Adventure is out there.

Hola,

So sorry that I haven’t posted in a while! Are you still there? Good.

Time is flying by even faster. Not good. I really did not expect it, but I have completely fallen in love with this place. A lot of it has to be credited to the people though, they are amazing!

Hmm… so what has been going on the past few days? Eh, I guess really not too much. Last week we spent nearly every day doing bridge surveys. Still finding tons of beaver sign, even in places I would never ever have suspected to find beavers – there were NO trees in one area, but sure enough there was a beaver dam on that creek. Their engineering continues to amaze me. We haven’t had any more possible otter signs and were never able to confirm that scat we found in my last post.

Oh oh! Something really exciting. I’ll have to back story some bit though so you can get the whole picture of how this happened. I convinced Megan to join the Y that I workout at and she has really taken a liking to their spinning classes, so one day when we went to one of the classes, some guy calls me out for my Pirates shirt; “hey, is that just a random shirt you have, or are you actually a Pirates fan in North Dakota?” Well I know I have mentioned this before, but I am a HUGE Pittsburgh Pirates fan. This got us into a decent little conversation. Turns out the guy, Nick, is from Pittsburgh and now works out here for Delta Waterfowl. Well, I need to find a way to contact Ducks Unlimited or Delta Waterfowl members for one aspect of my survey. So Nick invited me down to Delta’s international headquarters (which happens to be in Bismarck) to meet with some people there, learn about Delta Waterfowl, and to talk about the survey. Today I met with him. Honestly I really never really heard of Delta Waterfowl before I came out here, maybe once as a brief mention in one of my wildlife classes during my undergrad. Welp, I am completely impressed! They are a 101 year old organization that has some similar aspects to Ducks Unlimited (which I am a very active member of), but instead of focusing on habitat conservation, Delta targets more the hunting community. They want to “secure the future of waterfowl and waterfowl hunting.” (Their vision off their website.) So they are more focused on the research and production of waterfowl. They build nest boxes or “hen houses,” participate in predator management in waterfowl breeding habitat, and conduct a lot of research in one of the largest waterfowl breeding areas in the world, Manitoba’s Delta Marsh. I was able to sit down with Nick, who turns out to be Delta’s chief operating officer, and John, their senior director of U.S. policy, and they gave me the history of Delta Waterfowl and aquatinted me with the organization. After some bribing (not really, they were just that generous) of free t-shirts, duck calls, stickers, and the book To Ride the Wind by H. Albert Hochbaum, I have most definitely decided to become a Delta Waterfowl member. You’re probably now wondering if I was able to work my survey into this meeting. I was. They agreed to help us mail out 300 of our surveys. Score!

Oh and I guess I should mention that the 309 surveys we sent out to the USDA list have been very successful, I do not remember the total count off the top of my head but within a week we have received somewhere around 75 surveys back so far. That’s a pretty impressive number in such a short period of time. I’m excited by that.

Well it looks like we are all packed up and ready to go. We’re heading up to Devil’s Lake to camp and fish for the weekend. Uh, I mean we are heading up there to conduct angler surveys. Yes, lots of angler surveys. 😉

Hmm, and on a side note it’s Friday the Thirteenth. I just realized that one.

Well. We had a pretty good weekend, spent Friday out on the river fishing for walleye. We caught 5 and cooked em up for dinner Saturday night – delicious!!

We spent some time both Saturday and Sunday scoping out spots and developing plans for angler surveys. So this is our dilemma. We have to interview around 200 anglers, but hardly anyone fishes from the shoreline here – everyone owns their own boats. We can’t get people in the morning before they go out on the water because we are worried they will be too much in a rush to get into the water to be willing to be interviewed on beaver.  And then when they are pulling their boats out, as they walk from boat to their truck they’ll be in a rush to get the boat loaded and out of the way so other boats can dock and come out, then once the boats loaded they usually hop in their trucks and leave right away. We are thinking about setting up a station at boat docks that have fish cleaning stations and try to get people as they clean their fish, but other than that we are kinda stuck for ideas on how to interview more people. One idea we had was to set up stations outside bait and tackle shops and try for that approach, but there are only about 3 shops in the area. Another idea we had would be to take our boat and stalk angling boats, but I am not sure I am comfortable with that. I know if someone pulled up to my boat and started asking questions about beaver while I was trying to fish that I would not but much of a happy camper about the situation. Anyone out that have any suggestions for us? We definitely need any suggestions we can get!

Now, the reason for my title. Currently the shop/office where we live has lost all internet connection and we had designated today to be an office day to catch up on paperwork, etc. Well the weather cooperated with that plan and its currently raining, so it’s a good office day minus the internet. Which means we are currently camped out at the closest Starbucks sipping on yummy coffee and taking full advantage of the free wifi. But this means that unless we get internet back on at the shop it might be a few days before I post again. So don’t hold your breath.

And one quick picture before I get off – this is what free time and no internet, plus a huge scrap wood pile leads to:

Yes, be jealous of my mad pallet fabrication skills.

Until the ‘nets back up. Adios.