Richie and Buckster -- I just returned from a 2-day, 20-mile horsey ride through the headwaters of the Hermosa Creek roadless area (which local sportsmen are working to have designated wilderness in order to keep the motors out forever) where Mike hunts. I saw only two elk skeletons that looked like winterkill. Amazingly, our fears of massive winterkill don't seem to be the case. Turkeys took a bad beating, but that's another story. Because elk came down so late last year to where roadside and ATV rifle hunters could kill 'em en masse, as happens in early snow years, the rifle seasons were a bust. My take is that any extra loss of bulls to winterkill -- for which I've yet to find any evidence -- was more than offset by all the thousands that were not killed by rifle hunters after migrating down to winter habitat. Lots of water, everything is green. Should be a banner season so not to worry. Dave