Wyoming Wildlife Photography

One of my favorite activities in summer is to watch, and when I can, photograph, Wyoming wildlife.

Sometimes we take for granted what most only see on TV or in the movies.

In Wyoming, our wildlife is part of our everyday life.

Not sure I will ever take it for granted.

On today’s post are a few of the photos I have shot in the past month.

Nothing beats a chance to see nature up close.

On a side note, a big thank you to everyone who is purchasing my books the past few weeks – they are selling well, in fact, better than ever. – if you want to take a look click this link.

A Sunday Drive

Working on a re-do of how this site looks. So far, a lot of do-overs, but I will get there soon.   

Sunning

We took an enjoyable drive yesterday and were once again reminded of how beautiful Wyoming can be. To some it looks terribly empty, to others, there is too much to see. 

Playing with the colors a bit

Snow in the mountains

If this one is blurry, they were in an all out run - 55, or so MPH

All of the photos are from that two hour and ten-minute drive. 

Young Mule Deer

Horses enjoying the new growth grass

Wyoming Pioneer Sheep-Man J D Woodruff

According to my calendar, Spring-2017 started yesterday, and it felt like it. Today seems like we slipped back into the ending days of winter, but that is March in Wyoming.

The first cabin in the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming was built by, New Yorker who came west, J. D. Woodruff. He would go on to become a Wyoming pioneer in both the sheep and cattle business. Woodruff came early to Wyoming and served as a scout for the Washburn-Langford expedition into the Yellowstone area in 1870.

Not the Woodruff Cabin, his was not near this nice

The first cabin in the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming was built by, New Yorker who came west, J. D. Woodruff. He would go on to become a Wyoming pioneer in both the sheep and cattle business. Woodruff came early to Wyoming and served as a scout for the Washburn-Langford expedition into the Yellowstone area in 1870.

In 1871, John Dwight Woodruff built his cabin on the Owl Creek in what is today Hot Springs County, an area that only a few years before was a sought after and fought over Indian hunting area. Woodruff’s cabin wasn’t much by today’s standard, but it served well enough for his trapping cabin. The structure was 12 feet wide, 20 feet long and seven logs high. The area where he built the cabin, had long been and remained Shoshone area and Woodruff was able to get permission from the famous chief himself, Chief Washakie, to graze sheep. Not sure he told the old chief he intended on grazing 6,000 head, but that is what he brought in from Oregon. It was the first large sheep operation in the state. Woodruff, by the 1880s, was still grazing the area but now with cattle.

Hunting ground became grazing for sheep and cattle

Woodruff later sold his cabin and site for $18,500 to Captain R.A Torrey stationed at Fort Washakie. Torrey later brought in his brother Colonel J.L. Torrey as a partner in the ranch. From the time of the purchase, the two expanded the ranch rapidly, and it soon became the famous Embar Ranch with a reported 40,000 cattle and 6,000 horses. The Cabin site has been noted in the National Register of Historic Places since 1970. The little cabin no longer stands but is marked by a bronze plaque noting its inclusion as a national historic site.

Woodruff seemed to have been lucky in life surviving many close encounters with Indians in the area. Once facing certain death he and three friends were saved when a party of Indians arrived and scared off the tribe Woodruff, and his buddies were fighting for their lives against. Sounds like they were friends with the newly arrived Indians, but according to Woodruff’s account, the second bunch did not know that Woodruff and his friends were there. On another occasion, he hid in the dark underbrush for eleven days as a group of warriors hunted for the trapper along the river. Woodruff survived because he always brought along fishing supplies, and lived on raw fish as he waited for the warriors to leave the area.

Quite an interesting and important man, now mostly lost in history.

Wyoming Day and Books For Sale

Looks to me like I missed the only specific Wyoming Holiday – Wyoming Day, which is celebrated each year on December 10.  On that date in 1869 Territorial Governor John Campbell signed the bill that granted women the right to vote. The new law made Wyoming the first to allow the vote and the ability to legally hold elected office to women.

The bill originated because legislators believed the idea of women suffrage would be good publicity for the territory and might bring more single women to the state.

By Wyoming Statute, Wyoming Day, is supposed to be observed in schools and by other groups around the state each year. I am afraid that practice has long since fallen by the wayside. Too bad, this was a most significant step in American rights.

So How Cold Was It? - Seems like this time of year I normally post something about the weather and how tough the cold was on early settlers. I suppose that will be coming soon, but for now, I will only say, “I cannot imagine how early trappers could survive the cold like we had last week with temperatures plunging to double digits below zero.” BURR!

Thank You, Readers - Many thanks to all of the readers that have pushed my latest Wyoming novel, Ghost of the Fawn, up to number 30 in its category in softcover and number 91 in its eBook category.

If you have not given it a look yet, you can read a free sample here. The book was originally written for teenage readers, but it has found a terrific audience with adults. Thanks!

Meanwhile stay warm and keep reading and watching Christmas movies, we watch one nearly every evening. Christmas movies may be mostly sappy, but we need them, we need the feel good and warmth of the stories. I hope they keep them coming for many years to come.

A Nice Christmas Gift – Speaking of Christmas stories, here is the link to my book, from last year, of Christmas stories, you can read the entire first story for free, enjoy. UnderWestern Skies – 14 Tales of Christmas.

*All photos were taken on our Sunday trip to Laramie, Laramie City, in the old days, 100 miles away.

The Wild West

The Wild West

In his autobiography Standing Bear, a Sioux chief said that the white man, not the Indian made the west wild. “We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, the winding streams with tangled growth, as wild. Only to the white man was nature a wilderness, and only to him was the land infested with wild animals and savage people, To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful, and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery.” Interesting!

When the whites came into Indian lands, they tried to change the native peoples way of life. Religion, living style, lifestyle, food, cooking/eating utensils, dress, war, relationships and tribal makeups and hierarchy were all wrong – according to the new people, from the east, and now in the west.

In my view, the wild west came about as more and more non-Indian’s moved and crossed the west. Civilization movements and a clash of cultures changed the American West and created our, modern, view of the wild west. But, I’m most sure that this was not something new. Civilizations change as new people become more and more a part of something, where at one time they were outsiders. People being forced to change or obliged to accept what they do not want will fight, always have, probably always will.

Sometimes we do not look at the big picture, probably it was not as wild as Hollywood has made it out. Indian encounters are much more prevalent in old television series, movies, and novels than they were in real life. But the wars in the west were genuine, and were brought on as Standing Bear so eloquently stated, when the new people saw things as savage and wild instead of the way they were and had always been.

More Pronghorn

Recently I have been doing research and reading personal accounts of early homesteading and town building in eastern Nebraska where I grew up. I ran across a story of antelope (pronghorn) hunting in that area in the 1860s. I had never heard of Pronghorn in that area and I decided to do some digging.

When Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery explored the west in the early 1800s there were an estimated 35 million pronghorn antelope in North America. One hundred years later the population was estimated at 13,000 with extinction coming within the next decade. Today there are nearly a million pronghorn in Wyoming several hundred thousand thrive on the hard grass, yucca, cacti and sagebrush in the high grass prairies of this state.

It took full protection in every state to increase the heard, full protection for fifty years, but it worked. Much of the west has enough pronghorn for an annual hunting season as game managers watch and manage the herds carefully across the west.

Today pronghorn are a tourist attraction in the west, most of the year they are easy to spot and a joy to watch, especially running, up to 55 MPH.

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Pronghorn or Antelope ?

Whatever we call them, Antelope, or Pronghorns they are a fascinating animal found over most of Wyoming. It was most likely Lewis and Clark who called this, only in America animal, an antelope, that we owe this misnaming. Antelope are found only in Africa, our Wyoming pronghorn is not related to these true antelope. The pronghorn is related to no other animal on earth, an interesting distinction.

From Clark’s journal—Friday, September 14, 1804
"In my walk I killed a Buck Goat [antelope] of this country, about the height of the Grown Deer, its body Shorter... the Color is a light gray with black behind its ears down its neck

And from Lewis’s Journal of—Monday, September 17, 1804

"We found the Antelope extremely shy and watchful insomuch that we had been unable to get a shot at. I had this day an opportunity of witnessing the agility and the superior fleetness of this animal which was to me really astonishing.”

Still lots of pronghorn in Wyoming, enough to support a very good hunting season each year and plenty to watch. Various states have tried to move and put pronghorn in parks, but it has had limited, at best, success. Seems that pronghorn need a large migratory range, and being fenced, even within the boundaries of thousands of acres has not worked.

A Picture is Worth a 1,000 Words

A picture, or in this case a photo, is worth a thousand words. Many writers might take exception to this, but a good picture really can tell a great story.  Here are five photos that tell their own story. Or if they don’t, use your imagination and see what you come up with.

North or South?

 

 

80 year old camp site

 

 

 

Here's looking at you kid

 

 

For everyone who believes Eastern Wyoming is flat - yea Right!

 

Home Sweet home to someone at sometime

 

 

 

Eastern Wyoming -A Two Hour Vacation

When I tell people I live in Wyoming, I often hear, “Oh, Yellowstone, I love Wyoming.”

 Well I love Yellowstone myself, the most beautiful place on earth. But I have to explain that I live on the other side of the state, eastern Wyoming. Specifically, Guernsey Wyoming, south of Casper, north of Cheyenne. If that’s not enough I try, “two hundred miles north of Denver."

Then I sometimes here, “Is there anything out there?”

“Well yes, yes there is.”

My wife and I think eastern Wyoming is the greatest place to live on earth, we have mountains and plains, rivers, trees, wildlife and cows. Not too many places to shop and that makes it just about perfect. Monday afternoon we took a two hour ride out west of town and back—so here it is a quick glimpse of eastern Wyoming, just west of Guernsey.

Eastern Wyoming – A Two Hour Vacation.

A nice Texas cow in Wyoming, still like seeing these old Longhorns around, even if this one is not sure which way to let the horns grow.

 

A little history lesson – this is the Oregon Trail crossing at the Bitter Cottonwood. Hasn’t changed much since the trail was the best way west. Actually it hasn’t changed at all. It was a long day, at 17 miles, but this could be done from Fort Laramie in one good day. Travelers liked this camp site because there was an abundance of fire wood.

 

Not the wild herds of trail days, but this is open range, still no fences in site.

 

 

And we do have mountains in Eastern Wyoming, this is the Laramie Range

 

Laramie Peak through the boulders

 

Mountain pasture buffalo

This is Cottonwood Creek about 20 miles upstream from the crossing at the Bitter Cottonwood. Yes, I know, pretty spectacular.

 

Why do kids always want to race, I declined, 55 miles per hour seemed a bit too fast for me.

 

Still seems to be a good number of horses in the area. I know nothing about horses, other than I have fell off, been bucked off and been both bitten and kicked, but still really like them, not sure why. This appears to be some type of draft (work) horse, maybe a Morgan.

Sun is setting I’m ready to go home – ahh, home sweet home.

 

 

Maybe I will grill and enjoy the view from the back 40 this evening.

Depending on when you read this post, goodnight or good-day.