Last Hunt Of The 2023/24 Season

[Birddogman]

Yesterday was our last hunt of the 2023/24 season.

When I got up in the morning, the thermometer claimed it was 14 degrees F, plus there was a good bit of wind, making little snow tornados in the open areas. Perfect!! I had plowed my lane the day before, which caused it to turn into a sheet of ice that gave even the truck some trouble. Startin' out:







I called my buddy, Dave, and asked him if we were "men or mice". He is a good friend and a good sport, so he and his setter, Jack, foolishly agreed to join us for what I told him was a "sure thing" final pheasant hunt.







The dogs covered miles and had a BALL! Jack, Joy and Bliss:







Jack in action. That boy can cover some ground!















No one was leaving 9 year old Joy in the dust!















Miss Bliss wasn't going to be left behind either!















Birds were non-existent, as expected (yeah, I lied about the "sure thing"). Dave worked this row with Jack, while I worked another one.







Suddenly, I Joy and Bliss got "birdy" and I had some double-dawg action!! Woo hoo! My heart started pounding.







Closing in on the quarry with Brittany teamwork!!







POW!! Bliss finally nails the point and Joy honors the point. I'm ready to flush my last bird of the season.







Turns out it was a *&^%$# squirrel....

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAPABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw==

Quittin' time.







It has been a good season - my 65th (not counting three years spent overseas in the Army in the late 1960's). This season, I've enjoyed: the company of my dear wife and good friends in the field and the wonderful solitude of hunting alone; countless hours of watching my beloved dogs do what they most love; beautiful wilderness places all over the country; and many birds of different species. Life is as good these days as it has ever been for me - I'm a lucky guy in every way, including still having the necessary stamina and good health to do this at age 77. The last hunt is always bittersweet nonetheless. At my age, I don't know if I'll have another season - I'll do everything reasonably possible to make that happen (go to the gym, do all my medical stuff like colonoscopy, etc), but there are no guarantees. Maybe I'll get to post pics of some hunts next season, Red Gods willin'.

Greg



--
Check out my photos at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/137747053@N07/

 

[NicholasD]

Greg,

thanks - I enjoyed the images and the words.

Red Gods willing…

Nick

 

[tbcass]

Love the dogs and the scenery but where are the birds?

 

[Groucho1]

Love the pictures and the writing, but PLEASE no pictures from your colonoscopy.

 

[JeremyB2]

Great photos and words. You really do get excellent results from that RX100

 

[elliottnewcomb]

Always enjoy your photos.

I notice 3 speeds: 1/250; 1/500; 1/800. Are you shooting S mode and changing from time to time?

 

[Busbob]

I enjoy every one of your posts, even though I am not a hunter I get it. Outdoors, dogs, fresh air, all that stuff. Just doesn't get any better.

May you hunt many more seasons!

 

[Birddogman]

Thanks, Nick!

 

[Birddogman]

Love the dogs and the scenery but where are the birds?

This time of year in Pennsylvania, there are none. PA used to have literally millions of wild pheasants - that's what got me hooked on upland hunting when I was young. A combination of factors that started in the late 1960's and continue today destroyed the wild pheasant population - massive suburban development to accommodate the ever-increasing number of people, clean farming practices that eliminated all of the old fence rows and such that provided cover, no-till planting and the universal use of herbicides, lack of avian predator control (when I was young, the Game Commission paid me for hawk wings - shoot one now and you go to jail), falling fur prices, so that kids no longer trap foxes, racoons and other ground predators to make money anymore, and avian flu in huge commercial chicken houses spreading to the wild populations.

The loss of the wild pheasants all happened in a few years. When Uncle Sam sent me to Vietnam in 1968, there were still wild pheasants everywhere. When I finally got back to the States in 1971, there were maybe 5% left.

So, we spend most of the fall each year in remote areas of the west to hunt wild birds. Here, the Pennsylvania Game Commission stocks pen-raised pheasants and that is all there is to hunt these days. Happily, if allowed to acclimate, they behave very much like wild pheasants and are great fun to hunt, but by this time of year, they are gone - likely more being killed by avian and ground predators than human hunters.





Greg

--
Check out my photos at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/137747053@N07/

 

[Birddogman]

Love the pictures and the writing, but PLEASE no pictures from your colonoscopy.

Ha! No problem.

My first wife refused to do preventative medical procedures, like mammograms, colonoscopy, annual GYN, etc. This was one of the factors that lead to her death, following a decade of needing 24/7 100% care. Such things are not fun for sure, but, IMO, they are necessary to live a relatively long and healthy life.

Anyone out here who does not do those things should. If you don't, odds are you will pay a high price.

Greg

 

[Birddogman]

Great photos and words. You really do get excellent results from that RX100

Thank you. To me, the RX100 (I have a V and I'm on my second VII, having worn out the first one) simply stands alone as the ideal field camera. When all I am doing is photography, I use a good ILC and a sack of lenses. I can't manage something like that in the field when hunting.

From what I read here, Sony is unlikely to improve/update the VII because of competition from cell phone cameras. No cell phone camera can even begin to do what I can do with the RX100. I'm tempted to buy a 3rd VII and just keep it in the box for when my current one wears out from hard use under field conditions.

Greg

 

[tbcass]

I live in upstate NY and it's much the same. There used to be pheasants everywhere. Now there are a few because some groups raise them and release them to the wild. My father was an avid hunter and ate everything he shot. Pheasants were one of my favorite meals. I think one of the problems is Pheasants are not native to North America, so their populations were tenuous at best.

 

[Birddogman]

Always enjoy your photos.

I notice 3 speeds: 1/250; 1/500; 1/800. Are you shooting S mode and changing from time to time?

Since you are the RX100 "tech guy", Elliott, I'll take the time to explain what I do with mine,

I find the auto setting inadequate for my needs. But, in the field, photo opps last seconds or less, so there's no time to be fiddling with the tiny, dense menus etc on the RX100. Like these shots of Bliss pointing and then Nancy about to take a bird over the point against the setting sun.











Also, I am usually wearing gloves, which makes fiddling with the tiny controls even more problematic.

So, I use the three memory registers to hold three complete sets of parameters that I have created for my most common type of shooting. I can switch between them in seconds in the field, even with gloves on.

MR1 is for general still photography - among many other parameters, 1/125 shutter speed, single shot, relatively low ISO. I honestly don't use this mode very often because for this kind of photography, I'll use my cell phone for snapshot quality; or my ILC system for serious photography, but it's very nice to have available when in the field carrying only the RX100.





MR2 is for action photography - again among other parameters, 1/500 shutter speed, high ISO, fast burst rate. I use this one the most.





Finally, MR3 is set up for HDR shooting; 1/250; 5 shots with 1/3 stop difference between them, etc. I use this surprisingly often, as I commonly come across landscape scenes when hunting in remote places. Not only does it help me deal with scenes that have a high dynamic range, it gives me lots of room in post-processing the image to get it just the way I want it.





Once operating in any one of those pre-set modes, I can very quickly and easily change some of the parameters with the little wheel on the back of the camera, even with gloves on - for example, shutter speed and exposure comp.

Make sense?

Greg







--
Check out my photos at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/137747053@N07/

 

[Birddogman]

I enjoy every one of your posts, even though I am not a hunter I get it. Outdoors, dogs, fresh air, all that stuff. Just doesn't get any better.

May you hunt many more seasons!

Thank you! Dogs and upland hunting have been my passion since I was very young. It keeps me healthy and happy. Frankly, I wouldn't bother to hut but for the dogs - watching them work and hiking/exploring remote wilderness places is what it is all about for me.





Greg

--
Check out my photos at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/137747053@N07/

 

[Birddogman]

Well, there are places in the west where they are very well established. Those places don't look nothing like at home.





Greg

--
Check out my photos at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/137747053@N07/

 

[tbcass]

Well, there are places in the west where they are very well established. Those places don't look nothing like at home.



Greg

Possibly those places are closer to the original Asian environment they came from. Pheasants like open fields with high grass for cover which is common in the west but not natural in the East. Pheasants used to live in and around corn fields because they could hide, and food was abundant.

--
Tom

 

[Birddogman]

Well, there are places in the west where they are very well established. Those places don't look nothing like at home.



Greg

Possibly those places are closer to the original Asian environment they came from. Pheasants like open fields with high grass for cover which is common in the west but not natural in the East. Pheasants used to live in and around corn fields because they could hide, and food was abundant.

True.

My extended family are all PA Dutch farmers. I grew up on a primitive PA Dutch farm. Around here, farmers really struggle to make a living, while owning probably millions of dollars worth of land for development purposes.

This resulted in my relatives (and all of the other farmers) cultivating every inch of their land - from property lien to property line. Plus, they cut down and plowed under nearly all of the thick ancient rows that had divided fields and properties since the colonial days. I don't blame them for doing this to survive, but it destroyed nearly all of the habitat.

Also, they went to no-till planting and the heavy use of herbicides. When I was young corn fields were nearly impenetrable jungles with corn growing out of them. You could put one shovel into the ground and get enough nightcrawlers for a full day of fishing. Now, those same field are mud flats with corn stalks, without so much as a blade of grass growing in them. Zero cover. You could dig all day in those field without finding a single nightcrawler. Zero food for wild birds.

Again, I don't blame my relatives - they do what they must do to survive as farmers.

One of the several Hartman farms in the valley below where we live:



Note the mono-culture corn field - not even a blade of grass.











Greg

--
Check out my photos at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/137747053@N07/

 

[elliottnewcomb]

Always enjoy your photos.

I notice 3 speeds: 1/250; 1/500; 1/800. Are you shooting S mode and changing from time to time?

Since you are the RX100 "tech guy", Elliott, I'll take the time to explain what I do with mine,

I find the auto setting inadequate for my needs. But, in the field, photo opps last seconds or less, so there's no time to be fiddling with the tiny, dense menus etc on the RX100. Like these shots of Bliss pointing and then Nancy about to take a bird over the point against the setting sun.





Also, I am usually wearing gloves, which makes fiddling with the tiny controls even more problematic.

So, I use the three memory registers to hold three complete sets of parameters that I have created for my most common type of shooting. I can switch between them in seconds in the field, even with gloves on.

MR1 is for general still photography - among many other parameters, 1/125 shutter speed, single shot, relatively low ISO. I honestly don't use this mode very often because for this kind of photography, I'll use my cell phone for snapshot quality; or my ILC system for serious photography, but it's very nice to have available when in the field carrying only the RX100.



MR2 is for action photography - again among other parameters, 1/500 shutter speed, high ISO, fast burst rate. I use this one the most.



Finally, MR3 is set up for HDR shooting; 1/250; 5 shots with 1/3 stop difference between them, etc. I use this surprisingly often, as I commonly come across landscape scenes when hunting in remote places. Not only does it help me deal with scenes that have a high dynamic range, it gives me lots of room in post-processing the image to get it just the way I want it.



Once operating in any one of those pre-set modes, I can very quickly and easily change some of the parameters with the little wheel on the back of the camera, even with gloves on - for example, shutter speed and exposure comp.

Make sense?

Greg

Thanks Greg, that is a very wise way to use the camera.

--
Elliott

 

[Birddogman]

It works for me.