Check Out Colorado's State Trust Land Map Server

It is an interactive map of all lands managed by the State Land Board.

From a news release:

Our public map provides data about our 2.8 million acres of surface trust land and our four million acres of mineral estate. We’ve made our GIS layers available to the public with tabular information about leases, rights-of-way, Stewardship Trust designations, the Public Access Program, acquisitions, patents, and more.

Plus, you can overlay your own Shapefile, CSV, or KML files on top of ours. Zip your files and use our new ‘Add Data’ tool, located in the top right corner of our map

If you go to the basic map, there will be a menu of map layers on the right-hand side of screen. You can check "SLB leases-recreation," but be aware of one thing — not all "recreational" leases provide public access for hunting and fishing.

Some State Land Board lands are leased to individuals or hunting clubs, etc. So click on the parcel to get the leasing info, as shown in the screen shot here.

When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Go Fishing

When life give you lemons, squeeze the juice onto your trout.

Caught in a traffic jam last month on Interstate 70 in Glenwood Canyon, angler Dylan Hayes fished — and put the episode on his Instagram, Eat Work Fish.

I carry a little telescoping spinning rod, reel, and lures in the Jeep in warm weather. Maybe it should be in there in the winter too!

Somebody Tell Me Why My Zippers Have Two Sliders

OK, gear-heads, this is for you.

I never made a "Things that Annoy Me" category for this blog, but if I did, it would include coats and jackets with double zipper sliders.

Double zipper on a Patagonia parka.

There I am, dressing for the winter, with the dog bouncing around my knees — "Oh boy, a walk! I have to pee!" —trying to line up the "insertion pin" with two, not just one,  "sliders," and then push it down into the "retainer box." 

Easy to do with one slider, but getting the two to line up, expecially with stiffer, bulkier zippers is a chore. Sometimes pulling downward on the "retainer box" helps.

The top-fastening look from 1871.

The double zipper lets you open the coat from the bottom. That used to be fashionable, although in the case of Mr. Henry Edwards above, it seems like the tactic of a gentleman of increasing girth who is reluctant to discard his favorite velvet-collared coat.

"Buttoned at the top" was not just a look
for the older gent, however (1880s "sack suit").

Here again, a young man's look.  That is a box camera he is holding —
his selfie stick would not fit into the photograph.

The outdoor brands seem to love their double sliders. My coat rack holds the afore-mentioned Patagonia jacket, a Cabela's down-filled coat, and an Eddie Bauer fleece-lined coat, all with double zipper sliders. And there is a double set on my waterfowling parka down in the basement as well.

But why? It is just more bother for no clear gain.

I never see anyone on the street with the coat zipped only at the top, its bottom floating free in the breeze.  Jacket and coats are either unzipped completely, zipped up completely, or open partway down from the neck.

We do not fasten coats only higher up so that they expose the elegrance of their linings or our fashionably cut waistcoats — not for the last 125 years or so.

Nor is this I look that I see on cross-country ski trails, in the marsh, or in the woods. I could maybe see it for horseback riding, but Eddie Bauer doesn't go for the "winter equestrian wear" niche.

So somebody tell me why the outdoor brands keep doing it.

Meanwhile, the dog really needs to go out!

Where in the Riparian is the Redtail?

Another patient in the Raptor Center "ICU."

The injured red-tailed hawk, the game warden said, was somewhere in the riparian cottonwood grove near where the power line crosses the little gravel road to the fishing pond.

What color is a red-tailed hawk sitting on the ground? Streaky brown and creamy white. What color(s) is the landscape? Shades of tan and brown.

He couldn't help because he was two counties away at some other activity. Luckily, he did have the phone number of the man who found the hawk,  and luckily that man answered and agreed to meet me at the site. 

The finder led me to a spot near the bird, which was impersonating a small stump in the tall grass beside the winter-clear water of the Arkansas River.

I laid my cotton flannel capture net on it, and it rolled into claws-up defensive position, which actually makes a hawk easy to pick up if you have your heavy gloves on. It footed me, but not very strongly. 

Into the bright blue carrier it went — I like this model because you can lift the top and set birds into it, instead of having to stuff them into a smaller end opening. 

Off to the Raptor Center we drove, where the hawk was pronounced dangerously underweight. 

"He's been on the ground [not hunting] a few days," the director said. Hydration, rest, and food come next. 

The hawk probably collided with the aformentioned power line, maybe burning a wing tip and injuring a foot. Human infrastructure strikes again.

Wolverines! They Might Be Coming Back to Colorado

Wolverine in Glacier Nat. Park (NPS)

Fictional southern Colorado high schools may no longer be accused of using an almost non-existent animal (in this state) as their mascot.

The last confirmed wolverine sighting — and it was a rare one—  was in 2009. A tagged male wolverine left northwestern Wyoming, wandered intp Colordo, and then headed for North Dakota.

Indeed, from his starting point near Jackson Hole, M56 took less than a month to arrive in the Centennial State, where his kind was last reported in 1919.

The venture confirmed what was believed of wolverines’ tendency to cover vast ground. Still, researchers were astonished by the speed. And more than that, they marveled at watching in real time the animal of mythological lore that had always evaded their view. (Recent estimates suggest low densities, small numbers in big places — between 250 and 350 moving across rugged, remote fringes of the Lower 48 states.)

Colorado Parks & Wildlife (back then the Colorado Division of Wildlife) formulated some reintroduction plans, but did not carry through. Now, wolverines are back on the table, so to speak. (You would not want a live one on your table.)

Wolverine reintroduction has not come up in Colorado Wildlife Commission meetings for more than a decade. The agency began a wolverine reintroduction process in 2010 and created “an extensive plan for how reintroduction could be accomplished,” said CPW spokesman Travis Duncan. 

Recently, the agency has been reviewing that plan and process to find possible update and what remains workable, Duncan said. 

“We will be working with a wolverine expert who is going to take on updating and providing greater detail on a wolverine restoration and management plan,” he said. “The contract isn’t in place yet, but we hope to be able to say more on this soon.”

Meanwhile, in Lewistown, Montana, urban wolverines? We're not there yet. 

UPDATE: And in Utah this month, a wolverine killed or wounded 18 sheep in one morning before being captured, radio-collared, and released.