Hope

 After dropping Connie off at her home, I arrived at my home just at dark on Thursday. As I walked from the truck to the house, Hope greeted me like a long lost jailer, with the hopes of me feeding her. I had contacted Tami, on the day before leaving, and told her not to feed Hope any more so that I could possibly hunt her when I got home. The one problem with having a life, is that it sometimes cuts into ones hawking. Tami however had done a great job and her weight was just right when I picked her up on Friday. Generally a week long disruption will take a couple of extra days to iron out.

A normal Hawk of a different species would have most likely suffered performance issues after a week of inactivity, but the Harris is not like any other species. They like to hunt more than they care to eat. Her weight was perfect, with the extra day of not being fed, she was just at the bottom of her preferred weight range. 

I went to Arock to hunt the Lava bluffs there. The last time there, I found a Jack further up the road than I normally hunt. I went back there to start this time. I have been taking the dogs with me, and after some scoldings I have finally convinced Josie that I want her to stay close to me. In truth, about the only benefit that I can see to the hunt routine, is that the dogs don't feel left out. I can live with that. Nice close slips work out the best. If you give a Jack Rabbit time to plan, he will generally beat us. Having those large ears, they know where we are to the inch, and most generally do not wait around to see what we are selling.

We covered a lot of that hillside and did manage to get a few slips, but they all managed to evade her. Eventually I began to work my way back and we busted one pretty close on some more open Sage. Hope caught him. It was a bit uphill from my position and I was covering as much ground as I could. When I got close I could see Josie standing back from the tussle, just as I wanted her to. Her tendency to get in there seems to have always been misunderstood by Hope, so I had to make Josie understand that biting the rabbit was a no no!

By the time that I arrived back at the car we had covered three miles. I was totally surprised that we really didn't loose any real time in our season, and really proud of Hope and her desire to hunt.

 

Crater Lake

 After leaving Kimball Park , we drove on up to Crater Lake, and  using our Senior Pass drove on up to the lodge, and rest rooms!   ( Senior pass you remember?)

Most of the stuff inside the lodge was closed. Of course the concession was open.

A picture or two of the lake from that angle. 

We took the rim road around and stopped occasionally to take a picture form a bit different angle.

If you can, notice the Red cinder layer in the cliff face.

There was a pile of trees growing out of that one stump.

This is a view of Fort Klamath, and Klamath Lake in the background.

We couldn't have picked a better day, nice and warm, crystal clear sky, and best of all not a lot of traffic or crowds to deal with.

We drove back on the back side of Klamath and Agency Lake to Rocky Point. A nice scenic trip around Klamath Lake. We stopped at the Favell Museum to look at his stock of Indian Artifacts. Fee was $9.00 each, and we were the only ones there.

A weather system was blowing in and the temps dropped to the teens in Klamath and was supposed to be colder the next day, so we packed up the next morning and headed home.

Kimball Park, Fort Klamath,Or

 On our way to Crater Lake, we made a side trip to Kimball Park. It is the headwaters of the Wood River that is a Blue Ribbon Trout Stream and one of the most beautiful parks that I have ever visited.

The water is crystal clear and cold.

Connie is standing at the spot that the water comes out of the ground.

Josie and Brick were of course having a great time.

The park was empty when we arrived and they were

able to run free.

When I lived in the area there were huge Brown Trout that lived in these waters, and resisted every offering that I could dream up to try.

Plum Valley

After we left the Bear VAlley area the first thing I did was go to O'Reilly's in Klamath Falls to get some batteries for the trailer. When I closed it up to make the move I had to have Connie hold the button down while I pushed from the outside. It was slow but we were able to close the slide back up again. 

A year after I retired from the Railroad we sold this place to a Couple who have since become our friends. We try to get together at least once a year. This year it was apparently our turn. They have done well with the place and it is quite beautiful. Our camping spot is the place that our mobile home used to sit. 

The place looks like a park. I used to grow hay and alfalfa under the trees.

On our trip to see Crater Lake I could resist a couple pictures of Mount Mcloughlin across the lake.

 We enjoyed our visit very much, there was a bit of nostalgia in seeing the area again, but it no longer felt like home. I was only a tourist visiting.

Trip to Klamath Falls

They have changed the format of this blog site and things are much more difficult to arrange than before, so its not as neat as it used to be. In fact I am finding it to be a pain in the butt. I will attempt to work with it at least for a while.

Connie and I had wanted to take a trip with the fifth wheel to the coast this year, but with the fires all over we decided that it just wasn't to be. Instead we decided to go to Klamath Falls. She wanted to see the Lava Beds again and I wanted to see some friends. 

I loaded everything that I could think of in the fifth wheel and trundled up to Burns to pick her up. Our first day was only to Christmas Valley and out to the lost Forest on the East edge of the Sand Dunes. The road had been improved enough that I felt comfortable in taking the Fifth Wheel in there. I was thinking that in October there wouldn't be any one camping there. For the most part I was right, at least for one night anyway.

The camp area is in a grove of Ponderosa Pines at the edge of the Sand Dunes. I do not know the story concerning these trees, but they are way the heck out in the desert miles and miles away from any other Ponderosa's. Thus the "Lost Forest". Every thing was fine until I began to level the fifth wheel and the battery went stone dead. In the middle of the night, the furnace stopped burning because there wasn't enough power to spark a fire in the furnace. So I got up at 2 AM and fired up the generator so that we could have a little heat. The next morning rigs began coming in for the weekend and that was all the incentive  I needed to load up and head to Klamath Falls.

Our next stop was at an old friends place in Bear Valley, just up from the Calif border. We based out of there for three days, while we visited every thing South of Klamath. Mostly it was driving around getting a look at all the area South of Klamath and visiting some friends from my Rail road days. We visited the Petroglyphs in Northern Calif and located the site of the relocation camps that were used to restrain the Japanese population during World War 2.

Our last day there we went down to the Lava Beds in Northern Calif. They too had been through a Fire and lots of things that we wanted to see were closed down.

                     You can see where the fire was stopped on the North end of the Lava Beds.

                                            This is looking East across the Lava Flow 

                                                                   Looking South

There were very few tourist this late in the year, but possibly it was due to the fact that almost every thing was shut down.

Change in attitude

 I was so blown away by Connie's Cat following me through 1.7 miles of Sage, that I didn't mention my reason for stopping at that distance. The real reason was that Hope was screwing around and really wasn't trying as hard as she is capable of. My rule with her has always been that if she doesn't kill she doesn't eat. My routine is that I give her enough chances at live game that she could have killed something, if she really wanted to badly enough. The only possible exception would be if she was low enough in weight that she could be physically unable to put forth the energy to effect a kill. This is a little safeguard that will keep her from becoming unable to hunt due to physical weakness. Of course she will only get enough to sustain her for another day, but sooner or later she will have to catch something in order to get a full crop and "belly," that she of course wants.

Once Hope gets into the real swing of things, the only reason that we are in the field for that second Rabbit flush, is that she is not using her head. When she is switched on, nothing can escape her talons. She is that focused and that good. However, it is only natural that she would need a bit of a reminder as to how the game is played each new year.

Hope is maturing and with that maturity comes recognition of how her chosen quarry acts and reacts. Granted she has been slower at this that I liked, although it was my fault for allowing her to think that way. Harris's like to hunt, and will do so almost all day long, or at least longer than I am comfortable with. So I allowed her to keep banging away at the Jacks and there were so many that sooner or later one would make a mistake and she would catch him. Sunday was the first time that I heard Hope making the sound that means- " there is a rabbit close to me". I of course helped her get it running but she still missed it. Its a good start, it tells me that she is thinking.

I have been flying in the mornings due to the heat. She flew on Sunday and screwed around, I didn't feed her. She started the day at 970 grams. Monday we decided to take a quad ride up on top of the Steens at the NE end. I didn't get home till about 4PM. Hope would fly to the wire in hopes that I would take her out, every time I went by. After my dinner, that," I myself had caught",  I picked her up at 6 PM. I also allowed the dogs to go for the first time since Josie had scared her into turning loose of a Rabbit that she had just caught. This time I had a shock collar on them, so it was to be a second chance for the dogs. I had made a pretty big stink on the last incident, and Josie ( the culprit) knew it. She was staying close, where I wanted her and watching me closely.

I decided to hunt here just outside my fence, for one of the 7 or so Jacks that make this area their home. There is a chunk of Sage that covers most of the flat, and a rocky shallow canyon that cuts through it. If the Jack is near the edge of the Sage where the ground really slopes up enough that the Jacks can out climb her, then she stalls out and lands, and all she can do is watch the Jack fade from her reach with ease.

We cut along the upper edge of the Sage, and she quickly took off using her best speed. The Jack started to run up the hill, but she was too close,  when he broke cover she slammed into him raising a huge dust cloud. When I arrived at the scene, Josie was close and watching, I yelled at her and she immediately backed off. I was able to break his neck, and extricate them from the brambles and limbs to the clear ground. She was waiting for her tin cup and tidbits. I offered her a front leg from her last kill, and she took it without hesitation, leaving me with the Jack.

I think the total number of steps recorded on my phone was about 300, and I was done."Now that's what I am talking about"! If she continues on this trend, she is going to be a really, really great hunting hawk.

A first for me!

 My friends John and Kim are here on John's normal fall Western trip. They have been on the road since late Aug. They just got back from a trip to Glacier, Yellowstone and Northern Montana and Idaho. Since today was Sunday and Sourdough pancake breakfast day. Connie is house sitting for a friend of ours just down the road a bit, so we got a bit later start to hawking than is usual. Even though it is October it is still quite warm almost to the uncomfortable stage.

Upon weighing Hope, I find that she is still a bit higher in weight than I would like, but since I intended to hawk here at the house, it shouldn't be a big deal. She will or she won't. No big loss either way. I still need exercise, and this is much more interesting than just a stroll down the runway.

John is in his 80's and more than a little crippled up from a hard life of serious playing. So Connie and I parked a quad at the other end of the runway and the plan was for John and I to walk out around the hill to the North of me and back to the end of the runway where the quad was parked. The thinking was, that would end up to be more than a mile and be just about all the walking he could stand. That way if we hadn't caught anything by then I could still venture further afield if needed.

Connie has three Cats now. Her older cat, Chilli, a yellow long hair, and two 11 week old Kittens. Chilli is a real "Cats, Cat. He doesn't like to be petted, will rarely cuddle, likes to sneak outside at night to hunt, and is over all about as much company and fun as a wet rock. He hisses at the kittens, seems to actually share the same attitude as WC Fields towards kids. He has been staying here at the house while Connie has been making her regular visit to the "Valley". His normal routine is to come back in at 10PM for the nightly feeding of Tiger, (my yellow short haired Cat) and the "kids". Try to sneak back out again before I  go to bed. Spend the night in the open window, occasionally testing the screen for a possible escape. Out the first thing in the morning, back in again about 10AM, then sleep until evening when it all starts again. all the while hiding from the Kittens in the back bedroom. He is actually pretty low maintenance for a Cat. He does however have one little quirk that I have rarely seen in cats. He likes to go on walks.

After getting every thing set up for hawking, John and I start across the field to the tower, and here comes Chilli. 

Hope is sitting on the tower, waiting for me to get in the field. Most raptors that will take Jack Rabbits will also kill Cats if they get a chance. Hope however has apparently seen enough Cats around the weathering area that she knows that they are not Rabbits. It still makes me nervous! I can just see the damage to both Cat and Hawk that is possible and extremely grateful that Hope doesn't try to catch him. I say tentative because I cannot believe that it will not happen at the worst possible time and place.

It was pretty warm, and I thought that he would have sense enough to stop and go back once we got out there a ways, but no! Not him. It was warm enough that the Timber Tigers, (lizards and other undesirable prey items) were out and Hope can really turn and twist for one of them. The first one she swallowed before either of us was close enough to see it all, but the second one she caught was right in front of us. As she swallowed the last of the tail.

 Chilli started up to see what it was. Hope in a flash made a lunge toward him, and Chilli wisely changed his mind. Hope stood back up and tucked her wings back, and jumped up on the tee perch. I breathed a large sigh of relief.

The combination of extra weight, high temps, two lizards, not to mention wiley Jack Rabbits, we didn't catch anything else. I dropped John off at his quad, and Chilli and I began our long walk home. His tongue was hanging out and he was bitching with almost every step. At the end I had to stop and let him rest a bit, but he made the whole 1.7 miles with me. 

I filled his water dish with fresh water and fed him some more goodies when we got in the house. He is passed out on the shady side of the porch.

We will try again tomorrow or tuesday hopefully without the entourage this time.