During my elk hunt last month in one of the most remote areas of Colorado, its northwest corner, I got yet another taste of what day to day living out there is like. I have hunted there many times since an early mule deer hunt on Douglas Mountain some 30 years ago. So I am not surprised when a bear mistakes something of yours for its own and a mountain lion sighting is interesting but not unusual for my friends Wanda Walker and her daughter Dawn Nottingham who live there.

I was visiting their new house, just being completed. It is Wanda’s first new home and she is 84 years old and still roping and riding and fixing fences torn down by careless elk. The house is far beyond power lines and they are happy to have their propane generator for electricity. She and Dawn own no ATVs. Instead they saddle a couple of their 15 horses for each day’s work with their huge herd of cattle.

Their border collie, Kate, was skipping around my feet like border collies do and I noticed chunks of hide missing from her back and forehead. It seems Kate had confronted a bear that had come onto the porch of one of their cabins up on Douglas Mountain.

Western mountain ranchers often have several cabins scattered about the wide expanses where their cattle graze in summer. The cabin where the bear grabbed Kate is 22 miles from the ranch house and the women often stay for days at a time in it or one of a couple more like it far from home instead of returning home each day after working cattle. The cabins are heated by wood stoves and lighted by Coleman lanterns.

The bear apparently grabbed Kate and threw her as it attempted to find something to eat in the cabin. The commotion awakened the ladies and they heard Kate yip as she was in the bear’s grip. During my stay, a bear hunter told me there were several bears “working” the area.



Help Mississippi’s

sick children!



I want to use the remainder of this space today to ask my readers to take four minutes to help Mississippi and Mississippi’s ill children. Want Mississippi to be first in the nation in something really positive? We are almost there. Out of 152 children’s hospitals from Hawaii to Alaska to Maine getting votes, our own Blair E. Batson Hospital for Children at University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson is currently second in a very important national vote for the top three such hospitals to receive some special equipment for our children. You can vote.

Xbox 360, a supplier of children’s and families’ electronic games, has joined with the Children’s Miracle Network to provide gameroom makeovers to the top three vote getting children’s hospitals in a national contest. At this writing, Thursday, our Hospital for Children at University Medical Center is some 7,000 votes behind first place Arkansas Children’s Hospital and 165,000 votes ahead of third place Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Michigan.

“The Gameroom Giveaway is a fun opportunity for all of America to place votes on behalf of the Children’s Miracle Network hospital of their choice, and also learn more about the Children’s Miracle Network and Xbox 360 partnership,” said Brian Hazelgren, chief development officer for Children’s Miracle Network. “We have found a phenomenal partner in Xbox and appreciate their efforts in helping us raise funds and awareness for the 170 children’s hospitals in our network.”

Xbox has raised $1.3 million for the charity through the sale of the Children’s Miracle Network Family Game Pack during the 2008 holiday season.



Hands on awareness



My son John Barham, a paramedic assigned to helicopter duty with University Medical Center, made me aware of this opportunity to vote the UMC Hospital for Children into winning this latest game room equipment for our Mississippi children who are being treated there. UMC’s Hospital for Children is a seven floor, 250 bed facility where more than 150,000 children come from all of the state’s 82 counties for treatment. My son regularly cares for a child being rushed by helicopter to the facility, thus his keen interest.

You can cast 10 votes at a time each day by providing identification information on xbox.childrensmiraclenetwork.org. Identify Mississippi as the state of the hospital and the rest is easy. Just keep clicking “VOTE” until all your 10 votes have been cast. The results are updated every five minutes and are shown on the site. Voters are eligible to win one of the Xbox 360 Elite consoles each time they vote. So vote again tomorrow and on until the final day which is Friday, October 16, 2009.

Let’s get Mississippi kids the latest items for their gameroom. Some outdoors page readers might question our wisdom in providing children more inside games when we strive continually to get kids into the outdoors. I suggest two responses: First, sick kids are confined to the hospital during treatment and most kids spend at least some time at home with electronic entertainment. And the hospital gameroom can approximate their home atmosphere. Second, let’s get our kids well, and then we can point them towards the outdoors.

Vote! It is fun and you will get a good feeling for each click.