This was the fall expedition of the research group that I belong to, and I had higher hopes for the trip than it turned out to be. First the background, there had been two sightings from this location within a stone’s throw and a year apart; one was a road crossing and the other a pattern of ongoing activity. If you read between the lines the forest we were working this expedition was where the creature had made its way for the road crossing. Normally the research group votes on a location as well as the date, and this location won out by a single vote over another, and I suspect there was some resentment from others in the group, but the location in Vermont won, and the other had its day as a the Adirondack trip in my last post. I had some frustration because I had wanted this trip to be a bit more of a backpacking trip where some in the group are more car camping, the end result ended up being somewhere in the middle.

I arrived a day early for this one as did a few others. They did so to account for travel distance, I did more so to get in some recon before meeting up with everyone else. I was able to scout the full length of the road running through and finding some interesting points that led off trail, and made note of the fact that terrain on one end of the road was a bit more rugged than the main way in, at least for a non 4×4 vehicle. The next morning we met up with the others and got to the forest and set to setting up camp, and trying to find an area out of the way. One pair chose a spot off a logging trail, another car camped and I hammocked nearby a short distance into the forest. We did some day scouting of potentially good night operation locations and we decided after scouting a few side trails to split into two teams and two areas.

For the night operation itself, we had good moonlight conditions to maximize night vision effectiveness, but despite good conditions, the odd thing this trip verses the other two before, was how quiet it was. There was little to any sign of animal activity once it got dark. In previous trips there had been signs of owls, small animals such as fox, porcupine and the like, this time it was dead quiet. The reason I suspect was the weather the next day. We were due to have a nor’easter and with that would come 45 mph winds which made staying another night foolhardy. After a quiet night operation, with sadly no luck, we decided to wake the next day and make a call based on the NOAA repor.t. Unfortunately the report didn’t change that much, nor’easter, lot of rain and hazardous levels of wind, so the trip was called short on a count of the weather turning nasty. This is one of the frustrating that can happen in this pursuit; great location, best laid plans of mice and men, and the weather denies. Given the history of this location and the surrounding area I am due to return at least once more this year or early next year.