Possum Pond Hunting Camp

    Possum Pond is named for a 2700 acre hunting section of land within the State of Florida Forest Service. The wildlife is managed by the FWC, Florida Wildlife Commission. This area was in part of the Babcock Ranch and comprises of nearly 68,000 acres and was granted to the State of Florida for preservation. You can read more about Babcock Preserve by going here https://myfwc.com/recreation/cooperative/babcock-ranch-preserve/

This 2700 acre track, Possum Pond, is just one of several similar tracks, some smaller and some larger. Each named track has a limited number of card holders that are allowed access via the main dirt road. Generally each track has a designated locations for their campers. Possum Pond has ten such card holders, each with two additional guest cards. The yearly cost can be divided among all the card holder, but only the initial ten get keys to the main gate and guest card holders can only enter with one of the initial ten.

    The yearly cost for Possum Pond was $37, 000.00, which may sound a bit absurd, but the cost for other private hunting lands are quite a bit more than that. So when divided up, the

cost to each of the ten card holders is $3700.00 and that could essentially be further divided by 3 guest card holders which can bring the total costs down to about $1234.00 for the year. The hunting leases are for 5 years, then your add your name and information for your area and in July the FWC draws a single name for each of the hunt areas. They are all rotational and not drawn at the same time so other areas come up each year.

    My Son was invited by one of his friends when one of the other card holders dropped out and his spot was up for grabs by the hunt group. My son said yes after seeing the property and we got in on the second year of the 5 year lease. My son and I each split the cost  between us which was about $1850.00 for the year. We hooked up my 24 ft camper and parked it out at the PP and began making several projects to make it more comfortable.

We built a raise 6 ft. wide deck the length of the camper to both doors. Then we added a 4ft by 8 ft outside shower with hot/cold water shower valve from the campers bathroom. I built a large 3 sided concrete block fire pit ,where we had hoped to roast a hog on but somehow that escaped us. We set up 2- 500 watt LED flood lights in the pine trees which came. in handy for cleaning animals at night after the evening hunt. The generator ran all night long keeping the camper cool with the AC in the summer. We never needed heat as it just didn't get all that cold except for a couple of days each year.

    People ask me all the time "what do you hunt out there"? Well, there was no shortage of wild hogs, which could be hunted all year. There were more than enough Whitetail Deer and

Osceola Turkey to fill your quota for the year. We hunted from tree stands that are about 12 ft or so off the ground and well camouflaged. We were allowed to set up feeding stations that held about 75 pounds of yellow corn and controlled by a solar powered system that you could set for any amount of spins up time in seconds to through out the corn around the stand. You can set the number to times per day the feed could go off, we set early morning and late afternoon for about 6 seconds. That is more than enough to get the animals to keep coming into our feeders. We had three hunt sites with feeders that we could go to which worked out well if we had three of us hunting which was not very often. In fact I usually would go out by myself, when I was the main card holder, during the middle of the week when there was no one else around, just me on 2700 acres and the coyotes and owls singing all night long.

    The only problem that we have experienced is some our feeders were too low to the ground. They were still about 6' from the ground up to the motor 

and the rotating disc that throws out the corn. Well, that turned out to be just the right height for a black bear. Black bears are well knowledgable about those strange looking devices that smell way to good to pass up for a meal. One did, right after putting about 100 lbs of corn in the hopper. He/she came in and looked it over and then stood up and grabbed the motor 

and snapped it off the barrel feeder and proceeded to eat 100 lbs of corn. Wild hogs will also get rather rowdy sometimes, and a big ole boar has more than enough power to knock over a feeder and find a way to get the snap-off lid loose to feed on a big meal. Getting back to the bears, we got bigger and better steel pipes legs and raised that

feeder up to where that bear could never reach it. The pipe legs are 10' long and bolted to the other existing feeder legs then secured to steel fence post driven into the ground 2' and u-bolts used to secure to the pipe legs to the posts. 

I was thinking to myself when we raised that sucker up that it would take a flying circus bear to reach that feeder. My son is holding one of the 10' pipe legs up next to the feeder and it was well over 2' short of the motor. Eventually we ended up moving that feeder to another site and lowered the legs some, but the motor base is still about 7-8' above the ground when you raise the feeder up.

    So when I did go hunting I needed to arrive at the hunt stand a good hour before actual shooting light, which is 30 minutes before the sun rises over the horizon. It takes me about 15 minutes just to park my truck and get my gear out and start walking to the stand. Once at the stand we have ropes hanging down on either side to attach our guns, back pack and whatever else needed to be hauled up the stand. I could not carry that stuff up with me as I used a hunter safety vest and climbing rope so as not become a piled up heap of mess on the ground should I fall off the ladder. Once up into the double wide stand and the shooting/safety bar is in place you have all the room you need. So I am either hunting with a rifle, a scoped 30 cal. M1 military carbine from WW2 or a scoped Marlin 30-30rifle or a 200 pound pull cross bow. All are equally deadly at the ranges of our feeder to the stand, which is about 35 yards. There is really no need to place the feeders out any further and all of the above weapons are really an overkill but they do the job.

    Big boar wild hogs are usually a nuisance animal as they will run off deer and other hogs and dominate a feeder. So with that in mind we try to eliminate them whenever possible.

With that said, these guys are super cautious when coming into a stand area, ofter taking their sweet time in smelling the air and stopping to look around. I have had them circle my tree stand and feeder location just to make sure its ok to move in. These guys have a preference to generally only come in after dark, really dark. So dark my video camera can't record and I can barley make out the hog after he finally commits. You are at this point picking out his outline and the head is usually on the "big end". My son and I each shot a big boar hog

back to back right at dark thirty. I got in my tuck to go help retrieve his first, which turned out to be one heck of a retrieve. I had to drive between trees and over palmettos to get close enough for 2-20' tow straps together and back him out onto the road. Once on the road we left him there and did the same for the other hog and drug him back to the first one and strapped him up and towed the pair back to camp at about 9:30 that night. We just left them where they were and hauled them off the next morning. We probably killed about 6 or so each year. Once they get that big they are no good to eat and in fact they smell as if they were dead already.

    

    One method that I used to get these hogs to come into the feeders is to used an attractant, I call mine "Florida Swine Sauce" The receipt is secrete, but it starts out with used motor oil. All I can say that this stuff works so well that the pine trees that we put it on have been rubber down to the inner bark with some smaller trees completely pushed over and out of the ground. If you buy a commercially made product you would pay about $25.00 for a quart bottle plus shipping. Hell, we used 2 quarts on our three tree stands sites.

    I have people ask me all the time about my cross bow and if that things can really kill a

hog. "Hell Yes"! I said. This thing is deadly at 35-40 yards, grouping 3 arrows/bolts within a 2 inch circle. At that distance it takes approximately a little over 1/4 second to hit the target. The only drawback about crossbows in general is that they are loud, but at that distance that arrow/bolt can hit you before you can blink your eye. Like all bows, the kill comes more from the arrow passing completely through the animal after passing through the heart or lungs. Either way, the animal runs out of blood before going too far if the hit was good. They have been times when the hit went through the heart and the broadhead stuck in the opposite shoulder of the hog and dropping him right in his tracks. Thump and on the ground.

 

    I have yet to kill a deer with my crossbow, only hogs, but I have had hundreds of chances to harvest one. I prefer to harvest a young Doe as the meat is much better. If I am going to harvest, then its is for the meat. That doesn't apply to hogs. A sow hog generally always eats well, even up to over 400 pounds. A young boar hog up to 75 pounds is my cut-off point. That doesn't mean you can't eat the bigger ones, but when they sexually mature and the testosterone is flowing they just don't eat right for me, and besides they stink. I have harvested 3 hogs with rifles and 2 with the crossbow. I hit another large boar late one evening and intentionally shot it through the vitals hoping it would run off and die as I did not want to repeat a late night retrieval just to toss him in the heap pile for the coyotes to eat. The second hog was a nice size eating 100 pounder, but my shot was just a little low. I think she heard the bow go off and raised her head up and the arrow/bolt went through her neck. I was aiming at her head with a broadhead that would crush bone. The video showed her raising up and then jumped up as the arrow/bolt went

through. She took off quickly at first but then after 15 yards she stopped and slowly walked off. There are "No Follow Up Shots" with a cross bow, it takes too long. I watched her just slowly walk off and stopping and looking around several times, all of which are signs of loosing blood and getting disorientated. I got down to check the arrow/bolt and it was red with blood and some blood on the ground but not as much as I should have seen if the hit was good. I followed her trail as far as the last position that I saw her and even followed several trails but still could not find blood. I watched for buzzards the next day but didn't see any unless the coyotes got her that night.

    To be honest, I could have killed many more hogs and deer than what I did, but it becomes a factor that I only have so much room in my 2 freezers. I had my 30-30 one evening waiting for that big boar hog to show up when I saw 2 hogs running in, then 2 more, then 4 came until I counted 13 hogs all pushing and shoving to get to the corn. One of them was a big boar hog red in color bu the ground action was furious and I could never get a clean shot. I think that was the one I shot with the crossbow a week later. I know I hit him as the arrow/bolt was covered in blood as I waited for just the perfect angle to get a complete pass thru.

    So 4 hogs, plus two unrecovered, 2 doe deer after the regular deer season and used my anterless tag to harvest them. I have to chuckle about these 2 deer that I harvested, as I kept thinking the tags were doe tags, as this was what they were many years ago. On both kills, I texted my son at another stand,"should I shoot the other deer"? as I had both tags with me. He said absolutely. But I didn't, as we still had some time and I wanted him to shoot one.

It turns out that the FWC changed the ruling from doe to anterless, as too many buck deer were being killed because their horns had already fallen off and that they looked like a doe deer at the time of the anterless tag season. On both occasions, I could have harvested 2 deer both afternoons and this does not include the buck 5 deer limit that I could have harvested during the regular gun season. I could have limited out the last two years as there were no shortage of buck coming into the feeders both early morning and late afternoon. The only shortage was freezer space.

    I had in the past never cared much for wild turkey, just didn't like the taste. One morning around 9 am I was lowering my gun and backpack down and heard what sounded like someone pounding a stake into the ground. It was loud and I just could not 

figure out who would be in our area as this was middle week and I was the only one in camp. Then I looked up to see the magnificent Tom Turkey strutting and putting...that was the sound I heard. Unfortunately for me my gun was 10 feet below me and there was no way I was going to get it up without Ole Tom seeing me, so I just admired his strutting and putting. A couple of weeks later a pair of Toms come in from another direction and I decided to take one of them. I aimed at the bottom of his neck hoping

to take out the vitals and not too much meat. The shot from my M1 must have been a bit too low as the Ole Tom just slowly walked off. Meanwhile, the second bird took to the air and not really seeing me that high up almost flew into my stand. I watched the Tom I shot at as he slowly walked away looking left and right. He was now out to about 50 yards and so I put the cross hairs directly in the center of his butt and let the second shot fly. That one downed him immediately. So people may wonder why did I shoot him in the butt? Well, that is exactly where you should aim for, as this will surely take out all of his vital organs...and it did.

    I was really anxious about the following deer season, however our hunting lease was up to be redrawn in July.We had in our hunting group 30 names of just the hunters, not including the wives. But there is no way of knowing how many names are posted to the FCW website for the Possum Pond draw. The first draw was a young kid, not in our group, that apparently did not know about how the system works and when the FWC required a $1000.00 non-refundable deposit, he dropped out. Now the whole process begins over again and we did not get it the second time around. So all of the campers, structures and any equipment had to be removed in 30 days. We got lucky as the guy that got lucky came by and said we could leave the wood deck and fire-pit. I dismantled the outside shower and loaded up my camper and sadly said goodby to Ole Possum Pond. It was a good memorial 3 years of hunting and camping and just being out in the woods, and to think that it was only one hour drive from home to camp. The photo below from a video clip that was my Christmas card for 2022, which was a sunrise from my favorite hunt stand. Sunrise was my favorite hunt time to begin the day, and sad to say that this chapter in my life has now come to a closed.

J. Michael                                        

Independence Mountain, Colorado Camping and Hunting Adventure of 2001

    Well, this story begins with my son wanting to take me up to one of his hunting areas in northwestern Colorado. I have had enough time to completely outfit my camper to our needs, and make whatever modifications to it as needed to be able to handle 5 people. This is a rather large pop-up type camper, with a king and queen size pull-out beds front and rear, and a wrap-around couch that makes into another bed for my 6-year-old granddaughter. My dog, Blaze, sleeps with me or the couch when its not in use. The dinette can also be folded down and made into a child's bed. Unfortunately, my wife had to work on this first of many trips. It takes a little over two hours to drive from Longmont up to the NW corner of Colorado.

    So we packed up the camper and headed north. My son's wife and granddaughter took their vehicle, and my son rode with me since I have never been to where we are going. We finally got off the blacktop roads and onto dirt roads, a sign that the end is near, or so I thought.          

We still had another 30 minute drive. 

Independence Mountain is at 9800 feet. have no idea what elevation the dirt road is but when my son said up there in those trees up on top of that mountain is where we are headed. I said what trees? all I see is dirt on a steep slope. He said wait until you get up there...the aspen trees are nearly 2 feet in diameter. The only aspen trees I have seen were in the Rocky Mountain National Park, and those were only 6 inches in diameter. He said turn here. I slowed down and made the turn and then looked up at the slope in the dirt road. My son said it is a bit of a climb.... an understatement!!

    Normally my truck has had no problem towing this 2300 pound camper before now. The motor in my Ford F-150 was a V6 with a 5-speed manual stick shift. So I had a little momentum when I turned so I left it in second gear and began the slow arduous climb. We got up about halfway when the road got steeper, so I jammed it into first gear and kept the RPM's up. We got to a point where I was not sure if this truck had enough balls to pull that camper up this steep loose gravel slope. I looked behind me and Wendy, my son's wife, was real close to the back of the camper and now the ole RPM's were beginning to rapidly diminish. Right at the point where I thought the motor was going to stall out, I slipped the clutch and got some RPM's back and at this point, it was not to take it easy...we're going to the top or else.

    Well, we finally made it up to where the road leveled off and my son said we are now at the top of Independence Mountain. So we drove a little bit down the road to where they had camped before and we pulled in and made a circle up under those enormous aspen trees. This site was right next to an open meadow. This site had an outhouse toilet without the walls...so it was kinda bare all. It was a good thing that it was back away a hundred yards from the camp.

So, Wendy and Brittney, my granddaughter set up the inside of the camper while my son and I  got our firewood squared away and tables and chairs out around the fire pit.

    Time for some lunch and a much needed soft chair that was not moving, and was on a level plane. We relaxed the remainder of the afternoon, made a campfire and dinner. I'm the only one that drinks coffee and that's OK... just more for me.

    This time of the year was early September and bow hunting season was will at the open next month. So we had plenty of time to scout the area looking for animal signs of movement. The chance of actually seeing any animals was pretty non-existent, with a 6-year-old along. We didn't see any, to no surprise, but did see where the animals traveled from place to place. So we set up a couple of tree stands in a couple of likely locations, so everything would be in place when the bow hunting season opened. The rest of the weekend went well and we packed up, hooked up the camper, when all of a sudden, it hit me...we now have to go down this mountain with 2300 pounds pushing all the way down. My son mentioned another road that might be a little better as it is not as steep....well, why didn't we go up that damn road then?

    Now that trip number one is in the bag, and I now know what to expect, I needed more HP out of this motor. So off to the muffler shop I went. We cut out the single cat converter and muffler and installed one size larger in diameter Cats (2 of them) and 2 open flow mufflers and larger diameter tailpipes. She sounds really good, but more than anything, all of that expense should have gained me at least 20 more HP.....and it did. I guess that car dealership in Longmont where I bought this truck, that made a $1500.00 price tag mistake paid off, as the HP increase nearly cost me $500.00. This V6 motor is large, nearly the same CU/Liters as that of the smaller V8 motor. So I already had pretty of good torque, it just needed a little boost on the low end to get up that steep grade. My exhaust plan paid off, as now this truck really pulls and does not stall out.

    Now it's the opening weekend of bowhunting in Colorado and my son has a tag for a Mule Deer Buck and a Bull Elk. So it's time to repeat those 4 paragraphs above and set up camp on top of Independence Mountain. Only this time there

was a slight wrinkle. Ya see it snowed up there...not much maybe 3 to 4 inches on the ground. My truck came with wide track rain type tires which is not an aggressive tread for snow. It was a good thing we brought along snow chains. We got a little way thru that open meadow but when I tried to turn to line up to get back up under those large aspen trees, we bogged down. Great, I got more HP and can't use any of it in this wet snow. So the chains went on and we made it into our location, then the chains came off. The camp was set up quickly as a fire was started in record time. Actually, it wasn't all that cold at the moment, but we knew that it would get near freezing at night. We had plenty of firewood and the camper's heater was such that it would run you plumb out of that camper.

    The next morning I dropped off my son at his tree stand and I drove down the road and parked off to the side and walked over to the other tree stand and got up in it. I don't have a license for bow hunting in Colorado nor a special permit for an out of state hunter. So I just watched and watched and watched some more. I saw nothing but tree rats giving our position to the other animals, as they sure were loud that morning. You often wonder about those things...do animals actually warn other animals of impending danger?

    Today is Sunday and Wendy and Brittney had to go back to Longmont in their vehicle while my son and I planned on staying the full week. They left around 1 pm and so we thought that we might do some scouting in another area. We actually saw a couple of nice Mule Deer bucks up on a hillside feeding and not paying much attention to us. But as soon as we stopped and that door opens they knew they needed to mozy on up the mountain. We moved on up the road some more and we were driving on a narrow clear-cut logging road when my son said,

“ Dad, don’t stop…slow down and I’ll get out”. I kept driving very slow, as looked into the rearview mirror to see him at full draw. But then I had to go around a turn in the road. I kept going slow and then saw a huge buck running thru the woods. I backed up and motioned to my son to get back in the truck. He waved me back, so I backed up to where he was.

    He was grinning, and said I’ve got a big buck down. It appears that there were two large bucks lying down behind a brush pile, just 20 feet off the side of the road. These brush piles give the animals a place to sit out in the afternoon sun and yet remain hidden...or so they thought. All my son could see were the tops of the antlers sticking up above the brush pile. When the two bucks realized something was up, they stood up and my son had an easy 8-yard bow shot. The buck spun around and ran down the sloping mountainside to the bottom and fell over. The weird thing was, I found the arrow right where he shot the buck, just lying on the ground as if he had put it there. But the old thing was, that it was pointing back towards the road…kinda odd I thought. The arrow must have gone all the way thru the body and fell out when the buck spun around. That arrow did the trick, as the buck ran out of fluids right at the bottom of the slope.

    So I went up to my truck to get my camera and get some photos before moving the deer. Then I looked up the side of this hill, as  it was about 30 to 40 feet up a steep grade, and we would need to find a way to get this big boy up to the road. Now I guess it was a good thing that I had about 200 feet of rope in the truck’s toolbox for emergencies and this was one of those emergencies. It's hard enough for two people to drag a 200-pound deer across the ground let alone try to drag it up a steep incline. This buck was much too large for the both of us to try and drag up the mountain slope up to the road. 

    Now I guess it was a good thing that I had about 200 feet of rope in the truck’s toolbox for emergencies and this was one of those emergencies. The buck’s antlers were in full velvet and we didn't want to damage them by putting a rope around them. So I made a loop in the rope to put around the deer's head. This would give us a pulling point. I went up that slope with rope in hand and attached it to the trailer hitch and told my son to lift upwards on the base of the horns to keep the head well above the ground and let the truck do the pulling. It worked like a charm. This deer was a 10 point (eastern count) and could very well be a 12 point if the brow tines developed that year, they should have. 

    My son took the deer meat and the head with the full skin cape attached down to the meat processor in Fort Collins and the head to the taxidermists. We stayed for a few more days up on Independence Mountain just because we were already set up for a longer camping period...might as well make the most of it.

    I had a full neck mount done for his birthday and now I have to look at this deer every morning when I wake up, as it hangs on my bedroom wall…my son doesn’t have any place to hang it at his house. So I’m reminded daily of a wonderful camping trip and of his Mule Deer Buck.

J. Michael

Light Snow Flurries Forecasted

    The weather forecast for this weekend was to be mild cool temperatures with possible light snow flurries. I have found rather quickly that your never trust the weatherman's predictions, and this weekend was no exception.   

    In 2000, I sold my house in Florida and decided to move to Colorado for a few years. My wife found work at the same business in Colorado and move about 4 months earlier and lived with our son and his family until I sold the house and moved out there in October. After a month, I bought a pickup truck and later a pop-up camper, so our families could enjoy the outdoors when the weather warmed up a bit. In April of 2001, I had decided to take my granddaughter, who was 7 at that time, and my dog Blaze for a weekend camping trip up in the mountains of the Rocky Mountain National Park in CO.  This was to be the maiden trip. I have photographed in this park quite a bit and in fact, every time it snowed the night before down where I lived in Longmont, CO., I would load up my dog and camera equipment and head up the this park for a day of photography. I would drive my truck up into the park bright and early the following morning. However, a crucial stop at the Mc Donalds in Estes Park was a must for coffee and a couple of sausage bic-ketts … that’s how we say it down here in the far south (Florida).

    When my wife and I decide to move to Colorado in the summer of 2000 for a couple of years, we wanted to be close to my son and his family and our 6-year-old granddaughter that had moved to Colorado a couple of years earlier. When we made that decision, my wife was offered a job with the company she worked for here in Florida right away. So we flew my son to Florida to travel back with his mother while I stayed behind to sell the house and everything else I could.  While traveling in a 16 ft cargo truck with what was left of our worldly positions, including a car hauler with my son’s drag race car in tow, I would stop every morning at Mc Donalds for coffee and bic-ketts … and I just had to get an extra bic-kett for my dog, Blaze. She loved them, so much so, that I think she actually could recognize the golden arches of Mc Donalds.

Blaze would get very excited knowing that her bic-kett was soon to come. So this was a continuing event … whenever we would go up into the Rocky Mountain National Park for the day photographing, I would stop at Mc Donalds in Estes Park for our morning fix.

    So … the weekend’s weather forecast for that springtime weekend was lots of sunshine and a possibility of light snow flurries…great lets go!! We arrived at our campsite on Friday around mid-day, and as I got the camper set up there were the light snow flurries mixed in with warm bright sunlight, beautiful t-shirt and shorts were the dress of the day. The next morning it was cool with the gorgeous warm colors of the morning sun against the mountains. We all piled in the truck and with my trusty Sony digital camera and we drove around photographing the mountain streams and whatever wildlife presented itself.

    One of my favorite areas was Moraine Park right around the corner of the campground. A moraine is where the ice and snow of a glacier rapidly advanced down a steep slope creating a wide flat area with scattered rocks, sand, and boulders. The land becomes flat with the trees and boulders and sand being pushed out to the sides of the moraine. Mountain streams formed later feeding the wide meadow’s grasses where the elk would gather and feed in late spring. The bull elk would gather up his haram and fend off rival bulls … a great place in late fall for photographing wildlife. But at this time of year most of the elk have migrated up to higher elevations in the mountains for the cooler air and the bull elk would have shedded their antlers. This was indeed a beautiful cool Spring Saturday morning. We drove around after having breakfast outside at the picnic table. Around noon, dark ominous clouds began forming overhead and by early afternoon it totally clouded up and it started to drizzle rain.

    The rain didn’t bother so me much, as I very often would photograph right from the comforts of my truck. Later on, about mid-afternoon, the rain gave way to sleet, which is a mixture of rain and snow flurries. Great!  Where are those possible light forecasted snow flurries? This time it wasn't light snow, but very wet. Another hour passed by, and now the sleet has turned into more of a light but steady snow shower, which quickly escalated into more of a steady heavy snowfall right before dark-thirty. I think perhaps someone missed the forecast here. When we finally made it back to the camper, I backed up close to the front overhanging queen size bunk, so that I could get up into the truck to brush off the snow that is piling up on the canvas top. I also was able to plug in the camper's 12-volt battery connection to the truck and leave the motor running a bit to make sure the camper battery was fully charged up for the night.

    I have a propane heater in the camper however, the blower motor has to have full 12 Volts of power to run otherwise the heater burner shuts off … I'm thinking about how much we are really going to need that heat tonight. After dinner and before we went to bed, I went out again and got up in the bed of the truck with a broom to sweep the snow off the roof over the front bunk. I also cranked up the truck to recharge the camper's battery a little more, trying to keep it fully charged to able to run that heater blower motor all night. There was about another 2 inches or so of snow up over the front bunk already, from 6:00 to about 8:00. I began running the numbers of hours through my head to figure out how much snow would fall at the rate it was falling. So … let's see, 1.00 inches per hour times about 9 hours to daylight equals … ehhh … Oh that's a lot of snow for light flurries?

    It's too damn cold out here to be doing this crap, I’m going back inside where it is nice and toasty warm. Whatever falls … falls. Just hope the canvas roof doesn’t cave in during the middle of the night. Later that night or somewhere in the early morning … who knows … I woke up with wet blankets …. hum, I wonder which one of those other two wet my bed?? I turned on the light and noticed water droplets forming on the underside of the canvas over our bed, with water drops steadily falling … Damn! The warm air inside the camper caused the cold air of the snow over the bunk to condensate…great!! I grabbed a couple of towels to help soak up the water drops and reluctantly went back to sleep. There wasn't much I could about it at this point in time. I sure wasn’t going to go outside and knock the snow off the roof over our bunk again.

    The next morning I got up and looked out the camper door and to my total disbelief, saw 13 inches of snow on top of the picnic table …. yeah, I measured it. So the day before I made a photograph of the truck and camper parked in the campsite.   I just had to get another shot of it now or no one will ever believe me that it snowed that much last night. The entire campground was totally covered in white … deep white snow. Some campers only had 2 man pup-tents to sleep in, while some just had a tarp strung up and were sleeping on the ground. They were really totally unprepared for that kind of weather. You could not see the road at all, so trying to pack up and leave was not a very good option. The tires on my truck were rain tires, not snow tires, and I did not have 4 WD. No cell phone service either, but we did have plenty of food. I made coffee and breakfast for my granddaughter and Blaze, deciding to wait it out a bit.

    A little while later I saw the park service truck with a snowplow come thru and cleaned off the roadway throughout the campground so people could get out. I had no idea how much or where it snowed last night. I didn't think that folding up the camper and hauling it down 4000 ft of winding mountain roads to the town where I lived was a very good viable option. So, in my hastily made plans, I decided to put the kid and dog into the truck with the motor running and the heat on. I put everything in the camper away and closed it and locked it up, living it right where it was parked. I told the park ranger that I would come back in the morning to get it out of that space. Actually, after snow quit, it was really quite a beautiful sight, as the snow is very wet and clings to the tree branches. It was still heavily overcast and I thought that maybe this snowstorm was not yet through with me, and I had better get on the road back home.

    The snow hanging on the branches of the pine trees made for great B&W images of which I made a few on my way down to town. After getting back home I found out that it only rained there, and when I showed my wife and son the photos I made of the camper, they were a bit stunned. My son and I went back the next morning and dug out the camper and hauled it back home. 

    SO there you have it !, the lesson learned here is don’t trust what the weatherman tells ya on forecasting, as he’s is guessing just like the rest of us. The one thing I did learn while living in Colorado is: “ If ya don’t like the weather now … wait a couple of hours … it will change”.

J. Michael

Blue Cypress Lake

Blue Cypress Lake

    While Photographing on the east coast of Florida at a boardwalk over the water which had several islands that held many species of wading birds, a gentleman came up to me and we started talking. He knew right away my level of photography and mentioned a lake called Blue Cypress Lake 30 miles east of Vero Beach. He said that Ole Joe runs a boat guiding and fishing service there where you could go out and photograph for the most part a water raptor called an Osprey. He said that lake held about 300 pair of nesting birds during the spring and that I should look into it.

    Blue Cypress Lake is the largest lake in Indian River County and is a ten-square mile naturalists and fisherman's paradise. This lake is also a photographers paradise for the bird life and the waterscapes, as well as spectacular sunrises and sunsets. As the origin of the St. John's River, the lake is abundant with wildlife, including bass, delicious catfish, alligators,  ospreys and of course majestic bald cypress trees. The lake is a premiere location in Florida for trophy size large mouth bass fishing.

    

    Well, I had probably a couple of hundred Osprey images already, but would look up Blue Cypress Lake on the internet when I got back home. I found the web site for this lake and

found a video that someone posted of the Bald Cypress trees out in the water away from the shoreline. The video quality was on the poor side but was good enough for further investigation. So I called and got Jeannie, Ole Joe’s wife at the fish camp bait shop, and talked to her for quite awhile. About a week later I decided to pack up my boat with provisions for an overnight stay on the water and go explore this lake. This is about a 2 hour drive from my place on the West coast of Florida. I arrived early in the afternoon and met Joe and Jeannie and told them about my plans to overnight in my boat on the lake. Joe gave me a map of the lake and warned me of the cypress trees that were cut down in the 50s and are still lying on the shallow bottom and if I hit one of those with prop of the motor it could take out my lower unit. He said don’t go close to shore past the cypress trees that are out in the lake. I had 2 electric trolling motors on my boat, so when I got close to the trees,

I raised the big 70 HP motor and used the electric motors to get around in the shallows. I spent all that afternoon on the west side of the lake, which did not allow for sunset images, but did provide plenty of shooting of the Ospreys landing in the trees and building their nests. So I opted to get up bright and early the next morning for some colorful sunrise images of the trees from the backside, 

which turned out to be a perfect location. The west side also allows for some very good early

morning light on the cypress trees up to about 9 am. The Ospreys were just beginning to build

their nest and there was no shortage of tree and spaces in which to do so. Some trees have as 

many as 3 - 4 pairs of birds biding for just the right location in the same tree. This made for

some interesting actions  images of these birds. After filling up several camera cards, I loaded

up my boat and said goodby to Joe and Jeannie and headed back for the 2 hour return trip 

home.

    After looking at the map that Joe gave me, and the Google Earth satellite maps, I could easily see where the morning light and afternoon light would be best for future trips and

adjusted my arrival times such that I would motor across the lake to the East side for late afternoon light on those trees and sunset images. The best time for sunset images are well after the sun goes beyond the horizon. This is when the colorful light show begins. I would shoot for about another 30 minutes or so and then would head back across the lake to the boat ramp, tie up my boat at the dock and spend the night in my pickup truck with a fiberglass camper shell top. You need to be closed up tight as the mosquitoes at night are merciless. I have a 12 V fan and 2 screened windows which is plenty

good enough to cool off and sleep. The next morning I would get up bright and early and make coffee and have a couple of donuts and get in my boat and head out to the west side of the lake and find a suitable location for some silhouetted cypress tree sunrise images with the colorful first light of dawn. I can’t remember not making a good sunrise or sunset image on this lake, it just doesn’t happen.

The Blue Cypress Lake fish camp, owned by Joe and Jeannie had four one room cabin rentals on the water where you could tie up your boat right behind your room. There were also two mobile trailers that they rented as well. After discussing my future plans of conducting overnight photographic tours on the lake and needing rooms for my clients,

Joe and Jeannie said that they welcomed me in doing so and we came up with a pricing that worked out for the both of us. My photo tours would consist of 4-5 hours of waterscape photography and photos of nesting Osprey in the afternoon, followed up with another hour of sunset photography to finish the first day and then head back to our rooms for the night. It was a nice convenience to be able to tie up my boat right behind my cabin. We brought our dinner meals, as the cabin have a full kitchen and bathroom with refreshing hot showers. The next morning we made coffee and pastry and got in the boat and headed out to the West side of the lake where I had several places lined up for spectacular sunrise images with silhouetted cypress trees. We would then photograph the beautiful golden light of early

morning of the cypress trees and then concentrate the rest of the morning on obtaining flight shots and courting of the Ospreys. After about 11 o’clock the light would be a bit harsh so we would head back to the cabins so the people could get their things in order while I loaded up the boat on the trailer. Jeannie was very kind and would get my people in her golf cart and bring them back the the bait shop next to the boat ramp. Over the next couple of years I conducted about two dozen or so photo tour to this lake. One of those tours was a group from a camera club in northern Florida, whereby I had presented a digital slide program that I arranged to some very good nature music. My second presentation for the night was a program on Blue Cypress Lake. Before I left that night, I had 5 people want to sign up right then for my next availability photo tour to this lake and more people wanting more information about my photo tours. That club tour required me to rent a 24 foot pontoon boat that Joe rented, and three cabins for the night. We would then photograph the beautiful golden light of early

morning of the cypress trees and then concentrate the rest of the morning on obtaining flight shots and courting of the Ospreys. After about 11 o’clock the light would be a bit harsh so we would head back to the cabins so the people could get their things in order while I loaded up the boat on the trailer. Jeannie was very kind and would get my people in her golf cart and bring them back the the bait shop next to the boat ramp. Over the next couple of years I conducted about two dozen or so photo tour to this lake. One of those tours was a group from a camera club in 

northern Florida, whereby I had presented a digital slide program

that I arrange to some very good nature music. My second presentation for the night was a program on Blue Cypress Lake. Before I left that night, I had 5 people want to sign up right then for my next availability photo tour to this lake and more people wanting more information about my photo tours. That club tour required me to rent a 24 foot pontoon boat that Joe rented, and three cabins for the night.

One of the most interesting aspects of this lake is that it is completely private, with the total perimeter of the lake totally pristine with no buildings.

There is only the small trailer community of about 30 homes on three canals constructed back in the early 50s and the fish camp / boat ramp. The land around the lake and out for several miles is owned by the State of Florida as part of the preservation of the headwaters of the St. Johns River that flows north. The logging industry that felled the cypress trees in the 50s and many were never retrieved. There is still a tremendous amount of submerged trees on the bottom all around the perimeter of the lake. The State of Florida would not grant a permit to retrieve the remainder of those trees due to environmental concerns of the process, and so this lake will always remain as is, a pristine slice of heaven.

 Sadly, Ole Joe passed away and Jeannie 

managed to hang onto their house and the

cabins / fish camp for a few more years before she sold it. I have not been back after that but I still remember this lakes beauty and I have thousands of beautiful images to admire. Many of those images still vividly remind me of sitting in my boat on the lake and watching the beautiful colors of the day fade away into the night sky.

J. Michael