Wandering Aimlessly
Blaze Orange Chicken
by Phil Burkhouse
Hunting with a camera has many similarities to hunting with a weapon but also many differences. There is, of course, no gutting, dragging, skinning, and processing involved with a successful camera hunt, but there can be a lot of photo editing if the shoot was successful.
One of the similarities between hunting with a camera and hunting with a gun is more often than not there is no shooting. Some days you do not find your intended target or it eludes you just when you are preparing to shoot. Therefore, like in regular hunting, as I hike the woods, I am watchful for unintended subjects I encounter by chance that offer a bonus shot. One of these targets I have been seeing lately is an impressive fungus known as the chicken mushroom, Sulphur shelf, or the chicken of the woods.
Chicken of the woods is a very easy mushroom to locate and identify in your outdoor adventures, and this mushroom is found in our area in August through September. I often cruise the back roads searching for critters to Canonize, and if my eyes feast on a basketball size blob of blaze orange growing on a dead or decaying tree, I know I have located a “chicken.” They are easy to locate because of their large size and vibrant yellow to blaze orange colors.