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Yesterday I had the pleasure of getting out for one of the nicest opening days of the fossil hunting season at Mazonia-Braidwood State Fish and Wildlife Area that I’ve experienced. The sun was shining, the ground was relatively dry and temps were in the 40s-50s. And I only encountered 1 tick! I ran into a few other collectors over the course of the day, including @connorp. The park was mostly quiet as usual, with the sounds of birds and passing cars nearby, as well as the distant rumble of trains and planes. My hunting area for this trip was south of Monster Lake- after getting nearly skunked when it came to interesting fossils the last two years I wanted to go back to a site that had given me more success in the past. It’s about a one mile hike to get down to the collecting area, although I was able to pick up a few concretions on the way there. I’ve been using an 8 inch wide plastic rake the last few trips to clear leaves and litter from the ground and I have found it really effective. It’s a full length rake like this one: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Ames-60-in-handle-Collector-8-in-Poly-Shrub-Rake-2915900/204476248 so maneuvering it in the underbrush can be annoying sometimes, but since I’m already trying to fit a 6’3” frame through there it doesn’t make it notably more difficult to get around. Here are a couple concretions in an area where I didn’t clear things up: I didn’t find too many already split concretions- a few dirty plants I’ll share once I’ve had a chance to clean them up and some mystery things that may or may not prove to be anything (and one exciting find I will detail below). As usual, there were also plenty of split Essexella blobs to be found, but I didn’t bring any of those home. Towards the end of the day, I found myself at the base of a small hill that was veritably covered in both split and unsplit concretions. At first I thought it might have been a dump pile from a collector back in the day, but the number of unopened smaller concretions made me question that, as well as the next find I made- a very partial Tullimonstrum gregarium! It’s a wee one, but only the second example of our state fossil that I’ve found. Here is a wider shot of the hill where I found it: By this time I was starting to get pretty sore, so I decided to head back. I ended up with around 2 gallons of concretions, a pretty average day at Pit 11 for me. Here is my bucket at the end of the day: I’ve got about 10 gallons of other concretions in the queue ahead of these, so it may be a while before I start freezing and thawing them, but I will work on getting them cleaned up and ready to go in the meantime. As @Mark Kmiecik famously said about hunting Pit 11, I left “bruised and abused and grinning from ear to ear”. It’s a tough experience, but you can count on me keeping at it as long as I can. Anybody else planning to make it out to the park this week?