Modern Buffalo Hunter
My roommate is an avid bird shooter. He has the bonafide big honkin' 500mm F4 lens you see all professional wildlife and sports shooters using. So, you know he's serious. Today he invited me along on one of his frequent photo safaris out into the vast Pawnee National Grasslands just North and East of Fort Collins, CO. I promptly packed up my own long (but unworthy) lens, hiking boots, tripod and small stool for sitting and waiting and watching. Pat said I probably wouldn't need any of that stuff as we would mainly be shooting from the car. Wow, now that is my kind of photo safari. All we need is a jungle jitney with a surry fringe top on a chain drive being pulled through a theme park full of fiberglass dinosaurs jumping out of the bushes. We drove up and down miles and endless dusty miles of dirt track road, our raptors eyes roaming the vast almost barren prairie landscape looking intently for our prey to photograph. Pronghorn, deer, bison, prairie dog, wolves, coyotes, rabbits,. An especially fine catch would be a burrowing owl or swift fox. The birds are too numerous to list but I did shoot a few including an Eastern meadowlark, red-tail hawk, and eastern kingbird. As we rambled up and down the washboard roads in our fine horseless carriage I was reminded of the robber barrons of the old west who would cruise in their plush private Pullman cars throughout the plains slaughtering vast hoards of bison. Thank God cameras were invented. I wish all sports hunters would get the hint and realize they can get the same thrill of the stalk and the "kill" on film as they do taking another sentient beings life, for pleasure. Yes, I was riding in my car taking pictures of raptures hunting prairie dogs, but they don't do it for fun, they do it for life. I do this for fun and it also gives me life. The leisure life of the modern Buffalo Bill.
