Thanks guys. It just seemed that every storm that came through had us in its crosshairs. Other places around the state fared quite a bit better from what I've heard. Most of our elk came out okay, although we lost some of the smaller calves. The deer just got hammered. F&G said we lost 80% of the deer herd in our two local hunt units and I believe them from what I saw in my outings. The coyotes that were cleaning up deer along the tracks I didn't bother much, but the ones that were eating deer alive that had wandered onto the ice, I shot the hell out of those suckers. Not that it will change anything in the grand scheme of things, but I just can't drive on by that.
Dave, you had indeed told me in a PM that the past winter was a brutal one, but hearing is one thing and seeing some of the brutality of it in pictures is certainly another thing. Of course for you and the residents of your community to have lived through it is an entirely different matter. Thank you for sharing and glad that both You and the Family / town residents pulled through this past one.
I appreciate that Mat, thank you. Our population is about 5500 people and we lost something like 300 structures, including our only grocery store, bowling alley, a hardware store, etc. We had a couple of casualties due to the extreme conditions, but were extremely fortunate not to have more. And it's not like the amount of snow would be so catastrophic for some places, but here in the valley we only see about 4" in a normal winter, up to a foot in a heavy winter. So of course the building codes are written to take maybe double that. We got four feet here on the valley floor, and it just leveled anything that couldn't take it.
That's mother nature for you. Once in a blue moon, she will throw a curve ball in the form of extreme weather of some sort. Even some animals get blind-sided by the sudden weather change. I sure wish we had snow here right now, it's hotter than hell here!
That's exactly what we saw, heaviest snowfall here in recorded history since the 1880s. Like you say bravo, even the strong animals, some of them got caught. I mean, there's only so far they can drop down in elevation. When they hit the Snake River, that's it, there's no place left to go. We had antelope in the city park, deer in any place that snow had been pushed away, and elk that finally had to be tranquilized and moved off our baseball field so the boys could get started practicing this spring. Bizarre. I will probably not (and hope to never) see it again.
