Historic Launch

I was photographing my wife and her friends as they worked late-season “leftover” pheasants with Flying B Ranch guide Nance Ceccarelli and her setters. The hunters had followed Ceccarelli and an eager pup up ever-steepening grass slopes—stop-and-go dogwork indicating a running rooster was leading the way. Ceccarelli’s setter disappeared behind the flat top of a side ridge, apparently pinning a rooster on the rim of the precipice. The hunters stepped forward, the rooster launched and I had my historic shot. Historic because the Lewis & Clark Expedition filed down the Idaho ridge in the background on its return from winter quarters in Oregon. The explorers then spent several weeks with the Nez Perce in longhouses set within sight of today’s Flying B lodge. — Ron Spomer