What Better Way To Start Off The Year

The car thermometer read 31 deg F as I pulled into the parking area this morning and as I looked down toward the stream I was relieved that the water was only a foot or so above normal from yesterday’s rain - not ideal for collecting but certainly manageable. I spent the first hour searching a new stretch of stream that proved to be fairly devoid of teeth. For the second hour I worked an old reliable spot, but with the added foot of moving water, getting even 1/4 shovel full of gravel off the bottom was quite a challenge. I headed upstream a bit to where the water was about 18 inches for a good 40 foot stretch. As I made my way over to a spot on the bank where I could put down my bucket, I noticed a triangular shape at the bottom of the sunlit water. I carefully scooped up the object, fully expecting it to reveal itself as something other than a tooth once on my shovel, but surprisingly it retained it’s toothy appearance. As I walked the shovel load of gravel over to the bank, I could see that it was definitely a tooth, at least in the 2 inch range, but as I looked closer I could see it was very stream worn and missing it’s root - so close! I spent the next hour working the area around where the blade was lying, picking up ½ of a chubutensis tooth and pieces of porpoise bone including a 4 inch piece of rib - definite indications that there may be some nice teeth buried nearby. The area also yielded a couple of small Striatolamia teeth, some decent sand tigers including a 1 ½ inch specimen and a nice Coca-Cola bottle, which after some quick internet research turned out to be manufactured between 1951 and 1958 - it’s not a 4 inch chubby but I still thought it was pretty cool.