gobble gobble

Killed a gobbler yesterday. I'll write more tomorrow.

Great Turkey photos

Last night I had 3 gobblers come into the blind and hang around for about 90 minutes. They never strutted but I did get lots of great shots.

This morning I snuck up to within 15 feet of some gobblers. They were on the other side of a fence and a brush line. I could see their fans and sometimes their heads. I had the safety off and started to squeeze the trigger once but it just was not a responsible shot. There was too much stuff between me and them so I did not. Then I tried to get even closer and spooked them. When you are within 15 feet of several gobblers, do not try to get any closer. LOL

My new sniper suit is awesome BTW. Hopefully I'll get some pics up tonight.

Busy but there is hope!

WOW!

In the past two weeks I have been working nearly non-stop. I had to prepare a presentation, travel to Tennessee and give it. Write a 32 page campaign manual for a consulting job that we have and prepare for our biggest event of the year where I'm involved in probably 6-7 different events.

That is in addition to my normal job duties. Yesterday I worked on the campaign manual for 14 hours including being at the office until 3:30 this morning.

But tomorrow I'm leaving for Humansville Missouri and plan on turkey hunting/photography for the next 2.5 days. I wanted to leave tonight but I literally just clicked "send" on that 32 page project. Its in the client's inbox right now and I'm really proud of it.

So I hope I have not bored away any viewers of this blog. Trust me, I'd much rather of been sitting in the woods this whole time.

More macro

I took the redbud while walking across the MU campus the other day on my way home. I took the dogwood blossom in my kitchen. I used a bicycle light to light it from left to right and a flash. I have not even really looked at these. Just converted them to jpeg and threw them up here. I've been too busy to do hardly anything lately.

Fooling around with Macro photography

On the way to work this morning I packed the macro lens. Little did I know the wind was blowing about 20 mph!

I took a few shots. This is one of a dogwood blossom. I tried to focus on the anther.

I think I am going to like macro photography but I need to learn more about it.

Depth of Field and Fighting Birds.....a tough combination

This week I was hoping to get a shot of two male prairie chickens jumping in the air fighting....or at least trying to impress the girls. After watching several of these fights it seems that neither really wants to get hurt or hurt the other one, just look tough for the girls.

Anyway, there is a concept in photography called "depth of field." That is the area of a photograph that can be in focus at any given time in front of and behind the focal point. For a shorter lens, like a cell phone camera or on a point and shoot the depth of field is so large that most people have no reason to even know the term. For larger lenses, the depth of field becomes much smaller. For a lens the size of mine the depth of field is only a couple of inches. This means that I cannot focus on two birds at the same time unless they are both the exact same distance from me. If they are standing at an angle than its impossible.

That would not be a problem because just having one bird in focus during a fight could be pretty attractive. The problem is that they usually jump forward or backwards when they fight, leaving the focal point that I was at and they are FAST. They tend to lay down in front of each other and stare each other down for a few seconds before jumping. Even with that warning I never caught the action when the birds were close enough to make a great photograph. When the birds were a couple of hundred feet away the D.O.F. increases some and it was easier but none of those shots are that great.

Anyway, when I saw the birds face off I would turn up the ISO (what used to be film speed) which allowed me to increase the shutter speed so I could be prepared to capture this fast action without blur. Then I would position the bottom of the frame at the birds feet so I would have room in the frame for them to jump. I also switched the autofocus to "servo" so it would automatically track the forward and backward movement and adjust the autofocus. I still never caught one, darn it!

I still had the time of my life but as I look at these two shots I can't help but wonder about what might have been if I could have gotten them in focus. They are SO CLOSE and they would have been fantastic!!!

Quite an experience

This morning I was back at Jane's ranch. She and I had our blinds right next to each other and were set up before daylight.

I will remember this morning for the rest of my life. The birds came onto the lek and were all around our blinds before it was light enough to see anything. They were booming and making their lonesome call and dancing by quickly stomping their feet on the grass. The birds were so close we could hear their feet hitting the earth. I knew it was too dark to try to photograph anything so I laid in the bottom of my blind and just listened.

I would hate to overstate this but hearing those birds that close definitely had an effect on me. I could lay there and imagine unknown Native Americans over thousands of years waking up listening to that call. The photographer for the Missouri Department of Conservation wrote, "they sounded lonely and sad. The calls penetrated my soul like a spirit whispering in my ears." Wow, I could not agree more. This is one of those things that might sound cheesy unless you experienced it for yourself.

I will write more about this experience later. For now I will just say that it was one of the more meaningful moments in my life and I will never forget it. Jane said it all when after exiting her blind she said, "I cant think of a better way to spend Easter morning." I could not agree more.

These are two of the photographs that I got. I'm just spent a few minutes looking through the 300 shots I got this morning and picked out two to put up on this blog. I have several that are quite good IMO.

Matfield Green

Today was really exciting. I stayed at a place near Matfield Green Kansas called the Tallgrass Spiritual Retreat Center last night ran by a really neat lady named Billie Blair who signs her emails "the pastor in the pasture." We had a nice evening of conversation before turning in for the night.

This morning we left the retreat at 6 am and drove to meet Jane, a local rancher who partners with the retreat to host prairie chicken watchers. Jane drove us up to the lek (pronounced like HECK) and we had not even gotten into the blind yet when we started hearing the birds. That is one thing that has surprised me about these chickens, they start their booming before the sun even comes up.

The light this morning was PERFECT but unfortunately the birds never got very close to the blind. On this trip I have either had close birds with light or light and birds at a distance. Tomorrow is looking very positive because Jane made a very generous offer to me.

She is letting me come back by myself in the morning to photograph the birds and she let me set up my blind anywhere that I wanted. I went back to the lek with Jane this morning before leaving and set up my blind and she set up her own pop up blind. I told her that for her generosity I would get a photograph printed, double matted, framed and shipped to her. That would be over $100 but still not enough in my opinion. Prairie chickens are rare and having a lek on your property is even rarer. To have someone let me put my blind where ever I wanted was a very nice thing to do.

Hopefully tomorrow I will get a fantastic shot that will grace her wall for years.

Manhattan Kansas, where I am staying, is about 2.5 hours from the lek so I am going to have to be in the car driving at 3 am.

If the good lord shines a little light on these birds in the morning I will be able to do their beauty justice for the fist time on this trip.

These are the shots that I got today.

Friday April 2nd - Kansas Day 2- Second post today

This morning my guide sent me about 200 yards away from the blind. She is really giving me special treatment because I am a "photographer." I appreciate it but I'm not sure its fair.

We knew there was a chance of thunderstorms before we set off this morning and we saw it lightning before we even got the lek. My guide told me that if the lightning too close that she would call me and that we would leave before the birds left.

It was dark this morning because of the storm. It never got any lighter than me having my camera at 2000 ISO (maybe 1600 once), f 2.8 and about 120th of a second shutter speed. Thats the most light there was and that was only for about the last ten minutes or so. I had several birds really close but because there was not any light I did not get anything too wonderful. I'm really optimistic about the next two mornings though. Tomorrow morning I will be in Matfield Green, Kansas which is about 100 miles away from where I have been the past two mornings.

While I was driving today I saw a group of turkeys in a field. I quickly pulled over, got my camera put together and changed the head from the tripod to the car mount. Then I got the camera mounted on the window and backed back up the highway. It was scary because I was thinking that the camera might fall off as I was backing up but it turned out ok. I got some good shots of these jakes. Too bad they weren't big toms or else this would be a frame worthy shot.

I'm at a McDonalds in Emporia, Kansas right now. I'm not sure how or why i ended up here. I just needed something to do because I cant get to my location tonight until about 6 or 7 and I was thrown out of my hotel at 11 am this morning.

Konza Prairie Trail

Me at the start of the trail.

The flint hills of kansas.

Well maintained trail to eliminate erosion. Everything at the Konza was done with the environment in mind. No pets are allowed on the trails and this trail is the only place you can access any of the property.
One of the creeks has all of its headwaters contained within the Konza. This means that its used as the "benchmark" or baseline of streams in the midwest since its not contaminated with pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer the way the majority of our midwestern streams are.

Buffalo Wallow last used over 150 years ago.

Coyote Scat. I've never been in a place with so many coyotes. You could not walk 5o yards without seeing piles of this everywhere.
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Yesterday afternoon I took a 6 mile hike on the only area of the Konza Prairie that is open to the public. The Konza Prairie is owned by the nature conservancy. It is 8,600 acres in the flint hills of Kansas just south of Kansas State University. The nature conservancy lets KSU conduct biological research on the property. It's really quite fascinating since the land was never plowed and much of it looks exactly as it looked before European settlement changed the landscape of Kansas. In fact, there are buffalo wallows along the trails that I toured today. These were made by wild bison that were last seen on that property in 1857.

All along the trail there are signs of research projects. There are various types of traps, plants that were purposely protected from burns and signs all along the trail telling hikers to stay on the trail and not disturb the ongoing research.

The trail was really well maintained and overall I was really impressed. I am also impressed with my camera bag. This was my first long hike with the bag and it felt great even though it weighs about 45 pounds with all of my gear.

The wind was blowing 30 mph in town and it felt much higher on top of some of these hills.

First Morning in the blind

Last night the guide called me. She said that the birds had been staying quite a bit away from the group blind and she wanted to know if I could shoot from her SUV. She said that the birds do not really mind automobiles and she would like to get me closer.

I told her that I had brought my hunting blind and she agreed to let me use that. Little did I know that there would be 30 mph winds this morning.

She had me set up my blind about 30 yards ahead of everyone else who was in the group blind. I'm glad I bought the best blind I could because I've been in cheaper ones that would have flapped like a flag and scared everything off. The way it was parts of the blind would occasionally move in the more severe gusts and the birds never got any closer than about 50 yards. I thought it was because of my blind and I was concerned that everyone would be angry at me when the morning was over.

When the guide exited the group blind and came over to tell me that we were finished I asked her if my blind scared the birds and I was relieved to hear her say that it did not.

Here are some shots from this morning. Like I said, I did not really ever get that close so these are crops.

I'm going to take a nap and then try to head out somewhere this afternoon. Tomorrow morning I will be in the same spot although there is a chance for thunderstorms.