Hunting on the HiLine, Volume 3: River Morning

This time of year, our house becomes a hunting lodge. On weekends we are not in Bozeman, Jeff's buddies or family members are at our house, hoping to find an antelope, deer, elk, or birds. Usually, the company is pretty easygoing and fun to have around. I join them on their hunting excursions whenever I can.

Last weekend was opening weekend for two new animals. Antelope Rifle season and Pheasant season both opened. Jeff and his friend Jeremy went out early Saturday morning and both got their antelope right away. Jeremy had a buck tag and shot a nice animal. Jeff only had a doe tag, but got his right away, too. 

That left the rest of the weekend to go after some pheasants. With the opening of the Lost River Wildlife Management Area last fall, we have found an excellent new pheasant habitat, very close to our house. We also have a great dog to show us the way to the birds! 

The Lost River WMA is about 10 miles from our house, but if you were to simply look at comparison photos of our farm next to some of the WMA, you'd think you were in different worlds. The landscape is completely different, with the Milk River carving out steep cliffs, breaks, and coulees. It makes for some pretty wonderful scenery. Knowing the setting and lighting would be perfect, I brought my real camera and snapped some photos of this highly photogenic place in the morning glow. 

It was a beautiful, crisp fall morning with no breeze to speak of. We spent about two hours hunting and Harvey lead us to several rooster pheasants. As always, what I enjoyed the most was watching Harvey work, and simply being outside in a beautiful place, with people I love, and with nice weather to boot. It was truly an ideal morning! 

Starting off on our hike.

Harvey is surveying the scene.

Jeff and Jeremy.

Milk River, near Canada.

I really wish this photo hadn't turned out a bit blurry. Need to work on improving my camera skills.
Guess I'll have to go back up some morning and try again! 

Milk River.

I do need to continue to refine my camera skills. I have also thought about using Lightroom or some other basic photo editing program to sharpen my images for the blog. But... sometimes I feel like I spend enough time on the computer as it is.

Also, for those few of you who may have already read this posts, sans photos, here it is again! I have been traveling a lot lately and trying to edit and upload posts using the app on my phone. I haven't mastered that yet, either. This is how I had always intended this post to be, with photos. :)

I've got lots of great blog post ideas coming up for the next few weeks, so stay tuned!