Thursday, July 10, 2008

Day 8

DAVE: We accomplished 2 things today. 1) We backtracked yesterday’s 3 wolves and found they had basically come from the east and only approached for their last half mile from the northeast – thus NOT contradicting earlier evidence, and 2) checked all the remaining areas between camp and 12 kilometers to the east. Thus, our current hypothesis is that the pups are 12 km to the east, that is, beyond where we last checked to east a few days ago, farther out on the desert. The beauty of this hypothesis is that it is consistent with all our evidence and not contradicted by any except our amazement that they are that far away.

We plan to start testing this notion by sitting on a large hill in the areas 10 km to the east and watching in the evening to see if we see the wolves heading out of the suspected areas. Otherwise, we will also try to get use of a helicopter headquartered her for various other research projects and fly the area. That could take a few more days to arrange.