Bison screensavers

We drove to the National Bison Range on Sunday.

It’s been a few years and the weather, quite frankly, was too nice to see anything really cool; which doesn’t mean we didn’t see anything, we did. It’s just that the critters have a tendency to lounge around on a sunny day more than they do a day when it’s snowing horizontally.

We saw exactly three bison and a bunch of deer and two antelope.

The antelope butted heads briefly, which made for an OK picture and one of the bison stood up and pooped, which made for a photo I shared with some friends, one of which said they planned on making it their screensaver.

I aim to please.

The deer, at least the bucks, weren’t any bigger than what I see around here. In fact, they were smaller.

The most impressive creatures I saw were a herd of angus bulls in a pasture on the way to the range. One musta been pushing 2,500 pounds.

He gave me the bad eye when I pulled the car over and walked up to the fence to take his photo with the Mission Range in the background.

I mooed at him. He was not impressed.

Years ago I’d get excited about going to the range, where “your car is your cage.”

The rules say your car has to be your cage. There’s not much hiking allowed on the range, save for a trail along the creek.

But today, I’m not much on photographing from a car. I’d much rather take a long walk and see less than drive two hours and see more.

We did take a couple of short walks. One at the range and the other in a nearby Wildlife Management Area.

We didn’t see much in the WMA, but it looked like a good place to come back to someday when there was actually water in the numerous potholes, which are currently dry, despite the wet fall.

It takes a long time to make up for a July, August and September with almost no rain.

The problem with November photography is the days are short and getting shorter as the month progresses.

The other day it was cloudy and raining and we were walking in the woods. I glanced at my watch and it was 3:30 p.m. and almost dark.

The darkness means I’ve been sleeping longer, of course, and having this weird dream where I’m in college but always seem to be failing out, missing class, or way behind on my work.

Of course in the same dream I’m spending way more time at the bars.

From a psychological standpoint, it evens out and I wake up refreshed, term papers be damned. There’s worse recurring dreams to have in November 2020 and I’m kinda, sorta impressed on how my subconscious is handling it all.

Such are the joys of November. It ain’t all bad.