Getting the shot
Trending
A long time ago, when I first started writing this column, the weekly email to my publishing papers didn't always include a photo. I figured that my 700 words or so were enough to amply describe the adventure in each week's article or to lay out my ideas for better hunting or angling for the readership. As I became more invested in my writing, however, I realized that a picture did more than just fill whitespace, and as the adage goes, added another proverbial thousand words to the written experience. Thus, trying to capture a photo of each trip into the field or on the water -- be it a hero picture with game or fish in hand, or simply a shot of the natural world -- was an important add to my efforts with rod or gun.
While my well-worn Canon T3i DSLR camera with zoom lens rides faithfully in the console of my truck, and is likely outdated by more recent models, it serves its purpose and gets me tons of great stock photos of pheasants, geese, deer and more as I cruise the countryside. My iPhone now replaces the number of pocket-sized digital cameras I came up with, going from a clunky first-generation 1.3 megapixel model, to a 6MP, and then a 16MP which was about the size of a pack of baseball cards. Best of all, I can now drop the pictures from my smartphone directly to my email, online cloud storage, or website with a click of a button after the impromptu field session, presuming I have cellular coverage.
Despite these advancements, getting the shot to accompany this writing -- or simply a stash of stock photos for later use with seasonal articles -- often requires a bit of mental reminding amidst the excitement of hunting or fishing, and at times presents challenges or lost opportunities. Take for example this weekend as my lab and I wound our way around a nearly non-descript section of public access land in search of sharptailed grouse. The flock was scattered in singletons and pairs across the ridge of a rise in the middle of a lengthy hill that ran the eastern side of the property, and the birds presented a few makeable shots but most left early from the knee high grass bending slightly in the rising breeze.
Occasional rock piles had some stand-out vegetation that didn't seem to hold birds, but as we approached the final stretch of the rise headed south into the wind, I eyed up a large clump of buffaloberry bushes and tagged it as a landmark that any sharpie hunter could relate to. Against the horizon it made for a perfect picture, and would serve as an ideal stock photo denoting a prime place where grouse would hold on a dewy morning such as the one my dog and I were working through. I slipped my phone from my pocket and prepared to take a photo as Ole worked toward the gray-green stand of bushes.
One of the sacrifices an outdoors writer makes to provide the added detail to each column is such a photo. Sometimes, that means holding my shotgun in my off hand and dropping my level of readiness while the shutter snaps, and once in a while, that pause comes with a price. So, it was as my dog approached and a sharpie took flight in a perfect rising left-to-right arch just after the photo was taken. With my gun in my left hand, and my phone in my right, and my dog wondering why there was no blast coming from behind him, the grouse peeled off with the rising south wind and made its escape.
While I got the shot that I needed for this week's column -- and really what spurred this writing in its entirety -- I missed out on a shot that likely would have been a bird in the bag. On the way back in from our final turn through the property this weekend, with a cache of pictures of wooly bear caterpillars, popping milkweed pods and their white seeds, the grousey-looking bush and other fun fall sights from the grassy acres, I watched my dog get on scent and I readied my gun. He pointed and then plunged into the end of the hill's grasses and up came a sharptail, producing yet another makeable shot. This time, with camera tucked away and my 20 gauge at the ready, I converted and the only photo necessary was a hero shot of my lab and the bird after the retrieve at the culmination of another great hunt ... in our outdoors.