Dudley's Owyhee Treasures

Monday March 6 2017

I'm not the only collector of Owyhee Treasures.

(And some quartzite stones I find become Owyhee Designs jewelry.)

Dudley has his own ongoing collection.

This is some of what Dudley has found: 

Deer antlers (he even has a trail named after him - the Dudley Antler trail because he found an antler on this new trail he and I and August and Carol discovered); pretty rocks; owl and Raven and hawk feathers (which he likes wearing in his bridle); turkey feathers (he found 2 of those on the Bandit Springs ride and sported those in his bridle) and even a lotto scratch ticket! (I did the scratching, but he didn't win anything.)

Today we struck across-country to avoid some cows on the trail, and I said, "Maybe we'll find an antler today,"… and not a minute later, Dudley found a nice antler to go in his collection.

It just goes to show, not everybody is interested in diamond and silk… some of us treasure rocks and feathers and antlers and such things home-grown in Owyhee.

Eye Spy

Wednesday February 10 2010

I like to say that Jose has Elf Eyes, because he spots things while out on the trail that I'd completely miss. He always sees deer herds before I see the white butts turn and bound away. Once, on an endurance ride, he spotted a coyote on the side of a hill as we were trotting along. I couldn't see anything. Jose kept wanting to stop and look. I even let him stop and look and I didn't see anything. I told him there was nothing there, and I urged him along the trail, and he agreeably trotted onward while he kept looking at the hillside. The coyote blended so perfectly into the brown brush and dirt, and I only saw it when we were within a hundred yards of it and it moved. Jose's found deer antlers and feathers and obsidian. He even found a GPS once. I've got a box of his Owyhee treasures.

On today's ride, he first spotted twenty sage grouse when they flew up from the sagebrush. Must be a new lek there!

Next: a cow in the sagebrush... a cow? Perhaps it was a bull? We didn't want to get too close, because that's probably what it was. Some bull obviously didn't read the cow-lander to realize he should have come down out of the mountains four months ago.


Next: the mother of all deer antlers - and two points are even broken off.

I strapped it on the back of Jose's saddle pack, but as we trotted, it would poke him in the butt and make him swish his tail. I ended up carrying it the rest of the ride. It was heavy enough to know I'd get one big headache if I had to wear a pair of these on my head all the time. No wonder they shed every year!

Next - a stash of calcite crystals. We've ridden by this spot many times, but only now, after a certain amount of snows and rains, the mud has eroded and crumbled away and the crystals have chosen to reveal themselves. I picked a few up for Jose.


And, of course, always, Jose notices and treasures the views of this spectacular country that we ride in (particularly from high spots). I always wonder what goes on in his head as he gazes at the world spread out around him.