired upon!

This is extremely difficult for me to even say, but in looking at wildlife conservation as a whole, there simply isn’t enough time remaining relative to current funding levels and tactics to save every species on the endangered species list. It’s already too late for certain species. We need to take a much more pragmatic view based on what is truly possible. What could be accomplished if we went at this global problem much more aggressively and if we did all the right things from this point forward and started today?! We won’t know until we engage the problem head-on, in a highly structured manner, and provide hard push-back to anyone or anything that gets in the way.

In the meantime, we can look for the most proactive wildlife programs currently operating and find out what we can do to help expedite things in real time with an emphasis on the word “NOW”! When it comes to species that have been on the endangered species list for decades, there simply isn’t enough time remaining for what amounts to political diplomacy.

Please pass this along as it applies to some of the spaces you follow or contribute to.

Thank you.

How do different hunting practices impact the behavior of wildlife in their natural habitats?

A Shorter Version is Posted on Quora

Archery Elk Season, 2013
Various Pics of camp trailer, the San Juan Mountains, me and my partner, Kelpy

My background includes fifty-three years experience starting with hunting whitetails (both rifle and bow) with my father in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York, not far south of the Canadian border. The year was 1973 and I was just twelve years old. I would go on hunting with my dad throughout my teen and college years until I moved to Colorado after graduation where I continued hunting for both deer and elk. I would alternate years, hunting archery season one year and go rifle the next. But I missed numerous seasons due to conflicts with my project load at work. I remember the sacrifice and the strong yearning to be in the woods. That feeling would stick with me for months.

That first year hunting in the West was in 1984 and I was just twenty three. I already had eleven years under my belt when I began my hunting journey as an adult in the best physical condition of my young life. And I did so as a soloist with just a few exceptions. Not that I would have changed anything, but my career in engineering meant that there would be times when I couldn’t breakaway. For me, that was just part of the game if you wanted to hold on to a good job in the mountains of Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah. I hunted big, rough country alone, without the aid of horses or an ATV, and would regularly cover eighteen or twenty miles in a day. For a long time, I was a competitive mountain athlete and was constantly training for an upcoming event or for the simple pleasure of being at the top of my game. Forever waiting for hunting buddies to catch up was not my idea of “fun” and I learned quickly that I enjoyed the solitude far more than the companionship – with the exception of being with my father and later, my nephew when he came of hunting age. Other than those exceptions, I would spend the rest of my hunting days going it alone.

I have hunted in every kind of weather Colorado can serve-up. Snow storms were my favorite. As an accomplished alpine and backcountry skier, I’ve skied hundreds of miles in the backcountry of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming and was more than comfortable in deep snow and temperatures ranging from ten degrees to twenty below. Horizontal rain, sleet, hail were no fun, as was the case on warm days, but they didn’t keep me in camp. In Colorado, archery seasons are nearly a month long, taking place from late August to late September and some years, it doesn’t cool down until a couple of weeks into the season. This meant hiking around at or above treeline shouldering a twenty-five pound pack and sweating through my shirt and hunting pants and having to stop once or twice a day, strip down, and hang my clothes to dry. I’d put on another layer to thwart getting chilled while my clothes were drying. This was just part of staying safe and it’s so dry in Colorado, that the drying process would typically last no longer than twenty minutes. Time for a sandwich and I’d be on my way again. For the first ten, or so, years, I had entire areas pretty much to myself but, sometime in the early 90’s, the Colorado Division of Wildlife, in its infinite wisdom, crammed a two week long muzzleloader season into the last two weeks of archery. Muzzleloading had become a trend to be reckoned with, bringing thousands of additional hunters and their money into the state each fall. While growing in popularity, archery hunters quickly became the minority and with the muzzleloaders growing in such numbers, many of whom were from out of state, I began to feel pressed for space. In came the mega-travel trailers and ATV’s along with groups of hunters ranging from four to a dozen. Many of these guys waited and looked forward to their hunting trips all year long (I couldn’t blame them) and their presence in, what were just a few years earlier, wilderness settings made it feel more like a school playground than a wild place where large, wild creatures roamed freely. Back then, when it was archery only, there were seldom enough archery hunters in a given hunting unit to have any sort of long term impact on the animals that called these places home. Often, I could hunt for days before seeing another hunter. In retrospect, it was the end of an era. A time in my life that I’m thankful to have had. I’m now sixty-four and have no one left except for my eighty-five year old dad who remembers these times in the way I do. He agrees and has stated that, for all of the same reasons, he had it even better than I did, hunting for most of his active years well before the woods were full of people and the sounds of trucks and ATV’s everywhere, and some bonfire party just a few hundred yards from what either of would consider an ideal camp.

Hunting in Colorado and many other Western states has become a huge industry. In a few states, hunting and fishing is the primary breadwinner for the state and it is the means by which many small western towns exist. The woods have become super-saturated with the sheer magnitude of hunters such that the deer and elk have changed their movements in order to avoid the mass onslaught of people roaming the woods with guns and blaze orange every autumn. The elk can no longer be found in or near their historical places, places they called home for centuries during this time of year, which included mating season (also known as “The Rut”). One reason that I’ve always enjoyed bow-hunting over rifle hunting is simply the bow and how quiet it is. Additionally, it makes hunting much more challenging than if one were toting a rifle. With a bow, it’s not unusual to shoot and miss but not scare your intended target in the slightest as opposed to the ensuing chaos a shot from a high-powered rifle can bring. The gun shots are typically followed by the sound of ATV’s and trucks driving around on the network of Forest Service access roads in an attempt to locate the downed or injured animal. Once the shooting starts with muzzleloader season in mid-September, most of the wildlife in any given hunting area all but moves out, often seeking refuge on the private lands below and staying there for several months or, depending on the location and the inclination of the individual landowners, the animals might stay straight on through to the following spring.

Rather than descend en masse with the main herds, splinter groups comprised of fifteen to twenty, up to thirty individuals will move into heavily treed (often referred to as “dark timber”) and steeper and more rugged terrain on north facing slopes (to escape the remaining warm days) until driven downward as the early, heavy snows, and cold temperatures begin to encourage them to move down low enough to survive the winter and any remaining hunters. It is only after hunter-pressure ceases in mid-Dembember that they again move about more feely to get to better sources of food and warmer temperatures associated with dropping a couple thousand feet in elevation.

What I haven’t mentioned but is a tremendously important factor in the survival of the species is the major interruptions that occur during the critical time of breeding season which takes place (approximately) from mid-September and runs through a large portion of October. This is where things get complicated and the long-term impacts from hunting can be seen by comparing the health of the gene pool from forty or fifty years ago to that of today. Because these results vary depending on where a particular herd is being studied, the topic warrants a much more thorough analysis than I can present here but I may make an attempt in future writings. Suffice it to say that there has been an overall deleterious effect due to hunting pressures and differing herd management protocols from state to state. I believe it has gone so far as to become a very big example of animal cruelty. Imagine you and your chosen mate attempting to do just that while being shot at and chased for weeks on end, never afforded the luxury of stopping and remaining in one place for long enough to be successful in this primally driven endeavor. Now imagine what it must be like for a mature, dominant bull elk to marry with as many females as he can, all the while being challenged by other bulls on top of being shot at…for up to two months a year! By the time the rut is over, the cold snows and winds of winter take over while many of these bulls are a hundred pounds underweight and too stressed to survive yet another Rocky Mountain winter.

Unfortunately, after spending thirty years in Colorado, I had the need to relocate with my wife to Central Texas. We found a place far out in the country on a slice of land and live a good life here with our three dogs. My last hunting trip was to Southwest Colorado with my dog, Kelpy, for the whole of archery elk season in 2013. I’d not hunted there in several years and in that brief period of time, hunting as I had known it for so many years had come to an end. I’d hunted this same area in 2010 but it seems that it had been “discovered’ during the three years I’d been gone. I got in there a couple of days before the season opened to find a good, out of the way place to camp, well hidden off the Forest Service access road. I was roughly thirty-five miles in on that road, and the country it serviced was steep and uninviting. My dog and I spent a wonderfully quiet night under the stars. The next day would be a long one, hiking some 20+miles reconnoitering the area. I located some elk about ten miles in from camp and observed them for a couple of hours before heading back. By now, there were a number of other camps within a few hundred yards of ours.

All things considered, this wasn’t too bad. You couldn’t see my campsite from anywhere on the road, and I sensed that no one knew we were in there. The elk I spotted weren’t accessible by road or ATV and were far enough away that it would be unlikely that any of these guys would get that far off the trail I’d used to get within five miles and the next five were gotten only by hiking off-trail. I was well prepared and knew the area well. I spent the next three weeks hiking out in the early morning after I had taken Kelpy on our run, and back an hour or two after dark. As I had expected, the first week was almost too warm to hunt as the animals wouldn’t be moving around much and mostly remaining bedded down. The next week brought torrential rains and I hunted mornings but spent afternoons with Kelpy in my military tailer reading and catching up on rest. I wanted to be ready when the weather broke, which it did for a couple of days when I was able to call-in a couple of smaller bulls. From the tracks leading in and out of the area, I knew there was one big bull in there, amongst a four and a five point and around a dozen cows, spikehorns, and yearlings.

I would get just three days and three opportunities at the medium-sized bulls, and then two days of snow followed. The temperature dropped a good twenty degrees and I hunted through the storm being careful to stay on a perimeter of a couple hundred yards. What I was waiting for was another break in the weather, which came along with eight inches of cold, dry snow on top of mud from the rains, which had saturated the ground. I had just two days left and now that I had my weather and the clock was ticking fast, it was time to employ some more aggressive tactics. I would slip in closer letting out a good close-range bugle and a lost cow chirp. I got some cow chirps in return and could hear what I knew was the big bull approach toward my position, which I changed before he got too close. I had a clean shot at sixty yards but thought I could bring him in closer. I let out some grunts and that lost cow chirp, and that did the job. It was getting dark quickly as he circled a bit while at about fifty yards but much of his body was now obscured by a bunch of deadfall…maybe six or seven downed fir trees. I stayed put, waited for as long as I could before darkness descended. Forty yards but no clear shot. Right about then (this is a situation to always be aware of) I was “made” by a couple of curious cows checking on the lost cow call. I would have heard them were it not for the freshly fallen snow. I don’t believe they even saw me at first but the evening breeze had gone from being in my favor, to swirling just the littlest bit. I’m pretty sure they’d winded me until they saw me draw back in the direction of the bull in case he somehow presented me with a shot. He’d picked his way through the deadfall up to about thirty five yards, turned and ran in the opposite direction, as did the cows. I was crestfallen, with nothing to do but go over it in my mind while making my way uphill and back towards camp. Going for a big bull during archery season is more miss than hit, so the turn of events hadn’t surprised me. While I didn’t beat myself up over it, I was bothered by it enough that instead of using my one remaining day, I decided that I was done for the year. I was exhausted and may well have run into trouble getting an animal out on the off-chance that I did shoot something. It wouldn’t have been a smart thing to do.

A huge saving grace, my forever best friend, Kelpy, was happy to see me stagger back into camp. We embraced for a moment before getting ourselves fed and going on our nightly walk. I’d played it through in my mind on the long and dark hike back to camp. Relative to the circumstances, I had made no mistakes. Don’t get me wrong, I have made a number of mistakes when in-close with large bulls during past archery seasons but had learned something during each of those encounters. Downing a large bull like that one was is no mean feat. So many obstacles to overcome just to have a chance at one. He was a big-bodied six by seven of probably seven or eight years. That’s a long life for a any bull found on public lands during hunting season.

Depending on where you are in the Western US, several things have impacted the relative livelihoods of various wildlife over the many years of hunting and game management practices. Different states manage game animals in different ways and certain states are fairing better than others. While Colorado has the overall largest number of elk that call it home, the herd as a whole is not as healthy as places like Idaho and Arizona, but I’m not an expert on land use. Administering conservation practices against huge revenue generating fish and game activities on millions of acres of land with overlapping jurisdictions between the state wildlife agencies, the USDA Forest Service and the Federal Bureau of Land management) is a huge and highly complicated job. But the statistics taken over many years strongly indicate that some wildlife management practices work far better than others. Otherwise, the health of our country’s deer and elk populations wouldn’t be so different when comparing big game states against each other. The only thing that stands in the way of each state adopting the best overall strategies to maintain healthy individual animals and appropriately sized herds is money. As with most things, there is a strong countering relationship between managing for quality and managing for quantity. In my opinion, Colorado sells far too many elk tags to have a sustainable, healthy herd, and the overall health of Colorado’s elk has been in decline for decades. States that place more emphasis on herd quality don’t sell more tags than their herds can sustain over a long period of time.

Another significant change that I’ve witnessed over the years with elk is the amount these animals are verbally active. Hunters use various calls to get the elk communicating with them in an attempt to call their quarry into shooting range. The most exciting part of calling is in learning how to call a big, mature bull from where he is, perhaps, three or four hundred yards distant and, while continuing to call, use that little bit of time to get yourself situated and prepared to shoot should the opportunity arise. The idea is in getting your bull so focused on fending off this particular challenging bull (you) that he momentarily drops his guard and approaches straight towards you, as you draw your bow and launch a well placed shot. This is probably one of the single most captivating moments in all of outdoor sports, the feeling that you’d just accomplished what you set out to do at the beginning of the season.

During my last few hunting seasons, I began to hear an unusual trend and, by the time this season rolled by, I noticed that the elk were barely “talking”, that there was much less vocalizing than in any of my prior hunting seasons. With so many people calling or attempting to learn, the elk have become much more selective in what they discern as genuine, or false. It should be obvious that the time to learn is well before the season begins. All it takes is one bad call and the elk you’re after may choose to vacate the area, leaving you and your fellow hunters high and dry. There are many types of calls on the market but, in my opinion, reed calls can be the best. You just slide the little disk into your mouth and learn to use it such that you seldom let out a suspicious call. It can take years of practice not only in terms of the technical aspect , but in learning enough about why, when, and how elk communicate to know the when’s and why’s as to your own calling. As gratifying as “talking with the elk” can be, the fact that they’ve all but ceased must have farther reaching implications that don’t bode well for these animals. Imagine the disruption to humankind if we could no longer communicate using verbal language, even if it were limited to a couple of months a year. And that’s assuming they revert back to normal behavior once the combined hunting seasons come to an end. I would guess that that’s not nearly the case.

These things have conspired to make elk hunting much less enjoyable (at least for me) than it was fifteen years ago. It has bothered me enough to call an end to my years as a hunter. For years, affluent hunters have been paying large fees, including the cost of highering a guide and paying for a private lands hunt that they find to be the most desirable. Game processing is typically included. The pay-hunts like these don’t interest me and even if they did, I don’t have the kind on money to afford the associated $5K to $15K, or more, for a tag that would only be good at the game ranch I had chosen. While archery hunts of this nature have their place and have success rates of seventy-five percent, a public lands archery hunt averages around twenty percent. But, for me, I put more emphasis on the quality of the total experience and refuse to pay someone else to take me to the elk and do so enough times that I finally get my bull. I wouldn’t do it if you paid my way.

To have an opportunity like I had just a day before season’s end was a thrill I would not trade for a large bull on an expensive paid hunt. As a wonderful bonus, I had brought along my best friend, my dog, Kelpy, with whom to share the experience. That put my trip over the top! After driving down into Cortez, getting a hotel, cleaning up, and getting a good night’s rest, we were on our way home with just 1,670 miles to go! I am forever grateful for my years of roaming Colorado before it evolved into one big “sacrificial park” (where everyone goes so that other places may remain pristine).