Special Sneak Peek on our spankin' new website:
We will be posting on the new site from now on. Change your bookmarks if needed!!
February 19, 2010
February 10, 2010
February 09, 2010
Big Changes!!!
We're working on some exciting changes. A new layout and official site will be up and running soon. Stay tuned for the new link. Our goal is to get it launched by Feb. 20.
We can't wait to share it with you!!
We can't wait to share it with you!!
February 04, 2010
January 19, 2010
January 17, 2010
Winter Fun Never Ends
I love to snowmobile, hence winter is one of my favorite times of the year. I snapped this picture of my friend Jay while we were out riding on this last Saturday.
January 10, 2010
Back Story of F27
I had several friends inquire about the mountain lion picture that I have in a earlier post, it was also in the Herald Journal photo contest last year. So, I thought I would show and tell how I ended up with the picture. We call the lion F27... I will explain why. I was working with a study group in Wyoming, we were capturing and radio collaring cougars as part of a large scale study of mountain lions. This particular day we had spotted a mountain lion kill. It was a young pronghorn antelope that had been migrating through the canyon. There had been a female lion with several young sub adults at the kill site. We proceeded to hike the mountain looking for fresher tracks. While walking a steep rock ridge, we looked off and saw 3 sub adult lions moving through the trees. We soon got off of the ledge and found the mothers track and turned the hounds loose. In a very short distance we had the female in the tree. You can see her in the picture below...you can see that the final picture I got was exactly like this one, however standing farther to the right and zoomed in. Dan, one of the member of the capture crew and I must have taken over 100 pictures of her as we waiting for the rest of the crew to arrive and prepare the radio collar and monitoring equipment.
In this next picture I have moved farther to the right and zoomed in even more. You can see she is a mature female and not one of the sub adults, as she has no spots on her hide. It is easy to tell the difference between the young lines that are even a year old and a mature cat, as the sub adults will carry spots on them for more than a year, before they totally disappear.
This picture is taken from the same location, just zoomed in for a close up. She was in a perfect tree on a steep hill where you could stand on the side hill and be straight on, face to face with her.
This shot is just a zoomed in shot of the mouth, from the previous picture. Like with the spots on the hide, I show this to you, as we use the teeth as one of the best ways of aging a lion. You can see that the teeth are fully developed and very yellow. The older a lion gets, the more stained their teeth become. You can see she has large health canines, but they are very yellow. You will also see that young lions will tend to have lighter colored gums. I also look at the small teeth that are in between the canine teeth... lions will start to lose these or they will get very worn they the get old. Although very healthy you can see this starting to happen on this gal. We aged her at about 5-6 years old.
As mentioned we probably have about 100 pictures of this lion on this one afternoon. However, my favorite was the below shot that was entered in the Herald Journal Photo contest.
In this next picture I have moved farther to the right and zoomed in even more. You can see she is a mature female and not one of the sub adults, as she has no spots on her hide. It is easy to tell the difference between the young lines that are even a year old and a mature cat, as the sub adults will carry spots on them for more than a year, before they totally disappear.This picture is taken from the same location, just zoomed in for a close up. She was in a perfect tree on a steep hill where you could stand on the side hill and be straight on, face to face with her. This shot is just a zoomed in shot of the mouth, from the previous picture. Like with the spots on the hide, I show this to you, as we use the teeth as one of the best ways of aging a lion. You can see that the teeth are fully developed and very yellow. The older a lion gets, the more stained their teeth become. You can see she has large health canines, but they are very yellow. You will also see that young lions will tend to have lighter colored gums. I also look at the small teeth that are in between the canine teeth... lions will start to lose these or they will get very worn they the get old. Although very healthy you can see this starting to happen on this gal. We aged her at about 5-6 years old.As mentioned we probably have about 100 pictures of this lion on this one afternoon. However, my favorite was the below shot that was entered in the Herald Journal Photo contest. 
I love the character in this lion, as you can see several small notches on the edges of her ears (something you don't see on young lions) I always wonder how they got there, as I am sure they are scars from the hard life and experiences that these amazing animals live.
Just a couple quick after the picture shots. This first one is of the same lion about 45 minutes after the above shots were taken. You can see we have ear tagged her and placed the radio collar on her. She has been given a reversal drug to wake her up from her tranquilized state.
This last shot is of her slowly leaving leaving after coming back to her senses. Each lion that the study tags and collars is assigned a number. Either "M" for males or "F" for females followed by the number on the tag. She is F27.
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