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Tip o' the Day

When looking for wildlife, there are key fundamentals one should bear in mind:

1. Location

There's no profit in searching for antelope in a forest, or mountain goats in a swamp. But that same swamp offers survival food for bears emerging from hibernation in the spring. In summer and late fall, however, those same bears can be found feeding on mountainside berries.

2. Patience

Wild creatures are usually alert to movement. If you don't believe it, try sneaking up on a rockslide used by pikas, the little alpine rock rabbits. It'll be a barren landscape. Be patient, though. Sit down (I've even gone to sleep). Without movement, the creatures will soon be running all over the rocks.

3. Good optics

There's no substitute for good optics. I do my initial scanning with binoculars, then set up a spotting scope to zero in. I also employ my secret tool -- a wife who's a wonder at spotting animals.

You'll note I listed those fundamentals in their order of importance. One can have the patience of Job and it will do him no good if he's in the wrong location. Similarly, one can carry the best optics made, but without patience and location, his efforts and expense will come to naught.

There's another point to be made here: of the above fundamentals, only one can be obtained with money. Those most important can only be accessed with the coin of our own efforts.

In case I've not made it clear, I have little regard for those who expect to buy their way to outdoors expertise by relying on ever more sophisticated -- and expensive --gadgetry.

It ain't gonna happen.

BACKUP VIEWMASTER

Few people fail to thrill to the sight of a silver-struck grizzly sauntering through a wildflower-filled meadow; or of a red-cockaded woodpecker in waltz-flight through a pine forest; or of a whitetail buck scratching the top of his rump with the long tines of a set of magnificent antlers. Unfortunately, participation in these kinds of visual adventures are usually limited--not so much for opportunity, but for lack of time.

Or lack of patience.

Viewing wild animals is not always, as some suppose, a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Most of the time successful wildlife watching is an art. As such, three elements must coalesce in order for viewers to draw the prize.

The first required element is solitude, which, of an by itself is a means justifying its end without even throwing in the possible glory of sighting a couple of six-pont pull elk squaring off in a mountain meadow at twilight. Perhaps absolute solitude is not always absolutely necessary, but successful wildlife watching cannot often be accomplished in a crowd.

Second is patience. It's a fact that wild animals punch no time clocks. Neither do they care squat about your nightly need to watch the stock market report or transport Johnny to Little League. If they, on a whim, decide to visit the next county, they do so without asking a by-your-leave. They sleep when they wish, eat when hungry, grow passionate during season, and turn cautious in the presence of their most fearsome adversary--man. So it's you who must exercise patience, sometimes inconveniencing yourself and others in order to catch a glmpse of a gigantic grizzly digging for marmots in a boulder patch.

The third requirement is skill. Skill comes only with practice. Michelangelo did not pop from the womb a polished artist, and neither will you excel in finding and viewing wild creatures without both careful study and constant practice. And that's not to say one must spend that time only in the middle of Glacier National Park. Jane and I have watched goldfinches and hummingbirds at her feeders, cottontails cavorting on our lawn, cock pheasants crowing at pasture gates, and pine squirrels leaping from one windbreak tree to another. There've been flights of mallards and pintails, snow geese and honkers winging north in the spring and south in the fall. Redtails and sparrow hawks soar circles over our pasture, and whitetails steal apples from our trees.

Fortunately becoming a wildlife viewmaster does not demand that one be lithe as a swimmer, stout as a weightlifter, or agile as a gymnast. Neither must you be shapely as a model, dextrous as a typist, or handsome as an actor. Instead, viewmastering is an acquired skill available to everyone. When I married the girl-next-door, I was the outdoorsman, the hunter; she was a town girl with no discernible accomplishments in outdoor skills.

Fifty years later I can pilot our family sedan down a macadam highwat at fifty miles per hour while the lady scans a hillside. Often she'll spot the outline of an elk standing in a copse of trees. She's uncanny.

The reason Jane is presently so much further advanced in spotting wildlife than her husband is because she brings near-total focus to the activity. With her it's absolute concentration. Me? I can be sitting in the passenger seat and begin thinking about a time my packstring slid down an avalanche slope similar to the one on the mountain I'm gazing at. I look, but I don't see. Jane not only sees, but she records the animal and cries, Stop! Stop! There's a five-point bull elk with a twisted brow tine standing in the lodgepole thicket!.

It helps that she has previously spotted an unusual break in tree symmetry and the outline proved to be an animal. It helps that she has earlier spotted deer grazing a medow edge at dusk or bears digging skunk cabbage in a marsh in the spring. It helps, too, that her ears are sharp and finely attuned to every sound--the slight scratches of a squirrel scampering up the bark of a tree, the far off honking of not-yet-in-sight Canadas winging their way south.

But it helps most of all that her eyes are constantly searching and her concentration absolute. No ridgetop mule deer dares flick his tail while she's in the valley below, no bear lift an ear, no grouse cock an eye, no squirrel cut cones from a fir tree.

Pretty cagy of me isn't it? Unable to become the viewmaster I'd like myself to be, I developed my very own, private, in-house back up. I'm proud of me.

And her

 

Roland Cheek wrote a syndicated outdoors column (Wild Trais and Tall Tales) for 21 years. The column was carried in 17 daily and weekly newspapers in two states. In addition, he scripted and broadcast a daily radio show (Trails To Outdoor Adventure) that aired on 75 stations from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean. He's also written upwards of 200 magazine articles and 12 fiction and nonfiction books. For more on Roland, visit:

www.rolandcheek.com

Cheek combines his vast outdoor experiences as an outfitter in Montana with solid research to provide a thoroughly readable and enjoyable book. It reminded me of two other books, John McPhee's Coming Into the Country about Alaska, and Sebastian Junger's Perfect Storm

* Franklin Marchman in an amazon.com review

I picked up your book My Best Work Is Done at the Office and I was reading it until 2:00 in the morning. I haven't touched my other books since.

* H. Robert Krear / Estes Park, CO

Dance On the Wild Side is terrific reading, part true life adventure, part inspiration, and part blueprint for a life worth living.

* The Midwest Book Review

A self-made naturalist, Cheek has a thing about grizzly bears that some people feel defies understanding. Readers can thrill to a mesmerizing tale of grizzly bears and humans who, in chilling detail, morph into a lethal mix

* Outdoors Unlimited

I just finished reading The Phantom Ghost of Harriet Lou and it touched my soul. You've illustrated everything I embrace about hunting and elk hunting to be more specific

* Mitch Ratigan email

Montana's Bob Marshall Wilderness

9 X 12 Coffeetable size 97 full-color photos

KNOWLEDGE SHARED

outdoor bold

insight pared

source links for additional info

www.mtsky.com