Fall approaches!

[Lloyd McKissick]

http://i.imgur.com/RQwjx8jh.jpg (https://imgur.com/RQwjx8j)

In my old Ford truck, headed out to walk the woods again (and hopefully fill the freezer).

http://i.imgur.com/WBhTloBh.jpg (https://imgur.com/WBhTloB)

Contemplating the moment on a nearly perfect late Fall day.

http://i.imgur.com/Drci9mZh.jpg (https://imgur.com/Drci9mZ)

The reward for dedicated effort with a good bird gun.

http://i.imgur.com/ubGJirJh.jpg
(https://imgur.com/ubGJirJ)

But Fall is brief...

http://i.imgur.com/Jc0ilFQh.jpg (https://imgur.com/Jc0ilFQ)

and soon the northwoods are locked into silence again. Make it count!

[Dean Romig]

Fall is God's gift to us for enduring the rest of the year...





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[Lloyd McKissick]

"Fall is the island and the rest of the year is the swim"

[Dean Romig]

Fall is my life preserver :bowdown:





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[Lloyd McKissick]

Just found this one...

http://i.imgur.com/HeFDqUfh.jpg (https://imgur.com/HeFDqUf)

There's birds in them there woods...

and as a tribute to Dean's gun & old car pix here, this is a long abandoned (& upside down) '59 Ford Ranchero I ran across just last Fall.

http://i.imgur.com/2ZSWi2Eh.png (https://imgur.com/2ZSWi2E)

I saw the sun glinting off of the chrome bumper through the trees as I was looking for this downed bird.

[Mills Morrison]

Hope to hunt grouse one of these days. In the meantime, we have the dove season coming up here in the south.

[Garry L Gordon]

Can’t wait!

[Stan Hillis]

There is a subtlety that Lloyd's first pic captures that the others don't, and that I haven't seen yet in the deep South this year, that of the late evening sunlight having a glow that isn't present during the rest of the year. It is the signal to me that fall is approaching. The golden glow of it is captured in that first pic perfectly. I can see it here even before the leaves begin to turn. All of a sudden, one late afternoon, it is there and it fills me with warmth and hope. It took my wife some number of years to learn to notice it, but now she does, too.

It will happen here next month. I have always wondered if it is some angle of sunlight that I cannot measure or accurately describe. Nonetheless, it is as real as the sun itself. And, the thing that it awakens in me is as real as I am, or maybe more so.

[Lloyd McKissick]

Stan's right, that is an evening shot (the light is out of the West, I must have been headed out to the new supperclub that opened up there just a few years ago). It's that long slanting light you get in late Fall, especially in those northern latitudes.

[Daniel Carter]

Stan i think i have found a reason for the golden sunlight. For years i have seen this about the 15 th of august and read that about then the sun went below the equator and did not return until the next year. The suns rays then pass through a lot more atmosphere giving the dispersion that causes the change in the way we perceive the light. I imagine the latitude where you are will effect the timing of this. I am in Mass. so a lot further north than you are therefor earlier.

[John Davis]

Fall still feels like a long way off in south Georgia.

[Phillip Carr]

Fall also seems like a long way off in AZ.

[Lloyd McKissick]

I worked on a big project in Phoenix at Sky Harbour for several years in the early 2000s (had an office/apartment down there for the last year). Those "hellish" temperatures absolutely changed me, because elk hunting in 10-below zero in December here never used to bother me...but it certainly does now.

Speaking of slanting light...

http://i.imgur.com/atpItW5h.jpg (https://imgur.com/atpItW5)

http://i.imgur.com/m4uSCsth.jpg (https://imgur.com/m4uSCst)

This was the very last day for me up there in 2024, an early afternoon hunt on October the 31st.

My very last bird of the season...

http://i.imgur.com/RCdQ2MOh.jpg (https://imgur.com/RCdQ2MO)

with it's crop examined, birch leaves, buds and seeds

http://i.imgur.com/hOSEW9jh.jpg (https://imgur.com/hOSEW9j)

You hear people talk about "drumming logs" in the grouse woods (?), well here is a stellar example.

http://i.imgur.com/QGTIDwyh.jpg (https://imgur.com/QGTIDwy)

It snowed hard there two days after this, but I was on the road home to Denver.

[Dean Romig]

The old drumming logs I’ve found in my VT NEK covers were surrounded by piles of many seasons of grouse droppings.
Yours is on its way to being such a monument to ‘grousedom’!





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[Lloyd McKissick]

It is all about this guy, after all...

http://i.imgur.com/zciM9Czh.jpg (https://imgur.com/zciM9Cz)

[Garry L Gordon]

There is a subtlety that Lloyd's first pic captures that the others don't, and that I haven't seen yet in the deep South this year, that of the late evening sunlight having a glow that isn't present during the rest of the year. It is the signal to me that fall is approaching. The golden glow of it is captured in that first pic perfectly. I can see it here even before the leaves begin to turn. All of a sudden, one late afternoon, it is there and it fills me with warmth and hope. It took my wife some number of years to learn to notice it, but now she does, too.

It will happen here next month. I have always wondered if it is some angle of sunlight that I cannot measure or accurately describe. Nonetheless, it is as real as the sun itself. And, the thing that it awakens in me is as real as I am, or maybe more so.

Things like what Stan describes really don’t need explanation. They are sensed, felt — a part of our immersion in the natural world. You hunters know what I mean, like the primordial smell of the grouse woods after a rain, or the quality of sound after a long day on the prairie, just after the sun leaves only a glimmer at the horizon and day turns to gloaming. We are all richer for these things.

[Lloyd McKissick]

Mr. Gordon is correct, that wonderful lighting even works out here in the dry, open West. Late November, 3 or 4 years ago, ~6AM in NW Colorado, chasing elk.


http://i.imgur.com/cJjLG8Oh.jpg (https://imgur.com/cJjLG8O)

and 1st light earlier that week

http://i.imgur.com/MtTgIUuh.jpg (https://imgur.com/MtTgIUu)

After my long autumn in Minnesota this is always something of a shock to the system. Still great fun but...very different.

http://i.imgur.com/D2gsjhCh.jpg (https://imgur.com/D2gsjhC)

Well...maybe not.