Wild Trails & Tall Tales
- by Roland Cheek
GREATEST RESEARCH STORY EVER TOLD
The beast paused in a shaft of moonlight, lifting her nose to test the air's gentle downhill drift. It was an odor so delicate, from such distance, only the olfactory nerve of one so wild could sense. She turned to stalk the breeze....
Minutes later, the animal stood motionless behind a screen of spruce saplings. Only her eyes moved, first around the tiny forest glade, then to the pile of debris on its far side. Again, she tested the wind; her tiny ears flicked rearward, momentarily flattened, then pricked ahead. She took a step, another, another.
Despite the pungent odor luring her on, the approach to the jumble of logs took a half-hour. Finally she could see the juicy venison hindquarter tucked far back within the rubble. She took another step, bent her head and reached inside. The snap was sudden! She smashed the top logs from the pile with her instinctive leap, then crashed to her side, roaring and bawling hideously, held fast by a steel cable around her right forefoot.
"Looks like we may have 183 down," the biologist said to his partner. Night had waned and a rising sun peeked above the eastern horizon. The man snapped the off switch on his receiver and carefully folded and stored his antennae. "Let's go.
"A half-hour later, the men approached the forest glade, every sense alert. One carried an autoload 12-gauge shotgun, the other a rather plain looking broomstick in one hand and a canister of capsaicin pepper spray in the other. Faced with an ominous silence, they parted the last spruce branches. The animal lunged for them!
Neither man leaped aside, but both blinked as the giant grizzly crashed to ground, brought down once again by the ensnaring cable. "Easy, girl." one of them said.
The two biologists shrugged from their daypacks and moments later a hypodermic syringe gleamed from the end of the broomstick. The team leader warily approached the recumbent sow. She made one more lunge, again was jerked back, then squirmed to face her stalker until the second man approached from her other side. At last, the first man maneuvered into position and with a lightning thrust jammed the needle into the fat animal's thigh.
She roared and lunged and again crashed to the ground. Minutes passed. Her eyelids drooped. The first man poked her with his broomstick to no effect. Then he moved in and removed the bear's radio collar....
You heard right: the man REMOVED the bear's collar while his partner pulled the cable snare from her leg and dabbed the worn spot with disinfectant. Then they packed up their gear and hurried from the mountain....
The South Fork Grizzly Study was designed to achieve clear objectives over a ten year span. This single study provided the public with more and better understanding of grizzly bear behavior than any previous research--ever! The Study should serve as a model: completed a year ahead of schedule, objectives accomplished.
Now the unheard of: actually removing research equipment from wild animals who unwittingly and against their will, contributed so much to our--and their own--future....
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