52 ticks

I’m not sure there is such a thing as a “normal” spring on the North Fork. If there is, this May is certainly not normal. A couple of nice days doesn’t cut it. They have only made me more unhappy with cloudy, windy, gray days with short blasts of rain.

This kind of spring does seem to help bring out the ticks. In all my years on the North Fork (72) I have never been bitten by a tick and have only seen a few. My dad always said he had never been bitten either and that maybe our Indian blood gave us some kind of immunity. At any rate, a North Fork resident told me a week ago that he had picked 52 of the little beasts off himself on a recent hike and his hiking companions had nearly as many. They were parked at Camas Bridge and hiking up the Forest Service trail with few trees, but a lot of waist-high brush.

There are still a lot of grizzly sightings. One resident has seen nine and quite a few have seen more than three. I seem to get an e-mailed photo several times a week. I am sure some, if not most, are multiple sightings of the same bears, but they are not afraid to visit yards for fresh grass. Also, game cameras provide even more pictures that it was not possible to get just a few years ago. One neighbor has a “rub tree” only a couple of hundred yards from his cabin. Even so, I feel there are plenty of grizzlies and if we don’t deal with however many have become habituated, it will be the bears that pay the price, plus maybe a touron or two that get too close.

Flathead County graded the road at least as far as Whale Creek and it is good, except for the frost boils on Vance Hill. North of Whale Creek, the road is rough and frost boils at Holcombs are worse than last year. Folks are already ignoring the posted speed limit and RVs have come out of hibernation and have been sighted as far north as Wurtz Airstrip and at least one of them was towing a trailer with two ATVs. Heavy traffic makes heavy dust, so stretches of the road which have not been dust treated are already pretty bad. The county has posted signs advising 20 mph if dust is present, but if they have had any effect, I have not seen it. I think every North Forker should call the Flathead Forest Supervisor’s Office every day and ask when the Resource Advisory Committee will meet. The RAC has been the source of half of the funding for dust abatement from Camas to Polebridge. They money has been appropriated, but the new committee has not been seated.

In recent years, red fox, turkey buzzards and turkeys have become more common on the North Fork.

I have seen groups of two or three hens several times, but never a big male.

This week, a beautiful big tom was seen up Trail Creek. Maybe we won’t have to spend as much on turkeys this fall.

What do you think?

Larry Wilson’s North Fork Views appears weekly in the Hungry Horse News.