Fall Friends

Fall is coming!  And hunting season too.  I hunt.  Do you hunt?  I shoot. And when I get my target in my sights, I shoot over and over until I get it!  What to I pack?  Well for these old scans it was a Nikon N80 film camera, probably with some Fuji ISO 400.  For years I have enjoyed the field in front of my home because of all the wildlife it attracts.  Five years ago around the first week of October I saw a group of wild turkeys out having a mid-morning snack...and what a season opener!  Enjoy the collection below to see what I bagged that day.

Ruffling up his feathers!

Below is a shot that turned out very well with a nice fall mood with the fuzzy "foxtails" (a name we called that particular weed as kids). The details of color and pattern in the turkey feathers really show up too.

But as I was shooting the turkeys I didn't notice the other visitor come out into the field from the woods.  It was a Virginia deer!  Also known as a white-tailed deer.  This youngster, with it's beautiful reddish glowing coat, came right out to eat too!  And I was able to get tons for great shots.  It wasn't until I got them developed that my Dad, a former country boy hunter, pointed out that it was not a doe....it was a button buck!  Pay attention to the photos below and see if you can spot those velvety nubs that would eventually become antlers.

Check out that delicate looking back hoof

As I would later learn, a button buck is usually around a year and a half old, and if you look in the background you will notice the doe...he was still young enough to be a mama's boy!

Once you get a good look at her you realize how small he really is.  So it was a surprising fall morning shoot, and one that always makes be appreciate that first week of fall.

By C.H. Spurgeon:

"You crown the year with Your goodness." Psalm 65:11

All the year round, every hour of every day, God is richly blessing us; both when we sleep and when we wake—His mercy waits upon us…the benevolence of God surrounds all His creatures; in it, as in their element, they live, and move, and have their being.

Yet as the sun on summer days gladdens us with beams more warm and bright than at other times; and as rivers are at certain seasons swollen by the rain; and as the atmosphere itself is sometimes fraught with more fresh, more bracing, or more balmy influences than heretofore, so is it with the mercy of God; it has its golden hours; its days of overflow, when the Lord magnifies His grace unto men. Among the blessings of the nether springs, the joyous days of harvest are a special season of excessive favor. It is the glory of autumn that the ripe gifts of providence are then abundantly bestowed; it is the mellow season of realization, whereas all before was but hope and expectation. Great is the joy of harvest. Happy are the reapers who fill their arms with the liberality of heaven.

The Psalmist tells us that the harvest is the crowning of the year. Surely these crowning mercies call for crowning thanksgiving! Let us render it by the inward emotions of gratitude. Let our hearts be warmed; let our spirits remember, meditate, and think upon this goodness of the Lord.