June 3, 2013

At the other office...




For the next couple of months, I'll be 60 miles up a dirt road.  No cell phone.  No newspaper. No T.V.  Working 12 hours a day.  But my cubicle has a helluvah view. If you want to see more pictures of the upcoming season, follow along via facebook on the Spotted Bear Ranch page. "Like" us at  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Spotted-Bear-Ranch-Where-the-Adventure-Begins/183619038356235?ref=hl

Here's just a preview of the past few weeks:
























April 9, 2013

Thank You


Throughout the season,  I’m often asked, “So… how did you get into to guiding?”  The short version, I had an uncle who sort of laid the path before me -along with the help of two other guides, who I am forever in debt to for their encouragement.
So as this part of my season ends, I can’t say how fortunate I feel to eke out a living for the past five years sharing my passion for being outdoors.   It wouldn’t be possible without the people I am privileged to hunt and fish with.  So Thank You.  And to steal some words from Havilah Babcock.. the finest legacy a man could leave his grandson is a good gun and a good bird dog… 
I was lucky enough to have two.
The dogs are taking the summer off.  They've earned it.

March 15, 2013

The Zen of Fly-Tying


Sitting in front of a vise can almost be a form of monastic prayer for some fly tiers.   Many find it relaxing, meditative.  The inner voice quietly chanting, “ wrap, whip finish, repeat..”  It can be hours of repetitive motions that calms the mind.  Collecting one’s thoughts, and preparing for those long awaited moments of standing mid-stream.  A peaceful practice of patience that rewards a fisherman with neatly organized rows of freshly tied parachute adams or blue-winged olives.  Almost Zen-like.    But for me, fly-tying feels like a mixture of having O.C.D and the flu.   

At first, the symptoms start off small, usually with tiny midges, stuff that doesn’t take too much effort or material to tie.  Then it’s on to nymphs and my mind starts to drift, what if I added a leg here? Or oh that looks shiny, I’ll add that on top.    By the time I make it to streamers, it’s a full blown affliction. 
Some nights, as I struggle to fall asleep, my brain keeps imagining  pattern variations and possible materials, like a feverish dream that keeps repeating itself.  And my inner voice shouts “I need more flies.. girdle bugs.. mini-buggers… more streamers,.. I wish I had olive sexi-floss legs….”    It’s compulsive.


*Notice the folded bath mat on the left under the table. The price tag still attached. $12 for a liftetime supply of antron.
Also, it's not hording if you can still walk through the room....

 My fly tying room starts to look like a scene from the movie, A Beautiful Mind,   The one where they find the guy’s backyard shed littered with old maps and circled newspaper headlines amidst a maze of red yarn stretched wall to wall.   The audience has the heart-breaking but yet sympathetic reaction of, “..his condition has gotten worse..”
     I say fly tying room because it started off as a desk.  But five patterns in, and a dozen patches of deer hair, marabou, and shiny strips of streamer material scattered across the table, my mess has overflowed on to the floor.  My neatly organized boxes and bins strewn throughout the room like a little kid’s Lego collection.   And the only feeling I have when I finish a fly is a impulsive need to fish it immediately.  I want to know what it looks like underwater.  How it acts.  But I can’t.  Its 3 ‘o clock and I’m still wearing my pajamas pants.  And the nearest cold water stream is six hours away.  The pot of extra strength coffee doesn’t help either.  But as with most fevers, this will pass.  And I won’t tie again until mid-season, when I really need it.  I’ll clean up my caffeine-fueled frenzy of feathers and organize my freshly tied patterns in neat little rows.  But I know, next spring, when the pine pollen sticks the windshield of the car,  I’ll start thinking.. I need midges..

February 28, 2013

Pictures are worth a thousand words



Pictures are worth a thousand words....

With a busy bird season, it has been hard to sit down and collect my thoughts. I am often asked, “Well... What do you do on the days your not guiding?” - Honestly, I try not to do anything at all. Most my guide days start at 6 a.m and bookend at 6 p.m with a car ride home in the fading light. But in the hours in between, hopefully my camera has captured the words that have seemed to escape my fingers. In the end, it’s hard not to feel good about having a job that let’s you take your dogs to work everyday.  Oh.. and the view from my office isn't that bad either...




 

January 8, 2013

Hit or Miss


I’ve missed more wood ducks this year than I’d care to admit. I’m not one to keep a tally, or try to quantify a successful hunting experience based on the statistics of my shooting. But when you miss shots on ducks right on top of you, it hurts. And the experience tends to stick you with. It can haunt you. Missing close shots like that is really kind of embarrassing when you think about it. Two shots from my over/under probably puts out how many pellets? 75? Maybe 100? And I couldn’t put one of those on target at 10-20 yards? Its got to be the gun’s fault with those kind of figures. Or better yet, wrong chokes or wrong load. That’s the only logical explanation I can come up with, in the face of numbers like that. Mind-boggling. I couldn’t put one out of a hundred pellets on targert?!?! One out of a hundred…nope.

My brother is actually a pretty good shot. He claims that your pattern comes out as a cone and the key to successful shooting is to put the leading edge of that cone on your target, so as the bird continues to fly, the full pattern follows the target on its flight path. Makes sense, I guess, if you’re into science and mechanical physics. But after I saw every bird he shot one afternoon expel a spherically uniform poof of feathers, I politely told him, “Well, however your using your “cone“, you can clean all the birds next time, because I’m tired of hamburger.”

Regardless of my shooting, wood duck hunting is hard. And even harder to get them right on top of you. But once you’ve had squealing woodies coming in fast, feet down, and wings cupped, you’ll hold back on the treeline passing shots. Still, at best, it is hit or miss. But decoys do work. And if you know how to use a wood duck call, it helps too.