Often for me, when I'm out in the woods looking for wildlife, I want to be the only one out there. You know, you're sneaking through the woods thinking there could be a bear or fox or something around the corner and here comes another hiker. Dammit man! Now you know there's pretty much no point in going further down that trail. Anything that may have been ahead has already been scared off by this loud, clumsy dude. Am I right?
Wrong. Well maybe. That person has every right to be out there as well. And I'm actually happy to see people out enjoying nature rather than sitting at home watching TV or hanging out at the bar all day. So I've kinda learned to use this as an advantage. Use them as your flushers. I don't mean they come to the bathroom with you and flush the toilet. There are so many times that I believe you could walk right past something and never see it. That's what nature does. It camouflages. Owls for one. They are almost impossible to spot unless you already know their location or you happen to see them fly there. Deer as well. I've come up on deer and at the last second realize they are standing right there. I wonder how many I've gone right past. Sometimes they are there, but not visible. One time I was shooting a couple woodpeckers and the sound of my shutter caused a deer right behind me to jump up out of the brush. Scared the crap out of me. Another time, as I mentioned in my last blog (https://www.jimuhing.com/post/i-found-4-bucks), I passed another hiker coming from the opposite direction. He asked me if I had seen anything. He had not. But only a few hundred feet after passing him I spotted a 4 point buck laying behind some brush under a tree just feet off the trail. This guy walked right past it. Lately I've been searching for wildlife at the local mountain bike trails. Basically there are dirt roads that section off the area. Within these sections are bike trails that zigzag all through the woods.
So I get out there early with my bike and camera and I ride to the back of the first section of woods using the straight roads. Then the bikers come in later...some in pairs chitchatting as they ride through the trails which curve all around in the wooded area. I even saw one guy with cowbells on his bike to warn any possible bears of his presence. These guys go through the woods, back and forth and hopefully push anything in there out to me. So it's just another method of getting wildlife to be active when they are usually laying down for the day. It just sucks when you spot some foxes and before you can get your camera up, some guy comes walking up with his dog which chases the foxes away. This happened. Stupid dog walker guy. :(
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