Deer Rut Season Part 2 - Red Deer

In Part 1, I mentioned I went to Bradgate Park in Leicestershire to get some images of the rut.

Well getting there in the early dawn about 15 minutes before the car park was meant to open, I noticed a good few cars already there and took myself into the park. As I got near to the entrance, the calls of the Red Deer stags was loud and coming from a number of directions.

Within 25 metres of being in the park, I was aware of young stags to my left, right and ahead of me. All of them calling, and eyeing me nervously and suspiciously, while checking on their numerous hinds.

As I walked gently through the middle of them, I felt quite vulnerable, particularly as one of the more inquisitive ones started to come towards me. Extending one of the tripod legs gave me a little bit of false confidence if needed, but it was a nervous couple of minutes for me until I was clear of them.

Moving up the road towards Lady Jane Grey's ruined house, I was aware of a number of Fallow deer to my left and right, but at this stage, it was still quite dark.

As I walked further into the park, and the light improved, I came across my first Stag with a group of hinds that was busy seeing off a younger suitor.

These images below were of the senior Stag.

The first four images were taken in a burst of four showing him going through his roar. These were taken with the 5Dmk2 and 500 on the tripod. The second two were with the animal further away, so I just switched bodies and used the 7D for these.

Instead of using the tele-converter, I wanted to keep the full f4 speed of the 500 available to me, and switch between the Full frame and 1.6 crop bodies to act as my distance adjustment. It worked quite well and was surprising quick and easy to do. This is the big advantage of setting up both cameras in identical modes using the C1 to C3 custom pre-set dials.

In the last image, I wanted to show more than just a specimen stag and depict the hinds as well looking on as their brave stag roared at the retreating suitor stag.

It was a wonderful experience. The light didn't work as well as I wanted - no wonderful backlit shots, no steam as they bellowed in the cold crisp air. It was too warm, and at 8am towards the end of October I was still in short shirtsleeves. And of course, no wonderful Scottish mountains to be seen either.

Nevertheless, it was a wonderful experience.

Back next time with Fallow deer and a few bonus birds from the trip as well.

Martin

Local Patch - Deer

Following Dave's post last week about Dear and the Rut, I popped along to my local deer park as the sun was going down hoping for some nice contra-jour shots. Sadly, the deer weren't where I needed them to be, but thought I would take a few record shots to illustrate a couple of things.

The first image came out quite nicely, although light was going fast so I had to get the ISO up to 1600. All were shot with the 500f4 + 1.4 converter, and shutter speeds were less than 1/100 sec, resting on a fence, so they are not brilliant, but it was nice to use the 500 again, after a summer long of using the 180 macro.

Fallow Buck with out of focus stately home behind

Behavioural rubbing of foliage with antlers

This shot was to show the tell tale scenting as the buck 'leaks' as it comes up to the rut. As you can see I used flash here. Clearly it doesn't work and nor did I expect to , but again to illustrate the effects that you get back when using flash in this light. Spooky!!

This is posted so you can see the tell tale hind area markings of a Fallow Deer of the black and white 'horseshoes' around the tail.

Hopefully, I will be back there a few times through this month to capture some better images in better light

Martin

Deer and The Rut

Its that time of year again when forums start to fill up with images of Red Deer Rutting-Seeing the clashing of antlers as these huge creatures go into battle is a sight to behold, Of course you don't need to go up to the wilds of Scotland to get good images, Britain has many 'deer parks' like Richmond and Bushy near London and Bradgate in the midlands but there are many smaller parks dotted around the country as well as stately homes that have deer of various kinds in the grounds, A good size lens-300mm+ is the order of the day to get a good close up and not get in the way when they go into battle but don't forget a smaller lens for the habitat shots as well to tell the whole story, Europe has a few species of deer and they rut at different times-see below for a rough guide

Red Deer-Sept to Oct
Roe Deer-August
Fallow Deer-Oct
Sika Deer-Sept-Nov
Muntjac-Anytime

Here in North Carolina the White-tailed deer should start soon and i am off to the Smokey's mid Oct in the hope to getting some action

Dave

Trip Reports - A tough start

Its amazing how different a place can change in a month since my last visit. North Carolina is in its coldest spell for years and unfortunately its coincided with my arrival at the coast. It's well into minus figures with a very stiff breeze so the wind chill feels like its trying to rip the skin off your face.

Some of the birds have moved on since the last visit and having spent all afternoon driving around I have found some inland and in dykes and ditches out of the biting wind, it's been a tough day but the highlights were watching a Bald Eagle take a duck off the lake and feeding on it. I have some shots of Hooded Merganser which I have wanted for a long time-not great but good stock shots and some nice Bufflehead, Coypu and Deer. So a 12 hr day with dreadfully uncomfortable conditions and lots of driving-around 200 miles. I went to see if there were any bears around but no signs in the usual places-not suprising really, so I have managed something out of a tough day.
We will see what tomorrow brings but the conditions are forecast the same. I cannot post any images as I have my laptop with me but don't have any processing software on it as I use it just for storage and backing up.

More soon

Dave