Wyoming Outdoor Photography – A hard-earned smile

This year has been a doozy on my husband.

Earlier this year, his assistant had to have foot surgery and missed work for the entire spring.  For more than six weeks, my husband held down this place by himself.  He gathered eggs in two blizzards, shoveled snow for days on end and somehow managed to step in for me when I was out doing my Goshen County photographer thing or FFA work.

Thankfully his friend and coworker Jacob helped out when he could, and even lent Outdoor Guy his technician to help out as well.  In April, the farm’s seasonal worker arrived.  But still, it was two guys doing the work of three, in the busiest time of the year.  I’m pretty sure my husband didn’t have a single day off work for three months.

You’d think that he’d be glad to get rid of these pheasants.  Not care if hunters were having a good experience or enjoying their time in the field.

But that’s not my husband.  Each day during the special season,  he headed over to the check station once or twice a day to talk to hunters and see how they were faring.  He’d adjust his stocking rates some, tweak where or how he released birds, to give hunters a better experience.  During the youth day, two beleaguered young hunters were struggling to find some quarry, so Outdoor Guy all but drew them a map to where he figured there’d be birds.

And Friday, as he stood and watched 30 pheasants burst from the truck in anticipation of the general season opener, a smile tugged at the corner of his face.  His eyes held on the horizon as the roosters and hens took flight in a bunch, cackling and soaring until they landed or flew out of sight.

“That will never get old,” he told me, laughing.  “That’s the best part of the job right there.”

For at his heart, my husband is a lover of critters and all things wild.  Working for Game and Fish has a tendency to mire you down in the bureaucracy.  Like any government agency, there is an overabundance of rules and paperwork and meetings.  There are grouchy hunters that are never satisfied, a public who fights hunting on the whole.  And the reason you started in the agency gets lost in the muck.

But then you get to experience Wyoming in all her wild again.  Bottle feeding big horn sheep lambs, pulling fish nets on Hawk Springs reservoir or watching pheasants rocket up out of the stocking truck and catching the wind.

In that moment, I watched the burden of responsibility lift off my husband’s shoulders.  And he was once again an 8-year old kid who loved the outdoors and wanted to wear a red shirt for a job.  He had a bit of a spring in his step, laughter in his voice as we climbed back into the truck.

Of all the sights I’ve seen around these parts the last few months, that one is my favorite.

Enjoy the pheasant season everyone.