A Rare Wednesday Outing

[jonthepain]

What does jonthepain think when he wakes up and it's 24 degrees outside and windy as h - e - double toothpicks? He thinks, "field trip!"

Somebody's been edumacating my birds, so I cruised into a different county and found a nice stand of ten foot pines:


decided to hike the mile or so up to the top of the knob. semi-bushwacking on deer trails. but the dog is great at finding the trail so i just follow her. it got a little thick in the draw:


but we made it through to the top ok. the dog decided to take a break:


while i admired the view:


called in a half a dozen, but they busted me taking photos of them before they were in range. can't really see them in this shot, but trust me they are there; they are bugging out over those tall trees:


hiking out, the dam dog decided to leave me in the dust. i was depending on her to guide me out the same way we came in. naturally, i detoured around some blackberries, and ended up in some ridiculously thick stuff, missing my mark altogether, and ended up taking easily twice as long as it should have.

of course, the dog gave me a look when i finally joined her at the truck as if to say "and where have YOU been?" sheesh.


you know the guy who's forever bragging about how smart his hunting dog is?

i'm not that guy.

did i mention that it was 24 degrees out, and windy as all get out? double sheesh.

on to the next stop. saw some scat


and some tracks


followed said tracks


and found

a dead dog! oh boy. found one last Sunday also, but did not have the camera. sorry about that.

my trail opened up into this vista:


i pretty much hiked the coupla miles into here for Chuck, since he loves crow hunting in wide open spaces with no cover. Chuck, this stand's for you.


i hiked out into the middle of this clearcut, ala Chuck, but the best i could do for cover was to sit against a short pine in some broom straw, and put the wind and sun at my back.


now the kicker to this spot - and no i'm not telling where it is - is that it backs up to a cattle ranch. which means crows. this is going to be a primo spot in a couple of years.

so i called in some very uptight birds:


of course they busted me photographing them as soon as they were overhead, but with that big wind they had a hard time turning and getting out of there. (instead of just zooming by at 30mph they did their typical turn-on-a-dime aerial display to go back from whence they came.


and boy did that wind ruffle their feathers when they tried to pull that maneuver off lol!) they came in from behind me (i had the caller 20 yards in front of me, calling downwind,) so i had plenty of chances to smoke them at close range, but i was so intent on getting some photo shots that i neglected to take some 12 gauge shots.


what i learned was that it's a whole heck of a lot harder to shoot crows with a camera than with a shotgun. go figure.


thanks for reading!
jonthepain

[Frankiesurf]

Great pic of your "hunting dog" laying in a puddle.

[jonthepain]

lol thanks. some hunting dog.

[DarkSkies]

Great pic of your "hunting dog" laying in a puddle.

lol thanks. some hunting dog.

What Frankie said. Yeah, he is kinda goofy, I guess you just got used to him and decided to keep him. It's like he was put on this earth to bust your ballz.

Those pics, documentary style, are great. Thanks fo sharing them and the stories that go along. I might start copying that style for some of the pics I take this season. If you recognize it, ya know I stole it from you, with your permission.

[baitstealer]

Great story I enjoyed that, thanks. Maybe next time you will get to shoot some birds, keep up the good work.