1/06/11 ANOTHER WOLF STORY

FOG AND SNOW OBSCURE THE ISLAND

Thursday, 9:30 AM.  15 degrees, wind SW, light.  It is snowing, big dime-sized flakes, which makes the view from the library window akin to looking into one of those snow-scene globes.  The sky is overcast and Madeline Island is obscured by fog and snow, but the barometer predicts only partly cloudy weather.  The ferryboat captains will have to watch their radar and GPS closely today.
    Talked to old friend Paul over in Three Lakes yesterday to catch up on things, and he had two hunting stories to tell, one good and one not so good.  Good: he bagged a monster elk in Colorado, and brought home 435 pounds of meat;  he bagged it high in the mountains, at a distance of 345 yards, quite a (single) shot.  Not so good: he hunted with friends in a remote area of the southern Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in north-central Wisconsin, where they have taken good whitetail bucks in the past; he saw only one deer, and had his tree stand surrounded by a pack of ten wolves, all bloody from a recent kill.
    The birds have found our feeders again, so I bought a fifty pound sack of sunflower seeds yesterday.  Lots of birds, but nothing unusual as yet.