One night before we rotated out of Alaska, Karen and I were sitting on the bed plotting our future. It was fifty below, and the covers on the bed were frozen to the wall. I am not sure where I got it, but I had a map that showed the migration flyways. I noticed that the Pacific flyway funneled down to almost an hour glass pinch point right over Klamath Falls, Oregon. I stabbed my finger on the spot and told Karen, "That is where we are going to live. We will buy about 20 acres in the woods, cut a winding driveway into it so that no one can see, and put our house."
At the meeting with the State Police Officer who would decide where I would serve, I was asked where I wanted to go. I told him Klamath Falls. He was quiet for a bit and then said, "You might want to reconsider. That is a rough posting, and where we put problem officers". Of course I refused to listen. I should have said Eastern Oregon. The reason that I chose Klamath was because of Falconry. This same preoccupation with Falconry has steered both Karen's and my lives from the first time we met.
After a year of renting we bought a house in the suburbs with a 1/2 acre of land. It was a good spot. Outside of the city limits, but there were too many people. I eventually quit the State Police, pretty well burned out, and began my Horse Shoeing phase. I had offers from the Sheriff's office in Newport, on the coast. From Portland to work for the liquor Commission, but since neither place had any decent places to hunt Raptors, I turned them all down.
After 15 weeks of Farrier school I began my new occupation. As a farrier I went to the horse for my work. One client was a transplanted Bostonian that had a Moon Eyed white horse, proud cut of course, (Still had the part that produced hormones, without the testicles, and always a pain in the butt) I had cultivated a handle bar mustache as part of the persona. Well this horse had one at least as good as mine. I have never before or since seen a horse with a mustache, especially a "handlebar".
One of the times that I was trimming the horse, George began to tell me about some property back up in the hills behind Klamath. I was intrigued, so I arranged to go look at it.
Klamath Falls is right in the center of the Klamath, Modoc and yohooskin tribal area. Klamath Lake, covering about 34 or more miles, gave the town its name, due to a shallow falls at the pinch point where the town itself is located. In the early days it was a pretty rough and tumble town with the friction between the Indians and the whites. The hills around the town are pretty steep, and the old "Military" road went up one of the hills and through a high valley, and out onto the flat land at the other end. After Hwy 97 was put in along the lake the "old Fort Rd" was fenced off by ranchers on both ends. Most of it was owned by a rancher named Louis Hagelstein on the North end of the valley. He had begun to sell parcels of it, and it was being subdivided by the buyer. This was where the described property was located.
The road had not seen much use at all since the 1800's when it was built. It was a bit rough. The guy took me up a road that had been a narrow Gage Log train track up to a "hanging bench" about 500 feet above the valley floor. The track had been a "Switch back", and was about one car wide. The train had come up from a "log pond" that had access to Klamath Lake. The lumber mill and the trains had long since been dismantled. ( 1920s-30's ) The train would pull out from the mill, go out a spur and then back up the hill to another switch and then pull forward to a loading yard cut into the slope.
The property that I was interested in was part of that track and yard. It was 19.6 acres in size, and a "dog hair" thicket, having both White (Piss fir) Pine and Ponderosa. It was on the final slope to the flat "bench". There was a rise of about 100 feet to the upper edge of the property. The only other person there was the Bostonian, George Dolling. He had an old railroad section house that had been cut down the middle with a chainsaw, and brought up in halves with a cat. "my" potential property was big enough and thick enough that I felt that I could cut that winding drive way. The price wasn't that high, so I decided to buy it, build a cabin for weekends and hunting season, while living in town. There was plenty of trees that would fill the bill. I could see the potential of the area, but it would take time for it to come to its full value. I figured that by the time I retired it would would be a very desirable piece of property. Close to town, but an entire world away.
We were the second occupied place on that bench. The road in there was a mess, and impassable in the winter until it froze. The first year we had to bring our supplies in by horse back. I had to park my truck at a place on the bottom and on another road. I drove a motorcycle to the house from where I parked the truck. It was the only thing that could get through the mud holes that formed in the road. The problem was that the road had to cross the valley floor that drained the entire valley towards Klamath Lake. Once a few years later, the Subaru Wagon that Karen was driving got high centered in the middle of the road. A neighbor had to drag it to high ground where the wheels could again touch the road. It was interesting! Sometimes the snow was 4 feet deep on the flat.
I started on a cabin, working weekends and any slack time. In the meantime I accepted a job from the BNRR as a welder. Then at least I had weekends to work on it. I had a little camp trailer that I moved up there for us to sleep and cook in.
I got the floor and walls of the cabin up, when we both decided that doing this was a pain in the butt. We spent more time driving than working. Karen started working on the power company to get a power line run. They kept promising, but always managed to not get it done. After six months of the manager dragging his feet, Karen got mad! After she was done talking with the PUC Commissioner, the line went in almost overnight. I still laugh remembering the foreman coming up to Karen with his hat in his hand saying " Will there be anything else you need mam?" About 10 years later Karen took a job flagging for the power Company "pole installation crews", and this foreman was one of the guys that she flagged for. They all remembered her. None of them gave her any crap either.
Since Oregon was my Home of Record, I was eligible for a Ore VA loan. They had the best loan rate, which at the time was a reduction of about 3 percent. It was still high, but better than any other avenue. We had bought plans for an A Frame Chalet type, but the cost was so prohibitive that we decided on a Mobile Home. They were building them better and stronger with a winter package that was the best available at that time.
Unfortunately due to the contours of the land, I was unable to place the house down the winding road that I wanted. We settled for this spot. It was still about 100 yards from the road.
To bring in the two sides was a major project. I cut and trimmed trees for the almost three miles that the home had to travel. The only damage to the trailer was in the "cut" in the top picture. They had to replace only one little piece of siding.
After we were settled in we began a brush clearing project that we worked on, cutting and burning each weekend, and sometimes afternoons during the summer. It took us about 12 years to complete it.
The roads were so bad that it took a bit more than 45 minutes to travel the 11 miles back to town. There of course was no power, or phones, so it was an all or nothing prospect. We bought a friend that lived at the mouth of the Canyon a CB radio, and used that for our emergency contacts. I am pretty sure that the antenna that I installed in a large Ponderosa tree is still there, although the limbs have grown up around it, rendering it invisible.
During that time we began breeding Harris Hawks, with a pair of Harris Hawks that was an integral part of the current blood stock of captive bred Harris's in the US. There was a slump for a bit and I was having trouble selling the young for enough to even cover expenses. I was forced to sell two of the birds to a Wild animal park. I was so mortified that I sold the pair to a guy in Reno, and quit breeding Harris's.
I had gotten a Quonset hut really reasonably, and put it on the property below the house. I then began trying to breed Falcons. Hopefully for myself and for sale for the reintroduction efforts of the Peregrine falcons. We started breeding Cotournix Quail in the Quonset.
The first Peregrine bred in captivity in the US was in 1967 by a fella in Oregon. One had been produced in Germany in 1947, (Renz Waller ) and the feat had not been reproduced until 67. So a lot of what I was trying to do was new, and in the experimental stage. Strangely enough the problem was getting a male to copulate with the female. In size the males are at least a 1/3 smaller than the female. The problem was basically in the size of the enclosure, since the male didn't have any possibility of surviving if she got pissed at him. He would therefore be a very careful. The female seemed to be the ones that actually had the predominate sex drive. Males were happy enough being celibate.
There was a limited number of breeders in the US, and the prices for babies was pretty high. There was no legal way to get a falcon from the wild. If you could afford to pay for a young bird, you had to be one of the better known falconers to get first pick. Mostly the only ones that we "mortals" could get, was far from the best or even a decent bird. I had learned from breeding Harris Hawks, that like people, not all young birds were "worth the powder to blow them to Hell". One of the other problem was that our breeding stock was forced by the fed wildlife dept to come from our falconry birds. Of course if you had a Butt kicking hunting hawk, you were not likely to give it up. So a lot of the foundation stock were culls. So I decided that the only way that I was ever going to be able to fly a Peregrine Falcon was to breed it.
You may wonder at the desire to possess a Peregrine, and not one of the birds that were native to Oregon. Perhaps the best way to explain it is that raptors are like dogs. Peregrines tend through evolution to have developed certain traits that made them a perfect hunting falcon. They have evolved to fly high, striking their prey in the air. Prairie Falcons, which are the desert version of the Peregrine, have evolved to take ground quarry, generally from a perch. It is unnatural for them to "wait on" at a lofty pitch, waiting for the falconer to flush game. Its difficult to break these evolutionary traits honed over thousands of years.
In truth I had given up on breeding, as being too expensive and just too much work. A friend George Peden had some contacts among falconers that would enable him to get a possible start in breeding Peregrines, but since he lived in an upscale professional neighborhood, did not have the option for the chambers that we would need. I got sucked in, again.
I managed to obtain an older Peregrine female that had been retired because she hit game so hard that she injured her feet. She was a hard imprint, originally from the Peregrine fund, because she didn't fit in their program. She readily accepted me as her mate, and now all I needed was a semen donor. I had built a set of four chambers that were open to the sky but only 8x12 feet. It worked for the imprints, but was not suitable for a natural pair. So I made a deal with a breeder in Reno for a young imprintable male in exchange 5000 Cotournix Quail.
With that agreement we expanded our quail project to the point that we were producing 3000 quail a month. We sold them all over the states. I can't believe how cheaply we sold them. Of course prices were different than today, but we sold them at 7 weeks old for $.75 ea. Now they are over $1.50 ea. Our project filled a 20 x 50 Quonset hut. Karen ended up with Carpal Tunnel ops on both wrists just from cleaning shit trays. I swear one quail could produce 2 lbs of crap with one lb. of feed.
I learned how to inseminate falcons, and if necessary how to strip Males. We made some very nice birds that way. Perhaps the nicest were hybrids. Peregrine/ Prairie Falcons - Gyrfalcon / Peregrines. Each species adding something to the mix. Sometime in all this, my partner died, leaving me the breeding birds that we had gathered.
Interestingly enough one of the male Peregrines was Jessie's father. I gave it to another friend of ours in Eagle Idaho, that had helped in the gathering of birds for us. He paired him with another Tundra female, and at a later date I got Jessie, who was the "pick of the littler". It does make a difference!
If you notice the difference in the ground in two of the pictures you will see that taking a Goose wasn't a one time affair. The pictures show two different Geese taken.
I decided that we needed some natural pairs, so I began clearing a spot on the old train tracks that had been behind the house. The Father in law had a cute little Cat type machine, and I cut a pad for the building. It also had four chambers. 12 x16 x16. Much roomier and higher than what I had for the imprints.
The snows sometimes reached up to four feet deep. The ladder was there so that I could shovel the roof.
I had all the chambers full and we produced a fair number of birds from it. Young Peregrines from our project helped reintroduce Peregrines to the Missouri Breaks area. The guy told me that the birds that we produced were the most vigorous that he had ever seen. Of course by this time, the prices for such birds had fallen to the point that it was a lot more work, than reward, so I passed all my stock on, and resolved that once I retired from the Rail Road, I would only play.
During this period of time the environmentalists and Indians began legal proceedings about the water from the Klamath water shed for a Sucker that only bred in swamps anyway. The feds drained some of the empoundments in N Calif at Tulelake. They screwed up the Duck holding areas so much that the Ducks kept moving South rather than stopping in Lower Klamath and Tulelake. Since migration patterns are learned from one generation to the other, what had been flocks of thousands of Ducks dwindled down to almost nothing. The interesting thing about this is that the Klamath wildlife refuge was built for the express purpose of delaying the massive flocks until the rice farmers in the Sacramento region could harvest their Rice Crops.
In 2005 I retired from the Rail Road after 30 years. Karen and I had had enough by this time, so we began looking for someplace in Eastern Oregon that had some game to hunt and less people to share it with.
Through blind luck, we found the "Rock House" and have been here for 12 years this spring. While there are no trees here, we have a winding driveway about 3/4 of a mile from the Hwy that blocks us from view until you are right on top of the place. We live on 25 acres, with a swimming pool and a runway. We have achieved our goal that we set in Fairbanks 50 years ago. Life is good!
No comments:
Post a Comment