Espee Ranch Prairie Dog Transects

With a GPS device, Prairie Dog Transects are performed by walking a line and taking waypoints on a GPS. Each waypoint is associated with a count of how many active and inactive prairie dog burrows where seen within 5' (i think it was 5 feet) of each side of the line you walk. You stay on the line by keeping an eye on your GPS device; I walked in a North and South direction at 500 meter intervals (this would be called your Easting?). So I would walk North at 12S 0365000 (Thats a UTM measurement for easting), then I would walk over 500 meters, and the walk south at 0365500--taking a waypoing every 250 meters and trying not to deviate from that line(not even by a meter). Walking a straight line in the Prairie is tough because there are very few things on the horizon to give you an idea of which direction you are walking (no i didnt have a compass--next time, but you do get good at it.)

I camped for 4 days, 3 nights, walked 40+ miles, saw 6 Prong Horn Antelope, took 210 waypoints, saw 2 Horned Lizard (one had a body as long a 6 inches), 1 1.5 foot Diamond Back rattle snake, 1,000,000 head of cattle (1,000,000,000 cow patties HA!), and met 9 new and interesting people.

The horny toad was awesome, he didn't run. And when I touched him he puffed up, pushing all of his scales out, and stood up tall. His horns on his head WERE sharp! but his ones on his sides weren't. He was really squishy like a toad.

The Pronghorn were'nt too bright...They saw me on the horizon and I saw them..Then they started running and made a great circle...which ended up less than 30 yard from me. So that was awesome.

I was really moving out there, we had a PVC pipe as a measure of whether to include a burrow or not--I also used it as a walking stick. As I was hiking along, at a quick pace, I got a thorn in my shoe, and because I was almost to the truck i didnt take the thorn out, but I did walk slower--and at that moment is when I saw the Rattler--right in front of me, slowly moving out of my way, not giving a damn as I came near...

Glad to be back at my bunkhouse, home for the summer.