My most magical Hornby moment this trip was making an open connection with one of a regular group of whitetail deer who make the rounds around Sarah's family's cabin. There is no hunting on Hornby so the resident deer can come as close to you as they want but still are skittish enough that they usually will start moving out of the area as soon as they see you coming.

On Saturday I was listening to a CBC radio show -- on the interrogation of terrorists of all things -- in which one of the people interviewed related a story of how he could approach deer by simply acting like something that they don't know anything about. He said that he could get close by crawling sideways and low like a crab. I thought: that's stupid! and instead decided to try something equally clownish.

Later that day the next time I spotted the same group of deer cropping grass on the property I decided to walk backwards toward them, all the while praising them for the beautiful creatures they were. On the porch above, Sarah tried to stop laughing at the sight of me shuffling pointed in the wrong direction while speaking in soothing tones. From an outsider it might appear I was trying to navigate using echolocation.

To my pleasant surprise, I got within eight feet and that was plenty of range wherein I could shoot a closeup without resorting to my telephoto lens' teleconverter. I pivoted slowly and calmly shot several dozen frames of the closest deer as it tore up the weeds. The deer clearly was fine with me standing there -- perhaps it was as amazed with the sight of a backwards talking human approaching it as I was that with my feat.

100-400L -- a great telephoto

My Canon EF 100-400mm L is a great telephoto, very flexible and sharp through all of its range. It is only outclassed by Canon's great L primes but unlike their venerable primes above 300mm, is quite affordable. If I want more range than 400mm I can put the 100-400 on a 2X teleconverter. However, despite all that I wish, the 2X teleconverter does muddy the image a bit and any image I post with it needs some software sharpening. Being able to shoot without the teleconverter brings me back into quality shots right out of the camera.