Scenes From a Hunt.

Yesterday, I took Sandia and the camera to a nearby hunt. It was good to see old friends, and meet some new ones, and get reacquainted. But mostly, it was good to see hounds doing what they do, doing what they've done for more than a Millenia; and doing it in such a beautiful setting.

This dog worked hard, over a long, long time and a great distance. Usually, unlike life, hard work isn't rewarded. In this case it was.

They're back out there today, but I have another task. It's time to let Sandia loose on a jackrabbit. Let the learning begin!

Might As Well Get a Greeter Job at WalMart.

It's bad enough these days, when anybody with a couple hundred bucks in their pockets can get a fair-to-decent digital SLR camera, and set up business as a "Pro-fesh-uh-nul Photographer". My advantage, of course is experience. Having the technology and camera speed and knowing how to use the technology and that speed are two different things. 9 times out of 10 I'm still going to get the better shot than the other guy. Or girl.

Fer example, I get communiques like this:

Dan
Are you going to shoot any ASFA trials in places where I tend to show up? J ___ ran pretty well at ___ over ___ _____, but the photographer's work was not very good. __ has a poor sense of timing, and ___ focus is sloppy. I want a good picture of J___ for her breeder
(Edited to avoid embarrassing anyone)

So, what me worry?, right?
But, as "the Coach" on ESPN's College Game Day is wont to say: "Not so fast, my friend". Casio is about to tilt the field of play way out of whack. Beginning in March, any granny, or cuzzin Bruce with a thousand bucks laying around can get the perfect shot, (s'long as they can aim the damned thing, that is). The magic machine they will do this with is below:




See what it says on the lens barrel? If you want to see what kind of resolution you can get at that kind of speed, check out the samples here. Pretty impressive. So impressive I might as well retire to a life of leisure and panhandling in Deming, New Mexico.


Just kidding.

Alone Again. Naturally.

Seems like lately all I'm doing is driving Margaret to an airport. Yesterday, it was the El Paso airport, and she was off for a week in New York, to visit her son, and daughter, who is also visiting NY. Then she'll fly to Michigan to visit with her parents, and get accustomed to that thing we remember as... "snow". Cold, she could have had here. Woke up to 15 degrees this morning. She'll be in Michigan two weeks... long enough to remember why we went away almost 5 years ago in the Express. The forecast for the area is not good; but typical.

Anyway, she took the new camera with her. I thought I'd give the little camera a little review.

A couple weeks ago, when we were still in Texas, we drove down to Austin to the CompUSA store to get a replacement antenna for our Microsoft Streets & Trips GPS. (Sandia-damage, if you must know.) Turns out the store is closing, and had everything on clearance, so we got more than we planned on.

Our shopping included not one, but two of the slick little Fuji FinePix Z10 fd's.

We've always wanted a compact digital camera for those times the digi-SLR's were too bulky to carry. Well, this little gem is compact, as you can see. It has an optical, and digital zoom lens that is completely internal, so nothing sticks out. 7.2MP resolution.. better than my old D70 SLR. It also does movies... as seen in a previous post, (although, I have to work on my technique). It can instantly re size files for blogging... love that! And it comes in cool colors! (Would I pick anything but blue?). 6 other colors are available. They were marked down to $153 from $179 in the clearance sale. If you want one, I just discovered B & H Photo & Video has them in stock for $143. Oops.

But Dan, you say, how are the still pictures? Well, I returned to one of my favorite settings, with my favorite new model, and shot this:

Other than cropping... this is "as is". No other editing. It's also a smaller copy of the original fullsize file (for quicker uploading). I'm likin' it.

A Little Wound-Salt for Our Friends in Texas

Jessica Simpson Completes Elaborate Plan To Destroy Cowboys' Season

You half believe this is true, don't you?

:-p

City Slickers Beware!

So.. whatever happened to "truth in advertising"?

Day One.

As we pulled into the field north of Deming, I looked North and spied a couple of eagles. Young Goldens.. possibly the same two I posted pictures of on this blog a little over a year ago.

There were also dozens of Northern Harriers in the air.

We parked, got the dogs out and set off to find us a few jacks... Margaret walking student, Sandia, with Fanny and Buffy free coursing. We spotted 3 jacks during the course of our first mile. The girls saw none, as they were out of position.

About that time I saw something moving about 200 yards ahead of us. I thought it was a coyote, so we got the girls leashed up, because then I spotted a second... then a third... and suddenly I realized there was a whold herd, and they weren't 'yotes; they were wild pigs, and it was really a fortuitous that we had everybody leashed.

Except, as luck would have it, that's when we jumped the jack that everybody saw! Sandia is getting pretty excited about this stuff, and wants to be let go. Well, we were still pretty close to the pigs, so nobody got let go.

I decided the only way the girls were going to get something to chase was if we kept them on slips. Good thing, too, as Buffy almost dived headlong into this...

Judging from the way it's opened up it was either the eagles or a harrier that got him. We may have interrupted somebody's lunch. It gets worse. We'll be revisiting this unfortunate critter, but...

It was starting to get a little warm, and we decided to work our way toward the car, keeping the girls in the slips. We jumped one just to Margaret's left.. she slipped Fanny, I slipped Buffy, and poor Sandia could only stand and watch what turned out to be a short exercize run, as the jack lost them in some dense brush. We headed towards the car, and Fanny did, too. Buffy, however, remembered where she saw a jackrabbit that wouldn't elude her. Yeah... off she went, and it didn't matter that it was almost a thousand yards back the way we came.. she went right to it. I was yelling my head off, telling her, "NO!", and "Stop!", and other totally useless commands. As I approached her and her lunch, she did what she's done for years: Picked it up and trotted away from me. We repeated this exercize in frustration twice more, and I just decided, screw it! (or words to that effect), told her we were leaving, and headed back to the car. She looked up at me, and at least she didn't say "Goodbye", she just looked mildly perplexed.

I got to the car, we got the other dogs loaded, and we saw Buffy wandering around, not exactly coming, and not exactly going away. Basically, she was milking the moment for all the drama she could. But I had a secret: The magic green cow tripe treats.

Everyone in the car, we started to exit the field, but we had one more photo opportunity to go, as we watched a Harrier hunting. That yielded this dramatic shot of a descent to the ground in an attempt to nab a small, furry, creature. We thought she was successful, but no dice.

Here's looking at you kid.

Announcement.

Announcement 1: We have arrived in New Mexico! Back at Dreamcatcher RV Park in Deming, and the good news is the goathead stickers that plagued us last winter in the field adjacent to the campground are pretty much gone, along with a great deal of the foliage. But there's enough cover in there to hide a lot of cottontails and jacks, and about a thousand Gambel's Quail, and other birds. I took Sandia out to see his first jacks. Took a while, but we were finally successful. I tried to video it with our new Fuji Z10 compact digital camera, (More about that in another post), with little success. But here it is...


It took me 3 or 4 viewings before I finally picked out the running jackrabbit. Good luck with that... :) Tomorrow we'll head out in earnest to some of our favorite fields.. Fanny will begin Sandia's training. Should have better video then.

Announcement 2: Pictures from the weekend trials in Hutto TX are now uploaded and available for viewing and purchase at our website.