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Every photographer has at least one animal, bird, sunset, type of light, whatever, that they want to shoot and for some reason the photo gods have determined that they shall not prevail. And because of that it shall now be their quest and they will suffer and be disappointed until they finally obtain it, if they ever do, kinda like the holy grail.

For me that list is almost as long as the list of shots I have collected and one of the big ones on that list is this bird, the Great Gray Owl. It had become my Moby Dick and I was constantly thwarted in every attempt to photograph it. I’d hear on the Yellowstone telegraph that one was seen hunting the meadows back behind the Cascade Creek area and I would fly over there, pack my gear in just in time to see the tail feathers disappearing into the deep forest.

They love the dim places like a small meadow surrounded by tall lodge pole or ponderosa where they can sit on a branch at the very edge of the forest waiting for the smallest movement to betray the presence of their primary food source, the mouse. Then they swoop soundlessly down and snatch up that hapless mouse and take it back to their perch. At least that’s what the other guys told me because I’d never seen one actually do that due to the fact that I had in some way offended the gods. It was always they just left, or they were here this morning, I was constantly a day late and an owl short. But if you are pure of heart and persistent to a fault there is a small chance that you will be forgiven and allowed to complete your quest.

Somehow I had managed that, the pure of heart thing, and while driving through the Hayden valley, which if you’ve ever been there, you know is virtually treeless, except for one lone tree just off the roadway.  And in that tree, that glorious, incredible tree, sitting there like a dream come true, and a wish fulfilled, was a beautiful Great Gray owl. And because I had apparently really put one over on the gods I was granted an additional boon of being the only photographer there. In photospeak that is the equivalent of winning the lotto, powerball and the raffle at the VFW all in one.

I knew I had a very short time in which to take advantage of this situation because as soon as I pulled out the Sigmonster, my 300-800 zoom lens that lets me take pictures out as far as the eye can see, there would be a deluge, more like a tsunami, of other photographers descending on me and MY OWL because it was my owl, you see, no one else’s.

My unbelievable good fortune held for the first part of the shoot because everyone that went by had something else to do, some other place to be and must not have been photographers. But the good luck can not last forever and it wasn’t long before the drums sent out the message that a Great Gray owl was not hidden in the deep recesses of the forest but was out in the open where any one could take a picture of it, whether they were deserving or not and the flood gates opened.

I had already seized the moment and gotten my exclusive pictures and as long as I didn’t lose my compact flash card or my computer blew up I had them forever. Great joy and ecstasy on me. There were easily 60-70 photographers ringing this bird shooting every move it made and the bird for some unknown reason was cooperative and did all the owl things in the correct order and gave unstintingly of it’s time until finally having eaten it’s fill of field mice it did retire into the forest proper.

So happiness upon happiness, I left to continue my day’s work feeling very proud of myself. Now if I could just get those shots of  the mountain lion bringing down a deer I could die happy.