Friday:
Toucher arrives, as usual in the dark to sit out yet another fabulous, cold day in his watch. Leaddog shows up and goes up the hill to scout out a possible mule for the gang to chase over the next couple of days. Robba does the same, climbing up to the back of Beaver Valley where he encounters a very excited Leaddog who claims that a new mule of very large magnitude is scraping and rubbing in an area that hasn’t been visited yet by the gang. Rubs so fresh were observed, the trees were oozing sap with small flies and gnats present in the rub. New rubs and scrapes were seen – and appeared to be even more fresh as the hunt continued. Both decides to hunt/scout the area out to the Duck Hole and meets the Toucher for a twilight exodus from the woods. The gang is informed of the findings and all are set to scour the area on Saturday for the beast that is killing all of the trees.
Saturday:
The crew, now well informed geared up and ready splits with the drivers, who are driven to their starting points, and watchers/hunters/scouts deployed up high to seal off any attempts by the mule to escape. Leaddog and Digger splits up high, Digger rimming the Finger, and Leaddog performing his scouting task as with the day prior. Upon entering the area from Friday, he notices that more scrape are present, with new rubs appearing that weren’t there on Friday. Even more exciting was the very large rubs seen on trees further down form the initial set, that were not there as well on Friday; in the same condition – bugs, running sap and fresh scrapes. This mule is playing games with the gang, especially taunting Leaddog. The pushers are in the area of the Split Rock camp, one mule is seen by Polecat that may have had headgear. All finally gets to the area almost where Leaddog was, and then escaped on the Escape route to lower grounds leaving Leaddog up high, all by himself with all of that mega-mule sign about. It was too late to hit the probable area where the mule may be residing in this time. A hunt of the local bunny hill brings the gang back to camp where a fine dinner of mule steaks was devoured by all.
On an interesting note, it appears that Toucher feels as if Leaddog is attempting to compromise his hunting capability by somehow poisoning him, once again as with last week. No other member got “compromised” from dinner from both Friday nights – it looks as if the Toucher has a “touchy-tummy”! Even more suspicion is conveyed on Leaddog, by him staying in the area of the mega-mule’s activity when the gang was on the “other side of the tracks”. Hmmmmmmmm……….
Sunday:
All awakens to a bout of warmy-changy, snow is falling and blowing in six directions at once. The trees are covered (plastered) creating yet another snow-globe white washed world. No mule in its right mind would be running about in these conditions, as with the crew. All leaves early in hopes of a return next Friday to better conditions to see if Mr. Mega mule is still in the area.