Touching the Wild Read online

  Eventually, however, you may discover that you have in some way been acculturated into the society of another species, and you are then afforded a most privileged access to the animals’ vision of the world. You begin to see the ecology from their perspective—from their point of view. Your human presumption of imperial authority over the landscape may be lost—you become just another rightful constituent, and, by example, you begin to tread lightly. This is an account of such a relationship.

  P A R T I

  Some Interesting Mule Deer I Have Known

  C H A P T E R O N E

  In the Beginning

  Slingshot Ranch, early spring.

  Leslye and I live on an old Wyoming homestead ranch that lies on the eastern foothills of the southern Wind River Mountains, several miles south of Lander. The ranch was first established in the 1880s and is often referred to as the old Corbett place, and in more recent years it has been known as the Slingshot Ranch. Ellamae Corbett, the first schoolteacher in the pioneer community of Lander, is known to have lived here, and her old ramshackle log house remains in disrepair, partially dug into the hillside above the cliff face.

  Homesteads were established during this period in 120-acre increments and expanded by the gradual acquisition of surrounding lands, as people chose to sell or abandon their places. Located on the lower slopes of a rather prominent feature known as Table Mountain lying southwest of Lander, the ranch house, corrals, and buildings rest just above a cliff face that overlooks a small canyon and the creek that flows through the drainage known as Deadman Gulch.

  Deadman Gulch inherited its name from an unfortunate incident that occurred just down the draw, in which three white men on a freight wagon traveling from South Pass to Lander in 1870 were apparently attacked by a war party of Sioux. The three mutilated bodies were discovered by later travelers, along with a broken wagon and a team of missing horses. According to the report issued from Fort Brown, which lay within the boundaries of present-day downtown Lander, the three men climbed into a wolf den on the edge of the draw at the approximate confluence of Deadman Gulch and Anesi Draw, engaging the Indians in a vicious battle. Judging by the hundreds of expended rifle cartridges, the men must have put up a good fight until they eventually ran out of ammunition. The three mangled bodies were retrieved and, with little ceremony, immediately interred close to the fort. While workers were making improvements on Lander’s Main Street in the early 1900s, they stumbled on the grave containing the remains of the three men. One of the skeletons had a steel wagon hammer driven handle-first all the way through the head. The skull was retrieved with hammer still embedded and now rests permanently in the Lander Pioneer Museum.

  We moved onto the Slingshot Ranch about seven years ago in the spring of 2006. The Slingshot was so named by Nan Slingerland, who bought the place as a “satellite ranch” to provide supplemental autumn grazing for her herd of cattle. Nan and her late husband Henry owned the famous historic Red Canyon Ranch, which was eventually sold to the Nature Conservancy in the late 1990s. The conservancy now operates the ranch as an ideal, environmentally sustainable cattle operation. Nan retains enough land from the original fifty-thousand-acre ranch to continue running a viable herd of red Angus cattle. Her operation lies at the mouth of a spectacular glacial canyon where the Little Popo Agie River spills out of the southern Wind River Mountains. From our place we can see the high northern rim of the canyon, and Nan considered that our place was about a “rifle shot” away—hence the name “Slingshot.” I met Nan and Henry many years ago, and I was employed as a working cowboy and managed their Red Canyon Ranch during the early 1980s; after I moved on, we maintained a friendship for many years.

  After my years of involvement with the Wyoming bighorn sheep study in the northern Wind River Mountains from 2000 to 2007, I decided to again make Wyoming my permanent home. I immediately called Nan from northern Florida, where I have lived for most of my life. I inquired whether one of her old bunkhouses might be available until I could find more permanent accommodations—there was a dead silence on the phone. Then she cautiously asked, “Who have you been talking to?” I innocently said, “No one,” but, as it turned out, the old homestead and house on the Slingshot Ranch had been vacated just the day before! After discussions about some form of eerie fate being at work, she said it was not only available but, apparently, “meant to be.” Leslye and I moved in immediately, and the ranch became home to us and Leslye’s two horses, Lilly and Gum Drop. Eventually realizing that we “belonged” to the Slingshot, Nan graciously agreed to sell us the operation a couple of years later.

  The Slingshot is located a mile and a half from the highway at the dead end of a county road, and we are the last place up on the lower slopes of the mountain. Here the “Gulch” is contained by sandstone canyon walls, and our old house is perched a couple hundred feet back from the rim of a roughly vertical cliff face that rises sixty feet above the creek below.

  When choosing a place to live, I find that it is always best to base my decision on the quality of my most immediate neighbors—not necessarily the folks living more than a half-mile away on nearby ranches (all great people, by the way)—but the neighbors who will be living outside my door. We immediately recognized that the Slingshot was richly endowed with fine neighbors of all varieties. True, we had good irrigation rights, a deep well with potable water, and great hay meadows with gentle inclines that will roll a tractor over only once in a while. But it could be said that we fell in love with this old ramshackle ranch because of its rare ecology and teeming wildlife—definitely not because of the economic prospects of the ranching industry, God knows. The diverse ecology of the draw, the creek below, the surrounding sandstone cliffs, and the sage brush slopes that rise into the timbered mountains above all provide a rich diversity of habitat types, with a huge variety of vegetation for browsing and cover and, predictably, a corresponding abundance of animal life. Furthermore, old ranches and the irrigation they provide often create an island effect, as they establish a relatively lush refuge. After more than one hundred years, the house and compound are now surrounded by a small but well-established stand of ancient cottonwood, box elder, elm, and willow trees. Much of the space in and around the yard, as well as the understory between the larger trees, is filled with tangled thickets of fruiting trees and shrubs. Wyoming’s first commercial apple operation was introduced on the present-day Slingerland Ranch, and I would suspect that some of the old trees on the Slingshot may have originated from original varieties planted in the 1870s. The rows of large willows and cottonwoods that encircle the yard are surrounded by dense shrubs and volunteer fruit trees that produce crabapples and several varieties of plums, while two species of wild currant and gooseberry grow by the thousands. Dozens of hundred-year-old lilac trees and shrubs provide dense green cover in warmer months, and for weeks in spring their lavender and pink blooms fill the air with their intoxicating fragrance. This old place has, in fact, become a sanctuary for a diverse variety of plants and creatures large and small, four-footed and two.

  Leslye at the corrals with Gum Drop.

  Having always maintained feeding stations for birds and animals, I immediately installed bird feeders in the yard and was soon dumbfounded by the variety of species that lived in the immediate area or were seasonal migrants. Wyoming experiences a real winter, with temperatures falling to far below zero for several months of the year, so most summer bird residents are migrants. The fabulous orange, black, and white Bullock’s orioles tend their hanging basket nests in summer, until the young are well fledged, and then begin their long migration to South America a full month before cold weather begins to grip the Wyoming countryside.

  Three hundred cliff swallows arrive at the Slingshot, like clockwork, toward the end of June, immediately driving the freeloading English sparrows from the cliff-hanging, mud-pot swallow nests, and then begin repairs by collecting new mud from the creek. Egg laying begins within days. As soon as the members of the new generation are
fledged and become strong flyers, they fill the air in a great swarm every afternoon, receiving a crash course on collecting insects in flight. After a few brief weeks in late summer, and by some mysterious means, the signal is given, and all head south in one large migratory event—a full month before even a suggestion of cold weather arrives. Their departure is abrupt, leaving the late afternoon sky lonely and power lines barren, with only the company of nighthawks and winnowing snipe for consolation. We have nesting mallards on the creek and sandhill cranes on the wet meadow below the house, and, in early spring, Canada geese stand on the rim of the cliff in mated pairs and make a phenomenal racket every morning for an hour in some strange annual ritual that I have never fully understood, for their actual nesting sites are miles away. Pheasants, chukar quail, Hungarian partridge, and the threatened sage grouse all nest nearby and bring their broods to browse around the yard with regularity. Tree sparrows and white crowned sparrows pass through spring and fall, but blue grosbeaks and black-headed grosbeaks all nest nearby with two species of towhees. Cassin’s finches and their beautiful songs are common throughout summer, but the similar red house finches are year-round residents, as are the pine siskins. Dozens of red-winged blackbirds congregate in the yard throughout the day and tend their nests in the cattails down by the creek. Both ravens and magpies are year-round residents, with magpies nesting in the apple trees and in the scrubby willows along the creek. When an animal has been killed in the area, the ravens and magpies, along with one or two scavenging eagles, will always alert me. Few creatures die within a two-mile radius that I don’t know about within hours. There are multiple species of warblers that wander along the creek and venture into the yard with the golden-crowned kinglets. The area is graced with a relative abundance of lazuli buntings, with ten resident pairs of successful nesters last summer. Buntings and gold finches are with us throughout spring into early winter. Western and mountain bluebirds as well as barn swallows return each spring, and many are enticed to select our nesting boxes that dot the fences along the hay meadows.

  Cliff swallow nests on cliffs just below the house.

  Upon the arrival of the first heavy blanketing snowstorm of winter, when most other birds have moved far to the south, we fill our feeders and stand back, prepared for the onslaught. Black rosy finches, one of the rarest birds in North America, with one of the smallest home ranges, literally descend on the Slingshot by the hundreds. Fearless rosy finches are peculiar to the northern Rocky Mountains and are further distinguished by a year-round occupation of the remote timberline and alpine areas above ten thousand feet, preferring to nest on the alpine tundra with the pipets. Rosy finches are a blackish (or sooty), medium-sized, stocky bird with a contrasting pinkish, wine-colored iridescence that is unlike any color I have observed on any other species.

  Rosy finch visiting with the author. Photo by Dawson Dunning.

  After hundreds of attempts to photograph these brilliant birds that will eat seeds out of your hand, I have yet to get that definitive shot that captures the outrageous color on their wings and flanks. A blanketing winter storm will send them down from the high country in tight flying flocks of one hundred or more. Along with a few chickadees and redpolls, they feed ravenously for two or three days, until high winds liberate the snow that has enshrouded subalpine trees, and then, instantly, everyone is gone—back to the high country until the next big snow.

  Great horned owls are year-round residents that, along with the red-tailed hawks, successfully nest in the cliffs each summer just below the house. Sharp-shinned and Cooper’s hawks streak though the yard with predictability, often leaving only a telltale puff of feathers floating slowly to the ground. Northern shrikes are always nearby in cooler times, and appear to be more aggressive, persistent, and successful predators than the sharpies are. Harriers may be seen floating over the hay meadows, occasionally dropping into the grass to collect voles and deer mice, but suddenly disappear in the dead of winter. When many sensible raptors have migrated south during the coldest months, the Arctic tundra-nesting rough-legged hawks begin occupying the area—as these beautiful and exotic birds must find the balmy winter climate of Wyoming a haven from the true rigors of the far north. Although relatively large buteo hawks, they are considered to be inflexible “mouse obligates” and mysteriously manage to hover, dive, and then pull voles from the deep snow all winter. I also observe rough-legged hawks scavenging carrion throughout winter when opportunities arise. We also have golden and bald eagles nesting in the area, both year-round residents.

  Unlike other people who encourage and have a strong affection for these eagles, Leslye occasionally goes shrieking out into the yard during the day to scare them from the trees, crying, “Leave my bunnies alone!”—thereby proclaiming to all that we do not operate an eagle-feeding station on the Slingshot. On one occasion, we counted forty cottontail rabbits in the yard silhouetted on the moonlit snow, and we do what little we can to encourage their well-being. However, cottontails are the ultimate prey species, and the pendulum of their population swings widely. Like chipmunks, many of the bunnies have names and readily take horse cookies from Leslye’s hand down around the barn. Leslye has also cultivated a relationship with the remarkable rodent known as the pack rat, which often lives in accommodating rock shelters, but also loves old barns or derelict buildings. Large and beautiful rats with un-rat-like bushy tails, they are extremely intelligent and display a complex social life. Leslye can call a name, and a pack rat will emerge from a hole in a log wall of the barn, walk out onto Leslye’s lap, and casually take a horse cookie.

  Finally, in the dead of winter, the mighty goshawks descend from the high country to feed on quail, pheasants, and the Eurasian collared doves that frequent the ranch by the hundreds. Kestrels build their nest in a cavity within in a dead snag of a cottonwood outside the back door every year. However, until we began relocating the resident bull snakes, the little hawks never managed to fledge even one young bird.

  Bull snakes are important predators but are voracious feeders on nesting birds as well as their eggs and hatchlings. They are bold and aggressive, attacking large prey such as young magpies and kestrels with impunity. I once watched a large bull snake consume an entire nest of mallard eggs in a single meal. I relocated that snake over a half-mile away, and he was back cleaning up the remaining duck eggs in less than an hour! On another occasion, Leslye caught by hand a marauding bull snake with a distinctive tail scar at the entrance of a cotton-tailed bunny burrow by the barn. She then deposited the five-foot snake a half-mile away by our cattle guard out near the county road. Again, in one hour, the snake was back and trying to dine on the same nest of baby bunnies. We have found that these snakes must be taken miles away to confound their remarkable homing skills. Bull snakes are strikingly beautiful and even-tempered, occasionally approaching a shocking length of seven feet in this area.

  Leslye with Apple, the pack rat in the barn.

  The cliff face below the house and barn runs for half a mile up the draw and provides an almost infinite variety of cracks, fissures, and overhangs, as well as multiple small crevasses and caves. The higher overhangs provide protected vertical walls for hundreds of mud-pot cliff swallow nests. The many cracks, fissures, and small caves often provide a little moisture, shade, and anchorage for vegetation, making all manner of homes and nesting sites for a wide assortment of other animals. We have an abundance of “least” chipmunks that truly appear too small to exist, let alone propagate in such great numbers. They are industrious and fearless little creatures that spend much time around the house, where we provide a ready source of sunflower seeds on the porch. We commonly sit on the front porch in the evening watching all the activity in the area, with chipmunks scampering across our laps as they fill their cheek pouches and then diligently head to some secure location to deposit their stash—then back they come for another load. Naturally, many of our chipmunks have names, and some will let me scratch them on their tiny heads while they shell sun
flower seeds on the coffee table. Large, lumbering yellow-bellied marmots—“rock chucks”—live in and around the draw, and once a delightful and friendly female that we named Molly lived with us for a summer, making her home in the foundation of an old log shed outside our back door.

  We have identified at least three hibernacula (snake dens) along the cliff wall. As spring begins warming the south-facing cliffs, various reptiles begin to emerge, sunning themselves by day and returning to their dens at night. The smaller-bodied snakes appear first, with the emergence of garter snakes, along with the gray-green racers and the scaly swift lizards that belong to a rather large genus of Iguanids. We have horned “toads”—lizards—living a half-mile up the mountain in the sage brush and rock outcrops, but, curiously, none live in or around the cliffs. A week after the small snakes surface, on the warmest mornings, the heavier-bodied snakes begin to appear, as the bull snakes may be seen moving about but not yet wandering far from their sanctuaries. At last, the prairie rattlesnakes emerge, and for a week or two they may be seen coiled in lazy individual heaps, often by the dozen. They are sluggish as they try to restart a torpid metabolism that has been resting for several frigid months. It was not long after moving onto the Slingshot that we discovered that the prairie rattler was perhaps the single most abundant living thing in an ecology that was teeming with life.

  Leslye catching a bull snake.

  Least chipmunk.

  At one time in my life I collected venomous reptiles to sell to universities, zoos, and research facilities, and, while earning my way through college, I also worked with dangerous snakes as a professional reptile handler, giving twice-daily demonstrations at a zoo. All snake handlers get bitten—all of them—and I almost got what was coming to me on several occasions. After somehow surviving the immortal years of my late teens and early twenties, I realized that another line of work would be advisable and timely, so upon graduation I started working with somewhat less deadly species of animals. But I retain a deep affection for all reptiles and still have a high regard for rattlesnakes in particular. The prairie rattler is one of the more disagreeable rattlesnakes—an ill-tempered creature that is mercifully inclined to rattle at any small provocation, making them easier to avoid. It was our intention to attempt to live in harmony with all the rattlesnakes on the Slingshot, observing that they were here before us, and of course it was our consideration that they had every reason and right to be here. However, the prairie rattler has some of the most potent venom of any North American rattlesnake, and after three years of close encounters—every day—which included a miraculous “dry bite” to my hand while I was attempting to repair an irrigation head gate, at last, our favorable view of rattlesnakes dimmed. And in those three years, Leslye and I both experienced several other close calls. Then, one of Leslye’s mares, Gum Drop, was bitten, not once but twice on the nose. I happened to see the bites occur in the meadow in front of the house as the horse squealed and took off at a run two hundred yards to the top of the hill. There she immediately collapsed in a heap like she had been shot with a high-powered rifle. Clearly in agony, she then pulled herself up and again ran straight to me as I stood by the fence another one hundred yards away. Sliding to a halt, she whinnied as if pleading for help and then ran down the hill and stormed into the open corral. Again her legs buckled under, and she collapsed like the life had suddenly been sucked out of her. I reminded myself that this was a one-thousand-pound animal and wondered what that same amount of venom would have done to me. Horses often recover from snake bites, but it was a horrendous ordeal that left Gum Drop standing with her head down, swollen like a basketball, unable to eat, struggling for every breath, with bloody serum draining from her nostrils for days. All we could do was administer an antibiotic to prevent secondary infection and have plastic tubes ready to insert in the nostrils should they swell shut. Leslye spent two long nights in the barn with the pack rats as the mare slowly recovered, and it was a full year before Gum Drop’s head looked completely normal again. It became clear that our relationship with these snakes was not going to end well. The population had to be reduced. In the first year of our reduction program, we relocated or dispatched twenty-four individuals and optimistically hoped that we might see a reduced population the following summer. Beginning the following spring into summer, we were disappointed to remove another twenty-two snakes. Last summer our efforts began to pay off, and we removed merely five, but only after I had been bitten one more time on my irrigation boot by a hefty three-and-a-half-foot female with a bad attitude. Now we do not disturb the newborn rattlesnakes we occasionally encounter, but we continue to remove the larger adults that manage to come near the corrals or house. While out irrigating the hay meadows, visiting our prairie dog colony, or just roaming around, I still enjoy my occasional run-ins with the rattlesnakes, and I never disturb one that is not an immediate threat around the house or barn. Leslye, however, entertains a strong disapproval of rattlesnakes, and during warmer months, she packs “heat”—a “hog-leg”—on her belt in the form of an old Colt 38 Special loaded with “snake shot.” When the UPS man drives up, Leslye always greets him in the driveway with a friendly smile, but he always raises his arms and says, “Yes ma’am!”