Field Report- Michigan- Roscommon County

Saturday March 31, 10AM

55 Degrees, partly cloudy

Ground is the wettest i've seen it in 8 years.
Lake is the highest i've seen it in 8 years.
Trails I used to use are obliterated by ponds now.
No coyote sounds where I usually hear them.
Lots of Deer roadkill- Mild winter probably the reason.
Video taped 3 deer walking across a forest clearing.
Saw 1 eagle
2- muskrats
And nothing else.
Reptiles/Amphibians still in hibernation

GOOD to know Drew, thanks! We've been hoping to get up there next weekend to put some tree stands up, and wondered what the ground was like. The weather's not looking too hopeful though, but dang we wanna get those things up there and let them start blending in.

Hey though, with it nice and soft and mucky, better chance at finding prints, eh? :D

I must be a total spaz. Because all I could do out there was keep thinking a cougar was stalking me. I even doubled back to see if one crossed the trail behind me. Knowing my luck, I'll squat down to see the greatest Bigfoot track in history, and a freaking mountain lion will sink his canines into the base of my skull, because I wasn't alert enough to see him on the tree branch above my head.

After talking with my neighbor about him seeing two of them last fall in Clare County, and hearing bits and snatches of Jim's encounter I'm a little freaked out. Thanks everybody.

:lol: Tell me about it!

I pacify myself by remembering that there's PLENTY of natural food out there for them and that they're probably way more scared of us than vice versa.

I hope. :ph43r:

You forgot one thing...
When we are in the woods, we ARE natural food.

I wish Jim would elaborate on his Cougar encounter. I mean all I get so far is, he was walking, he looked up, and there was a cougar. How big how far? Did it come towards you? or was it surprised?


[edit]--can't let any of what I edited out in public at ALL Drew, sorry!

What happened with the cougar was that Jim had gone a couple hundred yards west from the group without letting anyone but me and Paul know where he was going. Everyone else thought he was off to the south, as he started out walking into the woods in that direction.

So we're all spread out in our little posts, sitting and listening, when out of the blue we hear Jim HOLLERING something indecipherable that sounded like it ended in "f-you!" (as it did). He sounded surprised, scared, and angry all at the same time and my first thought was "Oh crap...he caught someone getting ready to hoax us..." and then "OMG, did he really see something?" and then, when he didn't make any more noise OR answer me when I called, it was "OMG... did some critter GET him??"

He radioed back that it had been that cougar we'd been hearing about and after he got back to us (still shaking), told us that he'd been sitting on a hill at the edge of a treeline with his back to a tree, facing the top of the hill. He had his nightvision in hand and heard a noise at the top of the hill, which was only about 8-10 yards away at the most. He didn't see anything through the NV, so he set it down to grab his flashlight.

When the NV hit the ground, he saw the silhouette of the cat pop up at the top of the hill against the sky behind it, so he grabbed the camera, held it up toward the general direction of the cat, hit the flashlight, and screamed at it all at the same time. :lol:

He didn't get a great look at it, but definitely saw the silhouette of the head and ears as well as its coloring and the eyes when he hit the light. Paul was sitting where he could see the hillside and watched the movement of the cat as it took off like a bat out of hell.

I don't think it was after him, I think it probably smelled him and was coming to take a closer look and see what he was, and they both scared the bejeezus out of each other. The next trip up (maybe the 2nd one after?) we didn't actually SEE it, but we heard it over in the same area sounding like he was really looking for some action, if you know what I mean. ;)

Field Report- Michigan- Maple River Flooding- US27 north of St. Johns

Sunday April 15, 1PM

55 Degrees, Mostly Sunny

Walked 1.5 miles in on the north side of the river

-Saw my first Reptile of the year! Painted turtle sunning on a log, He was still covered with mud, I think he had just woke up that day, this is the start of the year for me. No snakes, no frogs yet.

-Other wildlife seen- one coot, two sandhill cranes, 1 GB Heron, 1- muskrat, 1 ptd turtle, 50+ C. Geese, 12- Swans.

Yep...when turtles and Herons are back, it IS spring!
Robin's don't count nearly as much for me.

Nope... not when we had about 30 of them in a tree outside our office, in JANUARY--

'Course, it was warm enough then that people were golfing, soooo.... :blink:

Hey y'all,

My wife and I will be biking from Big Rapids to Cadillac and back this weekend. We'll be camping along the White Pine Trail Friday and Saturday nights.

After we return, I'll post weather conditions, wildlife seen, etc. I wondered if there was any vegetation, conditions, or anything else anyone would like me to pay special attention to while we're out...and I'll be glad to put it in the report. We'll be traveling light obviously, but I'll have a video camera (that may or may not be worth a crap), a digital camera, and some binoculars along. Any other must-have bigfooting equipment?

...there's a lot of corridors like the White Pine Trail in this state, as I'm sure you all know...I've been part of one initiative to connect these "greenways" throughout the state and into Ohio...with the BF reports coming fairly heavily from Canada and Ohio, I wonder what people here think about the possibility that BF use these natural/man-made pathways as migratory/nomadic routes...this could probably be a discussion in itself...

IMA

With the amount of lakes in the metro area, I see a lot of birds (ducks, geese, herons, loons, cormorants) that rely on water around here. I even saw a bald eagle flying over I-94 about a month ago.

Driving back and forth from EMU to Taylor, I see a heron fly over the highway almost every day. Saturday, as I was driving home, I saw a heron poop in the air; I laughed because I thought it was going to hit the convertable in front of me. Instead, it completely doused the hood, windshield, and roof of my saturn.

Thank heavens Spring is here... <_<

Cool...that's my old stomping grounds!

Due to unforseen last-minute baloney, we ended up biking the Kal-Haven Trail from Kalamazoo to South Haven...not nearly as exciting...and it also meant that we couldn't camp. I didn't expect any incidents on the White Pine Trail, but I would have given it more chance than the Kal-Haven which is used way more heavily.

The mostly oak woods are fairly fragmented in the area by roads, corn/hay/soybean fields, and livestock farms and there's just not a lot of open space. There was a lot of standing water, skunk cabbage...and trillions of trilliums.

We did see more wildlife than I would have expected...of note: 3 deer, 3 grouse, 3 bluebirds, 3 red-tailed hawks, 1 flicker, 2 turkeys, and 1 coyote.

Nice trip, but not really worth writing as much as I already have about it.


BTW, does anyone else feel like there's a whole lot more cardinals around than normal? I must have seen twenty-five cardinals over the wekend.

I've seen cardinals several times over the last couple of weeks, and a gal at work discovered one plastered to the grill of her new Mustang on Friday :lol:... OK, maybe not so funny, but it kind of was.

Sounds like a nice hike though IMA, even if nothing exciting happened!

Newest video, entitled "Nice Beaver"

http://media.putfile.com/Nice-Beaver

Beaver pond in Northern Michigan

I will be up at my Northern Michigan residence July 29th through August 5th if anyone is going up during that time frame. Let me know.

I wish.

Wed. August 1st- Went canoeing on the Muskegon River 10AM to 2PM, spotted were:
- 100's of turtles
- Dozens of frogs and crayfish
- 10 Kingfishers
- 1 Bald Eagle (we followed him down the river for a half hour)
- 1 Garter or Ribbon Snake (No water snakes) :(

Fri. August 3rd- Fishing on 5000 Private acres West of Otsego Lake
-Nothing to report other than good fishing.

Sun. August 5th- Hiking in possible BF area south of Houghton Lake
- Found Two Propane Cylinders. Darkwing?? Can you ID them?
- Several Large Buck Whitetails Rubbing their velvet on tree branches and making a definite ruckus.

very cool Drew. I'll have to start adding our stuff to this.