Category Archives: Outdoors photography

Fall foliage seems far better than average

Oct. 15, 20128:06 p.m.

Hickory tree, left, and an oak glow in Sunday's early light.

I’m certainly not a leafologist, and a small box of crayons will test my artistic knowledge.

But I know natural beauty when I see it, and I saw it Sunday morning at our farm north of Lawrence.

The steep hillsides thickly studded with  five species of oaks, two of hickory, walnuts and many others, were ablaze with the kind of color most think only occur in New England.

I’m guessing  it’s been at least 30 years since we’ve had these kinds of colors on our family farm.

Lemony walnuts and hickories are usually expected, but this year the oaks seem to be electrified, too.

Maybe it had something to do with the drought, or maybe it was at least two nights of temps in the mid-20s….all I know is that it is beautiful.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO VIEW A COMPLETE PHOTO GALLERY.

 

By Michael Pearce | Filed under Michael's World, Outdoors photography | Comments

Autumn is time to hit the Kansas trails

Oct. 12, 20127:27 a.m.

For thousands of miles, you can walk amid autumn finery.

In eastern Kansas you can stroll beneath yellowing walnuts and hickories, then past reddening oaks as you pass along trails that take you up and down a rolling topography.

In the Flint Hills, you can hike by scarlet-colored sumac as you work through long stretches of prairie grasses that turn to gorgeous hues that rival those of  the legendary trees of New England.

As well as changing colors on trees and other vegetation, walking the Elk River Hiking trail takes you through scenic rimrock formations.

Most Kansans have no idea how many miles of really fine hiking trails are within our state.

Personally, I’d suggest checking out the Elk River Hiking Trail at Elk City Reservoir. As well as changing foliage, the trail winds through towering rimrock with some boulders literally the size of small houses.

Trails at Cross Timbers State Park have similar topography. Great prairie hikes can be had at well-maintained trails as close as El Dorado State Park.

CLICK HERE TO A LIST OF TRAILS MAINTAINED BY THE KANSAS TRAILS COUNCIL.

By Michael Pearce | Filed under Birding, Outdoors photography, Trails, Wildlife | Comments

Working for a special first deer

Sept. 11, 20128:32 a.m.

Carl Hall smiles and jokes as he gets ready for a deer hunt Sunday evening.

It’s taken Carl Hall more than 40 years to get around to hunting for deer.

The former Wichita State baseball stand-out from the 1990s spent some his most memorable days following bird dogs for quail and calling turkeys for family, friends and himself.

Adding a slight complication to this week of deer hunting is that Hall’s now confined to a wheelchair,  following a car accident in 2010.

But a special bracket that attaches to his chair lets Hall aim a .270 with a joystick that’s activated by his chin. Sipping on a straw fires the specially rigged rifle.

A nice eight-pointer was one of about 15 deer that passed Carl Hall's blind Sunday evening.

Sunday’s hunt in Barber County was one of those memorable times when about everything went right except for a shot being fired as Hall and four others peaked through cracks in a blind of hay bales big enough to feed  a big herd cattle for a month.

Bucks were seen, and a nice eight-pointer offered a slam-dunk opportunity while a bigger nine-pointer teased the hunters for a half-hour before simply walking off.

Stay tuned for updates, and probably a complete feature on Sunday’s outdoors page.

By Michael Pearce | Filed under Hunting, Outdoors photography, Wildlife | Comments

David Kent sentenced for poaching potential state-record whitetail.

Aug. 30, 20123:09 p.m.

Thursday morning a Topeka man was sentenced for illegally killing an exceptionally large whitetail buck in Osage County in November, 2011.

David Kent has been sentenced for poaching this 14 point buck in Osage County last fall. If legally taken, the deer could have been a new state record.

Brandon Jones, Osage County attorney, said David Kent agreed to plead guilty to four of eight original charges, including criminal hunting, hunting outside of legal hours, illegal hunting during a closed season and using an illegal caliber while hunting big game.

Jones said Osage County magistrate judge Taylor Wine sentenced Kent to 30 days in jail, which can be served as 15 consecutive weekends and $1,500 in fines. Kent was also ordered to forfeit the deer’s antlers and the gun used in the crime to the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism.

In an unusual move, Wine ordered Kent to pay $8,000 in restitution to the landowner, Tim Nedeau, where the buck was poached.

Kent also had his hunting privilidges revoked for five years and faces a six month jail term if he doesn’t comply with all of his sentencing requirements.

The case has received a lot of attention because the deer Kent poached was probably large enough to top a state-record set for gun-killed whitetail bucks with typical antlers that was set back in 1974. Kent’s poached 14-pointer was scored at 198 7/8 typical inches on the Boone and Crockett measuring system at a Topeka’s Monster Buck Classic in January. Kent claimed to have shot the deer in Nemaha county around Dec. 1, while legally hunting during the state’s firearms deer season.

At the show, a bowhunter produced an earlier trail camera that had the buck in Osage County, about 100 miles south of where Kent said he killed it. Law enforcement officials say Kent admitted to illegally killing the deer when interviewed at the hunting show.

The case also drew attention because Kent was at the scene of one of Kansas’ most notorious poaching-related crimes in 2007.

That’s when Thomas Kent, David Kent’s brother, fired a high-powered rifle bullet from a vehicle and into what he thought was a flock of geese in a Lyon County field. Instead, they were decoys and the shot killed 18-year-old Beau Arndt, who was hiding in the decoys while hunting with friends.

Thomas Kent served more than two years in prison for the killing. David Kent was with his brother when Arndt was killed, but was not charged in that case.

By Michael Pearce | Filed under Breaking news, Hunting, Outdoors photography, Wildlife | Comments

Fawns show perfect camo, but don’t touch!

May 27, 20129:00 a.m.

Given a choice, I’d take the Quivira National Wildlife Refuge or some private property I can access for wildlife photography. But Blake Nelson certainly has my envy for a photo he got on a Pratt golf course Friday morning.

Not only is it a nice photo of a young fawn, it also shows how nature’s white spotting works as camouflage. The basic concept is to break the animals outline, the same thing we try to do when we are wearing Realtree, Mossy Oak or any other man-made camo.

Fawns naturally hold stone-still, too…that’s the part we hunters often struggle with.

Blake Nelson found this fawn on a Pratt golf course on Friday morning.

An avid outdoorsman,  Blake was smart enough to leave the fawn alone. The doe that had the little deer probably tucked it away in a safe place then left so it wouldn’t draw the attention of predators to the spot. Chances are she returned in a few hours, nursed the fawn and probably moved it to another location.

Watch an upcoming issue of The Wichita Eagle for an article on the problem of people taking fawns they’ve found. It’s often a death sentence for the little deer.

By Michael Pearce | Filed under Outdoors photography, Wildlife | Comments

Ted Nugent guilty of wildlife violations — again.

April 23, 20128:34 a.m.

Comments he has made against President Obama,other Democrats, and the resulting federal investigation, aren’t the only problems in Ted Nugent’s world.

The outspoken guitar-playing, gun-rights advocating, outdoors television show host ,has pleaded  guilty to charges of killing game illegally for the second time in two years.

This time Nugent recently entered a plea agreement for illegally killing a second Alaskan black bear after he’d wounded another while filming an episode of his “Sprit of the Wild” television program. In that part of Alaska  wounding an animal cancels the hunter’s permit. In most areas a big game permit is not used until an animal is recovered.

YOU CAN CLICK HERE TO READ more about the current case against Ted Nugent.

As well as paying $10,000, the article said Nugent will not be allowed to hunt in Alaska for several years. I’ll have to check if that means he won’t be allowed to hunt in Kansas as part of an agreement between more than 40 states to honor penalties leveled in one of the others.

In 2010 Nugent also plead guilty to a variety of poaching charges in California, where he illegally used bait to attract and kill a blacktail buck with spike antlers. Shooting spike bucks was illegal  in that part of California. State wildlife officials made their case from what they saw on a “Spirit of the Wild” program.

CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT THE CALIFORNIA CRIMES.

By Michael Pearce | Filed under Breaking news, Hunting, Outdoors photography, Wildlife | Comments

Life on a lek

April 18, 20127:58 p.m.

THE MIDDLE OF A BIG RANCH, EDWARDS COUNTY – The day began with us getting lost in a pasture Tom Turner literally knows like the back of his hand. (Thank goodness we took GPS readings the last time I was out there.)

Our plan of taking down a flimsy blind by the lesser prairie chicken lek, and replacing it with a better photo blind, was dashed because gale-force winds would have taken the blind, and possibly us, to North Dakota as soon as we untied it from five t-posts.

So I sat in the blind that was bellowing in the wind. The chair I sat on collapsed and dumped my tender tush on a cactus.

And the only serious cloud in the sky seemed to be pasted to the sun as it rose in the east, keeping the lek shrouded in gray while surrounding ridges glowed in perfect light.

But the prairie chickens came, maybe as many as two dozen males, and danced and fought despite the jumping blind and the guy with a big camera lens within.

Of the 400 or so frames I shot, maybe 40 came when the sun finally appeared about two hours after dawn.

Ideal conditions – hardly.

Photography as good as I’d hoped – nope.

Worth the morning – you better believe it.

As they have for centuries, two male lesser prairie chickens vie for dominance on a lek Wednesday morning.

Lesser prairie chicken males fight for territory at a lek in Edwards County.

By Michael Pearce | Filed under Birding, Michael's World, Outdoors photography | Comments

Preparation for prairie chicken photography much of the fun

March 13, 20129:51 p.m.

A male lesser prairie chicken looks around on a lek in Edwards County.

You know those “perfect” wildlife photos you see from time to time, the ones with razor-sharp focus, outstanding lighting and the animal’s image captured at an ideal moment?

Some are luck, but most take a lot of preparation.

Tuesday morning I was amid Edwards County ranchlands, preparing for what might be a chance for some good wildlife photography.

Tom Turner and I were scouting for male lesser prairie chickens displaying on leks. The goal was to watch from a distance to see where most of the males had staked territories, then place photography blinds there after the birds had left the lek at mid-morning.

Tom knew the probable location of two leks, which we found holding displaying birds. We heard birds calling on two others we lacked the time or conditions to precisely find.

Tom Turner pounds in a long t-post to anchor a photography blind beside a lesser prairie chicken lek.

By 11 a.m. we had blinds on both active leks, staked down with full-sized t-posts to hold them in the wind- – hopefully.

I logged GPS coordinates so I could find them well before daylight in the future.

Along the way we watched prairie dogs scoot from hole to hole and jackrabbits do their ears-back streaks across the prairie. Several times we spotted herds of mule deer or whitetails watching us from the skyline. It was a bit surprising that some bucks were still carrying antlers.

Mule deer bucks watch from a sandhills ridge Tuesday morning south of Kinsley.

The preparation is over, and now we wait for a couple of days of photography when the weather and my schedule permit.

The anticipation is much of the overall enjoyment, too.

Even the best preparation doesn’t assure great photos. You always wonder ahead of time if luck will be on your side.

By Michael Pearce | Filed under Birding, Hunting, Michael's World, Outdoors photography | Comments

The artistic beauty of sharks – seriously!

March 9, 20127:55 a.m.

OK, this video clip is just plain cool to watch…unless you’re totally freaked-out by sharks.

You can CLICK HERE to see a very well-done video that’s matched with some great music. OK, so it’s in Spanish and I can’t understand a word of it, but maybe that just makes it better.

Be sure you watch all the way to the end to see how well this trainer works with sharks.

Great stuff…that I’m really glad I never saw first-hand in Hawaii last year.

By Michael Pearce | Filed under Fishing, Outdoors photography | Comments

Great owl video, but not a Raytheon bird

March 6, 201212:57 p.m.

We all get e-mail photos and videos that seem to be good true, right?

So it seems to be with a neat video that’s circulating around Wichita, claiming to be taken by a security camera at Raytheon, according to an e-mail I got this morning. A friend’s e-mail said it was shot at another local airplane manufacturer.

CLICK HERE to check out some great footage of an owl flying towards a camera in slow motion.

As I watched it the first time it struck me that the bird didn’t look like a great-horned, barred or any other owl native to this area. It also looked like it had some kind of leather bracelets on each leg.

Bob Gress, of the Great Plains Nature Center, had already seen the footage and confirmed the bird is an eagle owl that’s being handled by a falconer. (Or is it an owler?) We can’t say for sure where it was taken but it doesn’t look like some place where a major airplane manufacturer would have a security camera.

Anyway, it is fun to watch but chalk it up with other online hoaxes like the guy in the garage with the mountain lion supposedly shot near Leon, or the mountain lioness with two cubs supposedly eating a dead deer by Wellington, or the mountain lion supposedly dragging a nice eight-point buck by a feeder in the Flint Hills, or the mountain lion…

Well, at least this online hoax with some neat footage and it’s not another mountain lion.

 

By Michael Pearce | Filed under Birding, Outdoors photography, Wildlife | Comments