We traveled to McGinnis Park below the Owyhee Dam once again to give our talk about falconry to the fifth grade students of the area.
The reservoir still has about 30 feet to go to be full. I doubt that they will reach that condition as the irrigation season has already begun. They are still ahead of where they have been in the last bunch of years. Last year at the beginning of the irrigation cycle they had not even reached the level that the water would be at the end of August. The dams primary purpose is intended first for irrigation.
The river below the dam is one of the premier Brown Trout streams in the state. The funny part is that all you see fishing it are people from out of state. Yuppies in Goretex armed with Orvis rods flailing the water to a froth, with the sole purpose of torturing fish. The common belief among the elite fly flingers is that the Brown Trout is an exceedingly smart and cagey foe worthy of admiration and long expeditions. However just looking at the number of fishermen and women, and realizing that each of them will catch at least a fish or two each day. So multiply the number fishing by the number of sore mouthed Brown Trout that get hauled out into the open air for pictures, and one can not helped but be surprised at how many times they see the same group of flies with hooks in them and still get caught. How smart can a fish be if it continually goes through the same hellish torture every time it tries to eat anything.
I can't remember how many fishing camps and fishermen we saw on our way in to the camping area. All from out of state.
The Osprey however does not believe in catch and release, but he seemed to be interested in what this gal was doing.
The kids are bused in from the area schools. This year there was about 900 students over a two day period. The FFA kids come to Shepard them from class to class. There are any where from 15 to 20 kids in each group and they spend about 20 minutes at each station. There is every thing from Falconry to how to set siphon hoses in irrigation, 29 stations in all.
The weather was not all that great, wind being the major problem. We have taken several Representative flights from both Hawks and Falcons showing how they hunt and put them on a CD. That is all well and good, but the sunshine renders the TV a bit hard to see without a shade. The wind whipping around all over the place can be a bit of a challenge at times.
We would do a basic talk concerning the common raptors answering what ever questions they might have, then on to the CD showing actual hunts. Of course poor Jessie had to sit there for four hour with all those kids just itching to pet her.
We did have a bit of help as well. If you look real close you can see Brick ( The love sponge) sitting right in the middle of the bunch.
Actually I was a bit surprised that Josie did not care for all the attention that the kids would have liked to shower on her.
Poor Jessie was the one that suffered the most, but she was the one that impressed every one.
Josie and I took what ever breaks we could. By the second day I began to introduce myself as Jessie much to Karen's delight.
The critters are all troupers and did not let us down. Every one but the chickens got to go on this trip. The cats were pretty impressive. I took both out to the truck and called the dogs in and off we trundled down the road. The cats curled up on the console and slept most of the way. Once we got to our camping spot Tiger was all ready to go exploring, Frank only was concerned with where his next meal was coming from.I was more than a little surprised to find that we could let the cats come and go as they wished for the most part. It was a bit cute to see the two dogs and Tiger ganging up on the local Mice in a cooperative hunt.
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