Vic Schendels Blog

Horse riding in the DARK

Vic — Wed, 16 May 2012 17:59:07 +0000

Bull Elk at Sunset

A couple years back, my business partner Wayne Morine and me were invited on a elk/photograph hunt in the mountains just east of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The scenery in mid October there is absolutely magnificent with beautiful parks surrounded by deep pine forests and golden groves of aspen. It’s also full of elk, wolves, moose and grizzly bears and we planned on packing into the area on horseback with Frank, another business partner of ours, and his two sons. We met them in Dubois and spent the first night playing pool and having a couple of cool ones at the local watering hole. The next morning dawned clear, crisply cool and we motored the trucks and trailers up into the wilderness. It took a couple hours to get the horses saddled and get our gear all packed and by the time we moved out it was mid afternoon.
The trail meandered gently uphill for fifteen miles along a small crystal clear stream before heading up in the dark timber and over a little divide. It then twisted down a steep set of narrow switchbacks before delivering us to a wonderful campsite at the head of a hidden valley. We set up a large wall tent, gathered firewood and set a battery powered electric wire around the place to keep carousing bears away. That was a bit unnerving. Over the next few picture perfect days we hunted hard and I got lots of nice images but we hadn’t filled the freezer and everyone was a bit bummed out.
On the last full day a cold front came through and turned the place cold and dreary. The drop in temperature started the elk moving and just an hour before sunset we heard the crack of rifle fire from half mile away. We spurred the horses and moved quickly down from a high ridge into a deep park and found the boys beginning to clean three dead elk. Everyone was in a great mood, but as the gathering gloom of a wet evening set in I was thinking about the ten mile trip back to our little garrison and the smell of fresh blood in grizzly country. That was really unnerving.
It took two hours to get the animals processed and we left them there covered in pine branches figuring we’d pack them out the next day on our way back home. We mounted up and started for camp on a moonless, starless, dank, drizzly, grizzly night. It was so dark that I couldn’t see Wayne’s horse ten feet in front of me and I felt myself getting motion sickness from the ride. In addition, every few minutes my horse would get a bit close to an unseen pine and whack my right leg on the trunk which hurt like the blazes. When we finally made it back and were warming our backsides against a crackling campfire, Frank and his boys started to chuckle as they noticed me rubbing my knee. That’s when they told me the truth. I’d been riding that wicked trail with a horse that was blind in its right eye.

Mother’s Day 2012

Vic — Mon, 07 May 2012 17:26:15 +0000

Fox Kit with Leaf

I’ve been quietly sitting at a fox den almost every day since early March subtly waiting for a beautiful vixen to emerge with her five kits from underneath and old chicken coup in the south part of town. Arriving at dawn and leaving at dusk has tested my patience, but the hours spent taking almost 9,000 pictures during the last eight weeks were worth every minute. It has taught me a lot about the interactions between the mom and her babies and in a larger sense about how important mothers are to all of us.
In the beginning, mom would magically appear early in the morning and late evening from some hidden place and check me out for fifteen or twenty minutes. When she felt that I wasn’t dangerous, she’d call to the kits in a muted, whispering bark and they’d creep out of the fox hole, one by one only to jump right back in when they spotted me. Another quiet call as if to say all was clear and they would joyously surface again and spend the next few minutes nursing. Once or twice a day, I’d see her sneak off to go hunting and usually come home with a rabbit or snake for dinner and wondered how she could keep up such a harried existence.
This routine went on for a couple of weeks, although the kits were allowed to leave the den more frequently and to play for longer periods of time. They were so little and it was a struggle for me to find a picture that showed their smallness. Finally, one picked up an old cottonwood leaf in its mouth which was the size of its head and I got a wonderful image. As the entire family became more trusting, I was able to take pictures for extended periods and capture their fascinating behaviors. Mom always showed up first followed by three of the kits. She would feed and groom them one by one and then send them back inside. In a couple of minutes she’d call the other two and follow the same routine. Only twice did she allow all five to be out at once and I reasoned that she could only handle two or three at a time. In the first month they doubled in size and it was hard to imagine how much work it was for mom. Hunting, feeding, grooming, teaching and playing with five little ones was so taxing that she’d climb up on the roof to get away and go to sleep for an hour in the middle of the day. The last month was even more exhausting for her as the kits appetites grew ever more demanding and she taught them all the skills needed to survive on their own. In just a few short weeks, they left the den for good and used all the skills she taught them to survive. On this Mother’s Day, take the time to thank your mom for all the incredible things she’s done for you. Thank you mom!

Cattle Drive Part 3

Vic — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:24:47 +0000

The Big Move

The last three days of the cattle drive in Wyoming were full of adventure, saddle fatigue, exhaustion, great scenery and lots of picture taking. Day two began cold and the crisp air had that distinctive aroma of bovine fertilizer mixed with sage and decaying leaves in an aspen grove. The herd had slightly scattered during the night and our first job was to bunch them together again and get them moving down the valley toward La Barge. Hours were spent gathering strays and moving gingerly as my posterior was still a bit tender from the previous day. Eventually, four hundred head strung out in a long line and moved like a snake through the mountain meadows with a dozen cowpunchers and their dogs moving them methodically and constantly onward. I had to dismount many times in order to compose the right shot and high shutter speeds captured all the fast action. It also hid the embarrassing fact that my hindquarters needed a rest.
The day warmed to sweltering so we shed our jackets and stopped for lunch. An hour later, several of us broke from the gather and headed toward a divide to the south in order to find an easier route across the hills. We made our way up an old rocky game trail and as it grew steeper we’d have to stop every little bit to let the horses catch their breath and cool off. I loved that they were doing all the leg work, but at the top and heading down the other side things got really scary. The little pathway gave out and we started down a precipitous slope that from the top of my horse looked as though we were going to fall off the edge of the world. My bug eyes were already eight feet off the ground and peering down the steep pitch made it seem like twenty. Every few feet my mount would slip just a bit on some loose gravel and I swear that for the next ten minutes my life was going to end in a gnarly tumble of man and beast. It didn’t of course, and as things leveled out I thanked the stars and my sure footed horse for sparing my life.
The next couple days were uneventful except that a front had come through and turned the weather cloudy and cold. Riding in a saddle all day wasn’t exactly a way to keep warm and I looked forward to evening campfires, hot cups of coffee cowboy stories and sleep that always came fast. The last morning broke to frigid temperatures and knowing that home wasn’t far away we got on the trail early and were at the ranch by mid afternoon. As I shivered, we got cows into winter pasture, corralled the horses and took tack to the barn. Our “Drive” as I call it now was over, but the lessons taught to me by those wranglers were many. First and most important know your subject matter and secondly, I don’t ever want to be a full-time cowboy.

Cowboys and Horses

Vic — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 15:59:17 +0000

blue eyed colt and mare running

Beautiful Horse Photography

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my first morning on an incredible cattle drive in northwestern Wyoming. Due to the limited amount of column space for one article, I thought it would be fun to share a few more stories of adventurous riding, beautiful scenery, cowboy antics and great photography on the roundup. After the range riders released the moose, we mounted up and headed up to a prominent hill at the far end of the big meadow. At the top they showed me a medicine wheel that had been constructed by ancient Native Americans several hundred years ago for ceremonial purposes known only to them. It had a center of stone surrounded by a ring of more stones with spokes of rocks radiating from the center and was at least forty feet wide. The view from there of the valleys and mountains sprinkled with autumn gold was spectacular and I swear that you could hear the ancient ones quietly chanting in the cool wind as it circled around us. The boys made a small campfire and boiled up a pot of black coffee and we speculated about the magical place for an hour while we sipped at our cups. Over to the south, we could spot distant charcoal colored specks of cattle among the pockets of aspen and sage and after the fire was out we packed up and headed in that direction.
Gathering cows was tough work for horses, dogs and cowboys. Most of the stock was agreeable and gathered together rather easily when prompted by the sounds of rope slapping against saddle leather, whistling, and dogs nipping at their heels. The occasional stray was always a pain and they’d run a rider and his horse through choking willows, gnarly timber and all the tough terrain they could find to get away. The Australian cattle dogs were essential and moved methodically doing their dangerous work among sharp hooves that kicked relentlessly back at them. Those difficult bovines were no match for their sharp instincts and in time they always moved back in with the herd. Taking pictures of all that action on horseback was a difficult proposition and just as I’d line up a great image that mount of mine would decide to move. If you listened carefully you could hear it chuckling softly under the saddle because it knew what was coming next.
An outdoor photographer’s job can be unpleasant at times and as the hours of hard riding passed along, this dude noticed that his thighs and back side were starting to burn and that the horse was laughing louder by the minute. When you haven’t done much riding, all that jarring in the saddle has a way of wearing big blisters on tender flesh and I had them on both sides. As the afternoon wore on and moved toward evening the romantic side of pushing cattle lost its allure. For the first time I knew how tough it was to do that job and we still had three more days of hard riding ahead. Click

Cowboys in Wyoming

Vic — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:42:50 +0000

Moving the Herd

Cowboys in Wyoming

A couple years back I had the opportunity to involve myself in a four day cattle drive up in the Salt River Range of western Wyoming. I wasn’t any person’s idea of a cowpoke except that I did have a big brimmed hat and a good pair of roughed out boots which helped me look the part. I’d ridden a horse about ten times in my life and that was only on head to butt to head trail rides. Other than that, this dude was going to be enlightened as to what it took to be a real cowpuncher and take a bunch of photographs in the process.
I left Fort Collins in late September and motored up to the ranch which was located fifteen miles north of the metropolis of La Barge (population 690). It was a beautiful place, nestled in a sleepy little draw a hundred yards from the Green River. Century old cottonwoods dotted the property and I could see aspens on the distant mountains looking like someone had scattered gold dust on their slopes. My new partners welcomed me at the front door with handshakes that felt like weathered leather and cactus. An hour later, after a hearty dinner of rocky mountain oysters, they had me ride a few ponies to see which one would be the easiest to handle. We picked a gentle, buckskin mare and all the men swore she’d be the best one for me. Later that evening everyone gathered around a glowing campfire before bedtime and listened to one tall tale after another.
The overhead light stabbed at the darkness and fractured my deep sleep in an instant at three a.m. After a quick breakfast of biscuits, bacon and coffee we were out in a frosty field gathering horses. Then it took two hours of hard driving down dusty, rutted roads before we reached a barn at the head of a lonesome valley just as the sun was nudging itself above the surrounding peaks. I snapped tons of pictures as the men in chaps saddled the horses which were bellowing clouds of moist steam from their heaving nostrils. In just a few minutes we were mounted and moving up through high meadows looking for four hundred head of cattle.
We hadn’t gone a quarter mile when one of the boys noticed a big, brown cow moose heading down a hill toward a creek to our left. She was followed by three more and the site was absolutely magnificent. I was involved in picture taking, yet unbeknownst to me, the buckaroos were making plans of a different nature for one of those long legged girls. Now it doesn’t take much to entertain true cowhands and they were off to the races in a New York second, lassos circling in the air, trying to head and heel that critter as she plowed through the pasture. Despite her best efforts she couldn’t escape and when it was all over they’d really roped a moose. After admiring their handy work they let her go no worse for the wear. And as for me, it was though I’d stepped back in time and into the rough and tumble canvas of a Charlie Russell painting. Click

Natural Selection Theory in Action

Vic — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:10:23 +0000

man with a huge crocodile

Herbert Spencer coined the phrase “Survival of the Fittest” and Charles Darwin wrote of “Natural Selection.” As a wildlife and nature photographer I’ve seen many examples of these theories in the field over the years. Huge Bull Moose will fight to the death over one female in order to make sure the strongest genes are passed on to the next generation. The story is the same one for elk, deer, marmots, trout and almost all other critters on the planet. The mating seasons are intense and the photo opportunities are incredible as both males and females of the species are in their prime. It’s amazing to think that this process has gone on for hundreds of millions of years and that some species survive for eons and others become extinct in short order.
I’ve written lately about our last trip to Costa Rica. It’s an exciting, third world country and in it I found the greatest example of the theory of natural selection that could ever be photographed. The Tarcoles River winds through the country’s Central Pacific region before emptying into the ocean near Jaco. It slowly meanders through the jungle and has one of the highest populations of American crocodiles in the world averaging about twenty per square mile. Some of them are nearly eighteen feet long and sport choppers that I swear are full of armor piercing teeth. I wanted to find some way to get close to these prehistoric creatures and take a few pictures for the scrapbook.
Frank, the professional guide we had hired, set us up with a man who knew crocs and where to find them. We met him at a little dock on the side of the river and within a few minutes were motoring along in a small boat through the hot, steamy, monster invested water. He grinned as he showed us a gnarly scar that stretched from his wrist to the shoulder from an encounter with one of the beasts. I felt like we had met Captain Quinn from the movie Jaws. It took about half an hour to spot the sixteen footer they called Osama Bin Laden. His immense body was submerged and only his little green eyeballs lurked above the muddy estuary. Our captain beached the craft on the opposite side of the river and jumped out into the thigh high muck with a dead chicken clinched in his fist. Quinn slapped the carcass on the mud and within seconds Mr. Bin Laden glided swiftly past us and hurled his reptilian chassis onto the muddy embankment. In an instant the huge head of the croc lurched upward and his mighty jaws opened within inches of our daring compatriot. A second later the chicken had been devoured whole.
I’ve read that crocodiles have been around about 200 million years and that modern man originated about 200,000 years ago. As I triggered the shutter, I thought about that theory of “Natural Selection” and wondered why there was such a difference. Click.