Spring Photo Shoot at Mayberry

Looped around the perimeter of Mayberry last Saturday. Because our property is permanent marsh, most of the wildlife is just across the drainage canal on the grazing ground.

White-front geese stage at Sherman Island and it looks like they are about ready to head north.

(Click on photos to enlarge.)

Not sure why this single spec didn’t take off with his brethren, but he eventually flew off to join them.

As I watched some waterfowl, waiting for a good photo opportunity, I heard a splash in the canal next to me. Figuring it was river otters, I paused before turning to look. When I did, it was just in time to see a coyote dog-shaking to get the water off his back.

The coyote was nearly hidden by the tall growth.

Lola was very excited to be back in her element.

A horned owl, rested in a willow tree until Lola scared him off.

A red-tailed hawk took off from the field across the canal.

Lola jumped up a rooster.

Red-wing blackbirds were displaying.

The goats of Mayberry were back, cleaning up the vegetation on the levee. Hope they left enough cover for the pheasants to nest.

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Spring in the Altamont

We remained a ways off from the burrowing owls, not to disturb them.

Joe spotted a couple Swainson’s hawks gliding high overhead. Red-tails were hanging around a stand of eucalyptus trees and a ferruginous hawk was spotted on the horizon. 

Several Swainsons hawks passed high overhead.

 Joe also found a young king snake under a board. We took quite a few photos of the willing snake.

 

We found this very small king snake under a board.

 

 Burrowing owls were in their usual haunts. It was a nice day to observe.

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Consumptive Use and Wildlife Conservation

I recieved an email this week, from Suzanne Davies, asking me to create a link to a blog about photography and getting kids involved in the outdoors.  The blog is entitled “100 Resources for Teaching Your Kids About Wildlife Conservation” at http://photographydegrees.org/100-resources-for-teaching-your-kids-about-wildlife-conservation .

I responded that I’d check out her blog and I did so. Although the obvious intent of the blog was to promote photography and wildlife, I couldn’t help but notice that there was no mention of true conservation, at least in the traditional form. Conservation means to conserve, which implies use. In my opinion, consumptive use.

As a hunter, conservation organizations are Ducks Unlimited, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, The Mule Deer Foundation, Pheasants Forever etc. None of these groups are listed among Suzanne’s top 100. Seeing this I am very disappointed. The implication is that wildlife conservation is preservation, which is not the case.

Hunting is a major reason why wildlife habitat still exists in the United States. Hunting will continue to provide valuable habitat in the future, unless unknowing individuals create the illusion that hunting is anti wildlife and I believe that Suzanne’s list accomplishes just that.

Sorry Suzanne, I don’t know if you ment it that way, but your list needs revision, or you will be doing kids and wildlife a disservice.

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Do Coyotes Eat Ants?

Pair of coyote tracks

The pair of coyote tracks in the above photo was pointed out to me by my brother, Rob, during one of our reptile surveys. He had already figured out what was going on, before telling me about them. The tracks were the front feet of a coyote. They were deeply groved into the soft dirt, an indication that the dog had stood in one place, moving his head and forcing the tracks into the ground deeper than usual. The size of the tracks was just right for a coyote, but I wouldn’t rule out a gray fox.

Two feet in front of the tracks was a bush that completely blocked the view in his front vision. He wouldn’t have been looking ahead of him as he could only see about one foot. Yet he had stood in this position for more than a brief moment.  About a foot in front of the track, ants were traveling in and out of an ant hole. The coyote had stopped at this spot to feast on a few ants before moving on.

Tracks and ant hole outlined

With a little assistance, the picture is made more clear.

Here are the ants.

ants circled

I wonder how many ants a coyote can eat.

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The Rattler and the Ground Squirrel

Woodpile rattlesnake

Turkey hunting was unproductive Saturday morning. By noon it seemed unlikely that a turkey would show, so I stopped at the cabin on our property, which is used by another former owner, and sat in the shade relaxing and eating some lunch. Movement caught my eye as a rattlesnake slithered towards a wood pile. It was a very large rattler and I wished my camera were at my side, but if was still on my ATV – thirty yards away and the snake was rapidly disappearing.

Then it was gone, but a California ground squirrel appeared and it was alarmed by the snake. As squirrels do when a rattlesnake is near, it began to flag it’s tail wildly. I couldn’t resist and with the squirrel so distracted by the snake, I moved to my ATV and grabbed the camera in hopes of videoing the squirrel and maybe even the snake.

Watch the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlUyANRtR74

Who knows what you’ll see next when you’re hanging around on a nice day.

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Donated Turkey Hunt a Winner for All Hands

I’ve “donated” a few hunts to fundraising events over the years. Most of the time I ended up being the benefactor.

In about 1991 or so, I donated a duck hunt to the CWA Youth event at Comanche Hills. The hunt was a guided hunt on the public waterfowl hunting areas. Many people probably laughted at the idea of paying for somebody to take them hunting on the public areas. I can hear them now, “The audacity of that guy…”

I didn’t think I was making any kind of statement. I just wanted to take somebody hunting who was also willing to help raise some money for CWA. Surprisingly, the man who purchased that hunt, for he and his son, has become one of my regular hunting partners. He’s one of the nicest and most considerate people I know and his name is Tom Billingsley.

Not only did he and his son hunt with me at Mendota that year, they still hunt there to this day. And, Tom frequently hunts waterfowl, pheasants and even deer with me. The donated hunt was the start of a lasting friendship.

Tom Billingsley

This weekend I took two young gentlemen turkey hunting. A good friend of theirs and mine, Pamela Atwood, purchased the turkey hunt at the Mule Deer Foundation banquet in San Jose and gave it to them. They had not been turkey hunting previously and she has been a hunting mentor for them, especially Eric, who was introduced to hunting by winning an SCI essay contest at the age of 13.

Eric and Michael Maida joined me at 5:00 AM on Saturday and we headed for turkey country. Our first stop produced only one long range gobble. However we did see quite a bit of wildlife including three blacktail bucks. One of them was a keeper and we watched him for a few minutes before we concluded we’d have to scare him off to get back to the truck. It was a beautiful morning, but by 9:30, it was obvious that we’d better move to another spot. We were hunting on a ranch managed by a friend of mine because I could find only one gobbler on our ranch and what good would a two-person turkey hunt be when there was only one trophy.

Anyway, we  shifted to another part of the ranch and hit paydirt. After a little hiking and calling we had two birds down – a double.

After our success on Saturday, we headed to camp on our ranch and hunted for pigs in the evening. Finding no pigs, we ate barbecued mallard and slept out near the canyon where the turkeys live. In the middle of the night, (2:41 AM exactly) one of the bulls penned in the field next to our sleeping spot decided to bellow repeatedly about 50 yards from where we were sleeping. It was quite a wakeup call.

We rose about 5:30 AM and within minutes a gobbler began sounding off in the canyon below us. We set up early in the howling wind and chilly temps. I failed to impress him with my hen turley impersonation. We followed him for a couple hours, finding the old bird stutting in an open bowl, but we could never get closer than about 75 yards. Eventually he walked off leaving us frustrated.  But it was a great hunt.

On the way home we drove past a nice gobbler as he fed along side the road.

Eric and Michael were great hunting partners and I haven’t had more fun on any hunt since I was their age.

Michael

Eric

Thanks to Pamela and Stan Atwood for setting up a great hunt.

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The Mule Deer Foundation supports SB 589

On April 9, 2009, the following letter was sent to the Honorable Fran Pavley, Chair of the California Senate Natural Resouces and Water Committee. 

                 

RE:     SB 589 (Harman) – SUPPORT

 

Dear Senator Pavley:

 

On behalf of The Mule Deer Foundation (MDF), I am writing you to urge your support of SB 589 (Harman), which would provide greater accountability and transparency over the use of hunting license tag and stamp revenues.

 

MDF is a 501c3 non-profit organization whose mission is to conserve mule and blacktail deer and their habitat. MDF believes that hunting license tag and stamp revenue is critical to the preservation and enhancement of habitat for deer and other California wildlife.

 

SB 589 would require that hunting license tag and stamp monies be used for game species conservation and related purposes.  In addition, the bill would require that MDF and other sportsmen’s groups have an opportunity to review and provide comment on proposed projects funded with the monies.

 

It should also be noted that the bill, through account consolidation, improves efficiencies in the use of the monies and also helps ensure that there are sufficient funds available for each big game species, regardless of the number of tags sold for a particular species. SB 589 would also facilitate greater assistance with habitat projects by nonprofits, like MDF, who specialize in game species conservation.

 

Please support SB 589 when it is considered before your committee.

 

Sincerely,

 

Rich Fletcher

State Chair

The Mule Deer Foundation

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The Snakes of Spring

 

 

On our trip to the Ranch last Monday, we observed many of the rights of spring, golden eagles feeding their young in a roadside nest, vulture eggs inside a hollow oak, a turkey gobler strutting and gobbling, trout smolt heading downstream, a gopher snake in the road, plump does ready to give birth and zillions of wildflowers.

Shooting stars.

Roadside gobblers are scarce this year. Maybe last year’s dry spring took it’s toll on them.

The warm of the sun was having it’s affect upon wildlife. Nothing seems to be more affected by the warm spring rain than snakes. One of the highlights of the trip was a rockpile home of a den of rattlesnakes.

They are always impressive and my friend Joe DiDonato has shared with me several of the photos he took was the group watched the snakes laying in the warm sun.

The brown snake is the larger, but the black snake has at least 16 rattles. I wonder how old it is.

The black snake is the smaller of the two – not sure which is the male vs female.

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Spring Days at the Ranch

Drove to the ranch on Friday. Used the pick and shovel to clean the roads and cut back a fallen oak that was blocking the road. Then we glassed for turkeys, but found none. Shot my bow and fixed a problem before it got too dark to shoot. I was glad I had my backup bow, as I had to swich the arrow rest from my backup bow to the one I planned to hunt with. I’m shooting a Q32 with a whiskerbisket. Apparently the rest got bent when I crowed too much stuff into my bow case.

The weather was perfect and everything was gorgeous. I even had three hens walk by within 30 yards, but the gobbler that was with them headed off before it got too me. Maybe it got nervous. Who knows for sure.

I took advantage of the good weather and numerous photo ops to make the most of the trip. Here are some shots of the scenery, wild flowers and wildlife.

 Fiddlenecks

Red maids

Shooting stars were everywhere. 

As were Johnny jump ups.

On some locations on the ranch, native bunch grasses dominate the hillsides.

The stinkbell is a rare plant. We have at least a few dozen of them. (I cheated on this one – took it the week before but couldn’t resist including it.)

This fence lizard was quite macho.

A doe fed onto the ridge as I headed home.

And, I spotted my first gobbler of the spring.

The last photo of the days was of this canvas back duck cruzing past a couple mallards sunning on the shore of a roadside pond.

It was a good trip. One of the best aspects of spring turkey hunting is the beauty of spring.

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Kodiak Part 4: Loud Snoring Has Its Advantages – Keeps the Grizzlies Away

Day four of our Kodiak adventure was very enjoyable. If only we could have figured how to reel those silvers in quicker, we could have caught a plane load – all with fly rods.

In addition to silvers, we even caught a couple dolly vardon, but no steelhead. The fishing was everything Alaska fishing can be, but the mountain was calling for me to climb it and bag another deer which would include venison for the trip home if we could figure out how to hang  onto it.

During the night of following the fourth day we could hear soda and beer cans clinking in the night. Could it be that the grizzlies liked soda and beer?

We attempted to save a slab of silver salmon by inserting it into a zip-lock bag and sinking it to the bottom of the river (by putting a rock in the bag along with the salmon) in four feet of water. No luck, the bears got it too.

On the fifth day (one day before our departure) I climbed the mountain again and this time turned to the north at the top of the ridge. I wanted to hunt an area not previously disturbed.

I was a little discouraged by the lack of deer, but eventually found a decent buck in a large brush patch. Always concerned about having time to shoot, find, clean and carry the deer back to camp before dark, I decided to waste no time and shot the buck.

It went down in the brush and before long I’d recovered it.

You’ve probably heard stories about rifle shots being like ”dinner bells”  for the grizzlies of Kodiak Island. So had I, and I wasn’t a bit comfortable skinning and gutting that deer in a brush patch where I could see about ten feet.

My loaded .7mm and my .44 magnum revolver were stationed at my side. It was an eery feeling.

I reduced the deer to carrying size and moved it onto a nearby  open hillside where I could complete work on it while keeping an eye out for grizzlies.

I was a pleasantly surprized that the buck had four points on one side, a Sitka four-point buck is unusual, but it wasn’t particularly old or large antlered.

I managed to load the animal onto the back pack and carry it to camp before dark – crossing the river by raft one last time. In camp we debated our options. We decided to go with the only option that would give us a reasonable chance of saving our venison.

It was the “Lean the meat against our tent and keep our loaded rifles at our sides” option. It was a little scary (sleeping a couple feet from grizzly bait), but we figured the snoring and odors emitted from our tired bodies would keep the grizzlies away and it did.

On Saturday we loaded the Grummon Beaver and headed back to Kodiak with a couple silver salmon and one Sitka blacktail to take home to California. The venison and the fish were both excellent table fare.

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