Nothing to do with pheasant hunting but I see that the movie "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" is playing on the Turner Classic Movies channel on our cable provider this Sunday at 8:30 am. It was filmed in 1944 and the scenes they show in the movie after Van Johnson's plane has dropped its bombs and is making it getaway to China, was filmed from the air while a B-25 flies over what was then West Butte Farms that had a 750 acre loafing pond that is now "The Bean Field" federal refuge in the Butte Sink. How do I know? Because I was invited to hunt that club a number of times in the 1970s and can recognize the club's very large willow blinds and some other features in the Bean Field. You can also recognize the Sutter Buttes in the background.
It's a chance to see something that is publicly owned but closed off to the public and that is used as a backdrop for scenes in one of the great war movies.
It looks like it was filmed in the spring because it was fully flooded, the water was very muddy which it wasn't unless Butte creek flooded, and there weren't many ducks on the Bean Field which during the season often held more waterfowl than the Gray Lodge closed zone. Perhaps the scene was filmed after another plane had hazed off all the water fowl because as low as they flew filming and as many birds as there usually were there the chance of hitting a whole flock of big birds was great.
It's a chance to see something that is publicly owned but closed off to the public and that is used as a backdrop for scenes in one of the great war movies.
It looks like it was filmed in the spring because it was fully flooded, the water was very muddy which it wasn't unless Butte creek flooded, and there weren't many ducks on the Bean Field which during the season often held more waterfowl than the Gray Lodge closed zone. Perhaps the scene was filmed after another plane had hazed off all the water fowl because as low as they flew filming and as many birds as there usually were there the chance of hitting a whole flock of big birds was great.