Saturday 8-8-09 Where's the wildlife?

So Saturday turned out to be a day that was difficult for sure. We drove for more than 150 miles all day and we just could not see a thing. We spotted three snakes and allot of turkeys.
We spent the majority of the day in the Alligator Island NWR. This is a very large refuge and this refuge will be a separate trip in of itself. We will be able to spend a great deal of time on the water throughout the refuge in the canals and lakes within.
Towards the end of the day we ended up going back to Pocosin and searching for black bear once again. We spotted 4 before night fall.

But what we have found is that getting within 100 meters of any bear is not going to happen. On our last trip to this area in the spring we had no problem getting as close as 10 or 15 meters. But now we noticed a change and have to wonder why. For our purposes it is making things difficult. But for their sake it is a good thing. Being leery of humans is probably the best thing that could happen for them. It just makes our job that much harder. So this means getting eaten by the bugs and crawling through the brush and weeds and whatever else is in there. Not a comforting thought by any means.

But another concern is the population of the wildlife in the refuges. We have spent allot of time in these places and needless to say we have not seen what we had expected. In the 5 full days we spent in these refuges we noticed a minimal amount of activity and small numbers of wildlife. Even making a few treks into the brush for a few hundred meters we noticed nothing except a few snakes and spiders.

This will be our next assignment. Finding the wildlife in our wildlife refuges.
So now we are hoping that Sunday brings better spotting and photo shots.