End of the Lease

Well, it's only been three years that I've been hunting and two that I've been a member of the "Nimrod" hunting club of Oskosh. Part of the membership fee includes access to a very nice farm property that is adjoined by a marsh to the west, marsh/woods to the south, woods to the east and more public hunting land to the north. As the farmer is no longer allowing the club to utilize the property, sadly this will be the last year I will have access.



















During the fall as time permits I will go out to my stand, on the corner of "goose island" to observe the wildlife and hopefully catch some images of something interesting.

My preferred method of transport out to the Bradley farm is my Suzuki V-Strom. My go anywhere, do anything, adventure touring motorcycle. I have a skid plate on the beast and some 70/30 tires on it so I'll take her out into the marsh hay fields as far as I dare before I make the on-foot excursion to the stand.

When she gets stuck, she makes a good job of it... AAA won't bail you out of a farm field I imagine, nor will a Hyundai Elantra.

What I really go out to do is spot for and observe the deer. It's pretty early in the season and quite warm so the deer just aren't alive. We're in pre-early-rut, whatever the hell that means, so the forest rats are largely absent from the landscape. A complete 180 from late-spring, early-summer when I couldn't stop seeing the darned things on mountain bike rides.




















Luckily there is plenty of wildlife to observe. Often you can see owls, cranes, geese, hawks and other birds riding the wind in the area.


While there are just a ton of small birds and other flying creatures, the most abundant bird on the premises is the Sandhill. I was hungry at the time and couldn't help but wonder what these birds taste like. I have read, as they can be hunted outside of Wisconsin that their nickname is "flying ribeye". Being currently involved in a fight back from extinction and having a resemblance to the whooping crane makes being able to taste test the creature improbably. I suspect it will be quite some time before the animal resides on my dinner table, although I hear they can be hunted outside of Wisconsin.
























While on my last trip, there was absolutely no action... from anything. It was all very quiet... through the lens of my camera though, I felt like I just fell down the hole into wonderland, peering through a 600mm lens at giant spiders, flies and grasshoppers.



In this photo I was trying to expose for the cranes crossing in front of the sun, which I had to wait a rather long time for. The small image does not do the photo justice, click on it for a better view. I think I did a pretty good job w/ the exposure since you can in fact see the cranes and the image is not at all "blown".

What is ultimately frustrating is that printing this photo made it look terrible. My Epson Artisan 710 just was not up to the chore. While it does an amazing job with pinks, greens, blues, and yellows,... reds and oranges are lost on it.

Really hoping to see some deer next time... need to get some hope for the upcoming season. I've never, in the 8 years that I've been trying, managed to capture a photo of a deer in the wild. I don't know why it's been so challenging.