Picture Wednesday.......

S

Steve Sutton

Well-known member
first a couple that I really like from the Summer....

A shot of a Bull Manatee taken in Florida....a WHOLE LOTTA LOVIN goin on here....

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One of those shots that the guys that like crisp, hard, focus would never even think about posting.....shot from the window of the truck just as the rain broke.......Dad leading the kids across the road to some heavier cover...I tell myself the "blur" denotes speed and motion.....hey...works for me....

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O.K.. got the "Naturalist" stuff out of my system...and since Pete made reference to the fact that I need to stop talking about "hue" and "composition" here's a couple to prove that I still carry a gun from time to time.....


Grouse Food....

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People Food.....

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More people food..only you'll need to come out and collect this yourself....happy to take you to the spot and tell you "good shot"....after that you're "on your own"....

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Another one of those shots that the "good" photographers throw out....I like this one for the "distance, speed, and weather" that it portrays....at least to me....

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This one Don Shearer took. Aspen, Mike and I in Montana on a cold, windy, day taking a break on an old combine....Don made me lose the orange vest in this one....good call since the gun and the combine are about the same age.....and I'm not far behind....the dog are looking like "youngsters" though...

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WHEAT...lots of it....headed East.....

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Another "relic" left on the prairie.....

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Proof that old guns and old gun toters can hit a bird from time to time....

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Last one for now....Evening on Medicine Lake, Montana.....Trumpeter Swans and Cans....

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Very fun looking at what draws your eye, I'm not surprised. Old machinery and dead birds are hard to beat - looks like that weather in MT was down right bone chilling. That picture of you looks like you have been doing some hunting.

I like it - toting a '97 and a digital camera.

Jen liked the pheasants in the snow storm.
 
Sutton-
These are great. I like the pheasants on the tank - Dori likes the last one - send me a jpg if you can, it is good enough to boot my current screensaver ....

PS: how about the poop, i need some poop to finish it off, its like having a fluffer and no finish!!!
 
Question on the old stuff on the grass plains. Does any of it get moved? I see only grass growing up thru which leads me to think it must have not been that long in one place, but the age of the stuff says its not working. Here is why I ask, in New England if a machine or just about anything else sits for more than 5 years there is a darn good chance a tree is going to be growing up thru it.
My son likes the train.
My daughter likes the dogs.
I like the barn from the other day.
My wife wants to know why I want to move to the West.
 
Bob,
Trees are not much of a problem on the plains. :-)

Steve,
Very nice use of old farm machinery. Do you know of any good fly patterns using ruffed grouse? Sure are some pretty feathers.

Tim
 
on the prairie....one of the reasons they call it a "prairie" instead of the "woods"....

Seriously, most of the "trees" on the prairie are in riparian zones and if they aren't are likely planted, (and would require protection from rabbits and hares and deer and porcupines to survive to any size), so you don't see much "small" stuff....

This picture of an abandoned hey rake, and the one of the combine, are good examples of what you see on the prairies as far as "rusted iron" goes....

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Most of it will be sitting in the corner of a field, or at the head of a swale, and will have been sitting there since the last time it was parked....parts will have often been stripped but mostly they'll be pretty intact.....in most cases the small homesteads either "wintered out", "droughted out" or "starved out" and the families movedd on and .as a result you find lots of old abandoned farmsteads, (often complete with bed springs and little odds and ends that haven't been pillaged), along with the abandoned machinery....

Big stuff, like the combine, likely was owned by one of the few that "proved out" on his homestead and became prosperous enough to be able to afford to "up grade" as more modern machinery became available.....and if you know farmers you know that once the "new" combines, or hayrakes, or cultivators became available someone was going to get one and then everyone was going to have to have one...once the new "self propelled" equipment became avvailable the old horse drawn equipment became almost instantly obsolete and since there wasn't much recycling and no "trade in" value where just peft where they were last unhitched....

Horsedrawn hay rakes and mowers and planters and plows are very common on the prairie...maybe even more common than abandoned buildings....bigger stuff, like the Combine and the multi-bottomed horse drawn plows, are less combine but they are seen frequently.....

The hay rake above likely hasn't moved in over 50 years....it sits on the edge of a field in Dooley, Montana across the road from the Church I posted the picture of...the water wagon resides in a collection of farm equipment on the fair grounds of Plentywood along with at least 50 other pieces of farm equipment including at least a dozen combines like the one in the picture.....

Neat stuff to me and I find myself unable to pass a piece of "rusted iron", an old building, or a windmill, when I'm in that country......

Steve
 
Cool stuff...I especially like the 3 pheasants on the oil or water tank thingy. That locomotive is a GP-30(GM Electro Motive Division or EMD). Those were built in the early 60's. Sort of a dinosaur that I see every once in a while in a yard or on local short line. I'm always fascinated how those old locomotives get picked up at an auction for dirt by some grain elevator in BFE and repainted to live an entirely new life. It sounds corny but it's a big part of our heritage rolling down the tracks...the American industrial machine you know. Pretty cool.
 
Jay,
the Boston and Maine I grew up next to was still running GP 9's , 7's. The Brand New GP 38 and 40's were a sight to see as a kid.


I read once that EMD thought the GP 9 would be used for about 10 years and then replaced. Ha. Ha. The cool stuff makes its way to the short lines.


Thanks for the info Steve.

In the back of the Maine woods is an old Steam Locomotive that was barged into a logging head on one of the lakes and used till the area played out. Still in the trees where it was parked. I will hike in to that one of these falls when the kids get big enough. Everything in the East gets cut up for scrap each time the price goes up.

I had a farm as a back yard growing up, so I know exactly what you mean when you say, when the new stuff shows up............
 
Nice pics. Are you hunting on public land? How much are out state licenses?? When is the open and close of pheasant season out there. Looks like a it would be a nice trip.
 
that engine in its 'fresh paint" is part of the Yellowstone Valley Railroad....171 miles of track and serves only to customers.....both grain elevators.....

Here's the Logo.....I used to think the Mountain Goat on the old Great Northern Cars was the neatest logo on the rails.....not so sure anymore....


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Steve
 
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$50.00 of that was for the waterfowl authorization so that I could shoot Ducks, Snipe and Cranes if the opportunity arose so if you were doing it for Upland only you can drop $50.00 off of that....

We hunted a mix of BLOCK MANAGEMENT, (Montana's excellent program that pays landowners to allow hunters access to their property, and in some cases, to manage for something other than wheat), WPA land, Private, and NWR's and shot Pheasants, Sharptails and Huns, Snipe, Ducks and had opportunities at Sage Grouse, Sandhill Cranes and Geese.

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So by the time we were done we had hunted everything from CRP on private land after securing permission to the endless vistas of the Charles M. Russell NWR....

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I had the huge advantag eof having been invited by Don Shearer who has hunted those areas for over 10 years and has maps and private ownership permission all lined up.....even with the excellent BLOCK program that the State has you still have to be able to navigate the maze of un-named ranch roads, figure out who owns the private ground and then track them down to secure permission, so having all of that done ahead of time saves lots of time that can be spent hunting instead of searching.......going in with no prior knowledge would be touugher but is certainly doable.....

Good luck if you decide to go.....its a great place
 
Oh baby, I like those Huns and Sharptail. Looks like sunset from the shine on your '97.

To tag on to what Steve said - I'll add that Montana has the land ownership maps online that include roads and landmarks as well as ownership (private, reservations, school lands, federal lands - specified to agency, etc...). It is a lot of maps, but it is all there to the scale of much more fine than the section-level. There is a second set of maps that list private ownership, so you can find land owners.

T
 
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