There was a book titled “First Hunt” in the library of the elementary school I attended 40-some years ago, and, if you were to look at the check-out card in the back of the book, you’d see that a student named Kurt read that book at least 10 times during his fourth and fifth grade years. You might make the assumption that the youngster was obsessed with the idea of hunting...and since I was the youngster in question, I can tell you that your assumption would be correct.
What you couldn’t know is that I never got to go hunting -- not really hunting, anyway. My grandfather was a hunter and he took me on long rambles through the woods near his Ohio farm. We took hunting dogs along on our rambles, but no gun. Perhaps my grandpa sensed that his grandson wouldn’t have the heart for the killing of an animal, and grandpa would have been right.
Years later, as a teenager, I carried my grandpa’s .22 rifle out into a corn field -- my grandfather was not with me that day -- and I shot a groundhog. When the animal slumped to the ground, I could not bring myself to walk over to it. I went back to my grandparents’ house, put the gun away, and never touched it again.
***
I have a friend who is an amazing bird photographer and lately she’s been making trips out to the Washington coast where, for the second year now, snowy owls have wintered. The amazing creatures are native to the Arctic but they come here in the winter in search of food. My friend has made some wonderful images, and I pretty much begged her to take me along on one of her trips.
Monday I rented a telephoto lens longer than anything I personally own, and my friend, two other photographers, and I headed toward the ocean. We drove about 3 hours to the town of Ocean Shores, where we hiked a grassy peninsula of land running about a mile-and-a-half out into the Pacific.
“There’s one!,” my friend said, and I looked where she was pointing but saw only grassland. “There are two more!” she said. Again, I saw no owls.
After a while, though, I guess I got my owl-eyes in shape, because I too began to spot the creatures. We four photographers wandered the peninsula, spending most of the day making images. We were careful to keep our distance, staying a non-threatening and respectful 600mm lens distance away.
My favorite picture from the day came when an owl yawned, and it’s quite possible I like that image because, for me, the owl seems unconcerned by my presence. I felt comfortable to be on a hunt where the shooting was done with a camera.
