He had watched the elk, then watched the sky, then turned back to the elk again. Joe felt like a soldier at a remote outpost, listening to the distant rumble and clank of enemy artillery pieces being moved into place before an opening barrage.įor most of the afternoon, he had been watching a herd of twenty elk move cautiously from black timber into a windswept meadow to graze. Beneath the high ceiling, clouds approached in tight formation, looking heavy and ominous. The first severe winter storm warning of the season had been issued for northern Wyoming and southern Montana for that night and the following day, with another big Canadian front forming behind it. It was now twenty-nine degrees with a slightly moist, icy breeze. The temperature had dropped during the afternoon as a bank of clouds moved over the sky and shut out the sun. It was two hours away from nightfall, but the sky was leaden, dark, and threatening snow. Beyond the rim to the west was Battle Mountain, separated from the Wolf range by Crazy Woman Creek, which flowed, eventually, into the Twelve Sleep River.
The sea of dark pines in the bowl was interspersed with ancient clear-cuts and mountain meadows, and set off by knuckle-like granite ridges that defined each small drainage. The terrain he was patrolling was an enormous wooded bowl, and Joe was just below the eastern rim. Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett was in his green four-wheel drive pickup, parked just below the tree line in the southern Wolf range. It was late December, four days before Christmas, the last week of the elk hunting season. To die, or cause a plant, animal, fish, or other living being/organism to die, from lack of adequate protection from winter weather conditionsĪ storm was coming to the Bighorn Mountains.
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