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An early start on Saturday morning got me to Flagstaff before dawn. The temperature a chilling 19
degrees, brrrr. When we got to the meeting place about 15 miles north of Flagstaff on Highway 89A, Norris Dodd greeted us with warm coffee freshly brewed. Now that is the way to treat volunteers!!
AAF Board members Dave Brown and Paul Webb, and AAF Advisor
Richard Ockenfels had been up the day before to avoid the winter road conditions. Our assignment on this cold but calm Saturday morning was to
drive to observation points on either side of highway 89A and help the Arizona Game and Fish Department locate herds of pronghorn. So why
all this extra effort? Norris Dodd is the lead research biologist for a study being funded by the Arizona Department of Transportation to learn if,
where, and how pronghorn cross the highway. There are plans to widen the road and the information from this study may influence future
construction design that includes wildlife crossings that pronghorn will use. High speed roads with right-of-way fences typically stop pronghorn in
their tracks, according to the research done by Richard Ockenfels in the same area and other places in the State. Norris needed radios on animals
from as many different herd groups from both sides of the road to get the sample he needed for the study. So that was our job—go find antelope!!!
We broke up into teams; AAF volunteers, the four newest Arizona Game and Fish Department Game
Rangers, and Flagstaff Regional Supervisor Ron Sieg.
 I hopped in with Rich Ockenfels and we turned on to a likely dirt track about four miles from base camp. The Game Department had an airplane overhead and we
could hear them reporting back to the helicopter net gunning capture team where they were finding antelope. We very quickly found a herd bedded at the edge of the
junipers, near a basalt rock outcrop I have named “predator rock”. When we drove in there was a pair of golden eagles sitting on this rock and on the way out a
coyote was sitting on the other end of the same rock! Later in the day a prairie falcon flew past us. I turned to
Richard and said “you watch, that falcon is going to land on the same damn rock.” It did…”Predator Rock”.
Excitement began almost right away. We were able to watch the helicopter close in on multiple captures and
watch the netting. Very exciting! Master netgunner Larry Phoenix was on target all day, flying until the sun was
setting. His “mugger”, Jeff Gagnon (this is the guy who is told “JUMP” when the skids are still 12 feet from
the ground), worked as hard wrestling the animals in the netting and getting a blindfold on to calm them down
so the work of attaching the telemetry equipment, marking the animal, and untangling it from the netting (no
easy task!) could be accomplished quickly. The beauty of the net guns is no need to tranquilize the animals, so once the collaring work is done, they are good to go!
AAF President Brian George gets the “eagle eyes” award. Helps to be a long time Arizona Desert Bighorn
Sheep Society member, he knows how to find critters! Brian located a herd tucked in under the junipers on the east side of the road, where more collars were needed.
At the end of a day and a morning all 16 radio collars
were on pronghorn and sending signals. The research project has begun. The volunteer hours from the Arizona Antelope Foundation will be used as matching money for
federal grants to fund the project, so time really well spent.
Richard and I ran into AAF member Paul Delaney in the field. At first I thought we were driving up to cowboys with a lot of cattle dogs, and Paul saw the Game and Fish
logo on the truck and thought we were game rangers out to check their licenses. Paul is master of the Grand Canyon Hounds. The “cattle dogs” were a pack of fox
hounds and their quarry is coyote. May they catch a lot of them! We noticed that the coyotes moved in the
minute an animal was netted. Paul has since contacted me and has offered volunteers to help on pronghorn projects from the membership of Grand Canyon Hounds, Thanks Paul!
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