Antelope Buck in Lupine
I took a ride last night looking for whitetail bucks in velvet. My local hotspot is usually great for finding them but recent agricultural land use changes the past few years have made it more difficult for me to find the deer. As per the recent norm I wasn’t seeing many deer so I drove to another area that usually had a good concentration of pronghorn at this time of the year. Once I arrived I was pleased to see that the lupine were still blooming and as hoped the pronghorn herds were there.
Pronghorn Buck
I was able to capture some really nice images around the lupine with some great afternoon light. I was photographing out of my vehicle using a window mount and my 800mm F5.6L lens. These antelope are wild and wary but seem farily comfortable with cars. I think the oilfield and ranch traffic acclimates them a bit. If you get out of your car they move off in a hurry.
Pronghorn buck raking lupine
Even though the mating season, or rut, is well over a month away the bucks are getting in some practice. This buck began raking the lupines in a territorial display when another buck ventured to close.
Whitetail Buck in Velvet
Later on, getting towards sunset, I returned to my whitetail location to see if more deer had shown up and I was rewarded. This fine buck was feeding near the rouad but as luck would have it the sun had just gone down behind the mountain. By bumping the ISO up to 800 on my Eos1DmkIV I was able to come away with some fine images of this buck.
