Wildlife Job with Colorado Parks and Wildlife

 During the late winter and early spring, I took a job with Colorado Parks and Wildlife as a Wildlife Technician. Elisha continued to work full time at the Ice Skating Rink in Snowmass, and I also continued to work there at nights.

The job was pretty cool. I did a lot of shadowing of the Wildlife Managers (game wardens), especially John my boss out of the Area 8 Glenwood Springs Office (But John was based in Carbondale. But there were several WM's that I worked with: Darren, Peter, Matt, Devin, Dan, and Kurtis and also with a couple biologists including Julie and Kendall. They gave me a big fancy WM truck and the job was quiet varied. One of my favorite things that I did was relocate several orphaned cubs dens via snowmobile. We got to hold the cubs and snowmobile to get to the locations (above Sunlight Ski Area and the Flattops). I also helped to trap, immobilize, and take samples from bighorn sheep near Vail. I also helped with collaring and immobilization of elk for a reproductive study where they were inserting vaginal implant transponders into pregnant females. I helped with electroshock fishing on the Eagle river where they were investigating the effects of the upstream mine superfund on the fish. And I helped remove invasive pike using electrofishing. I did some trapping and relocating of nuisance turkeys, elk necropsies, and even went out to some ranches to check out potential wolf sighting and tracks.  I did a fair amount of snowmobiling and some ATV work and helped the properties technician build rifle tables for the shooting range, which included me learning how to weld and grind and some other stuff like that. 

 It was definitely hard to quit that job in order to start my permanent job at Arizona Game and Fish. This CPW job was only temporary. It did make it even harder as they offered to extend me on the same day I was going to quit. Sometimes I wish I'd stayed there...