It’s four am and as I reach for the alarm and brush away the cobwebs of a deep sleep, my brain begins the eternal struggle of burying myself back in the comfort of the covers or rising to adventures that certainly await me. Through all the years I usually made the choice for the latter and for the most part have been richly rewarded with some really good pictures. Last evening’s forecast called for snow and below zero temperatures and a quick glance out the bedroom window confirms that the weatherman is right for once. It’s a quick shower, one last fleeting look at the warmth of the bed as it calls me back, winter clothes and hiking boots and out of the garage at fifteen below.
The tires of the Xterra crunch loudly on the snow when it’s this cold and the drive up the Poudre Canyon will be dark and slow. The guy on the radio says that everyone should consider staying home this morning. I reach for the hot tea on the console and steam fogs my glasses for just a second as a blizzard of endless snowflakes drift in the headlights. Not far from town there are several vehicles that have slid off the road so I slow the truck to a crawl and know that the trip will take a bit longer than usual. Am I nuts?
A couple hour later I pull off and park the truck a few feet from the trailhead. It’s always coldest in the minutes before dawn and the steam from my breath rises like a chugging locomotive as my legs churn through the deep snow and up towards the cliffs. Eventually I find a rocky outcrop of frozen granite that affords an incredible view and I have a sit to rest my lungs . My thoughts turn to the people back in town who’ll miss these beautiful moments but on the other hand maybe they won’t today.
For two bone chilling hours I scan the crevices and icy ledges looking through the telephoto lens for Bighorn rams. Nothing. Another hour passes and I have thoughts of moving somewhere else so that the blood will start moving in my backside again or just going home and calling it a day. Check the battery to make sure it hasn’t lost its charge, set the ISO for 600 which will give the camera ample shutter speed to stop any movement and stay for a few more minutes. Just a few more minutes.
Opportunities happen when patience, practice and perseverance come together and today is no exception. He moves silently and deftly around the corner of a long ledge and shows himself a mere fifty yards from me. My heart skips a beat as I observe his magnificence and slowly raise the camera, taking time to carefully focus and shoot. He scrapes away the snow with his horns and hooves to expose frozen blades of grass which he rips away by the roots. The long stems hanging from his mouth make it look likes he’s spitting flames. In those magical moments, when time stands still, I hear the click of the shutter over and over again and know that the “fire breathing ram” is worth every bone chilling minute.
Bull Elk Thrashing Grass
There are opportunities to photograph all kinds of subjects every day of the year in Colorado. Last week I was going to look for wildlife on the western slope near the headwaters of the Colorado River. I left home before dawn and traveled up the Big Thompson and up and over Trail Ridge road. Near the top on the far side I saw eight bull elk grazing in the deep, dew dripping summer grass near the small lake that is the headwaters of the Cache La Poudre River. For several years I’ve been looking to find a bull shedding his velvet and as luck would have it one was in the group. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about let me try to give you a brief explanation. Growing during the late spring and summer, antlers are covered with a highly vascular skin which supplies oxygen and nutrients to the bone aptly called velvet for its look and texture. As the mating season draws near, the blood vessels dry up and the bull thrashes his rack against small trees and bushes to expose the underlying bone. It seems to happen over just a day or two and finding a big bull in the process had been frustrating until now. There’s a little bit of blood as the tissue tears away from the newly exposed white bone but fascinating to photograph. Use a shutter speed of at least 1/500th of a second to capture the action.
As the show unfolded another bull who had been watching the first began to rub his antlers against a clump of dead willow stumps. He started gingerly at first as though it might have hurt a bit but within minutes he was rubbing his antlers back and forth mimicking the first and exposing naked bone. This was all pretty awesome to see and I took a couple hundred pictures trying to get the balance and action just right. The temperature was warming and the sun was getting brighter making for difficult exposures when all of a sudden and in unison, all the bulls began to bolt for the lake. If you’ve ever watched kids playing at the swimming pool on a hot summer day you’ll get a mental picture of what happened next. The first bull got to the water’s edge and delicately tested the temperature with one hoof as if to decide whether to take the plunge. The second to arrive literally ran head first into the rear of mister hesitant and they careened into the icy water together. The third jumped right in and splashed the first two has he landed. It was a free for all for the next half hour as one bull after the next would stomp, jump, , shake and spray the others. It had to be one of the funniest things that I’ve ever photographed in the wild. Don’t ever doubt that animals have feelings because I got the pictures to prove it.
Competition for the Kill
As a professional wildlife photographer and former hunter I’ve been asked on numerous occasions what are my secrets for getting coyotes, red fox and other predators close enough to get great pictures. I don’t use predator calls or blinds and my images are taken almost entirely on public lands. Living in Fort Collins, Colorado, there are numerous places within a hundred miles to capture most large and small game in their natural environment. There are many prairie grasslands to the east and north including Wyoming and vast tracks of mountain valleys and canyons to the west of town. Using a Canon 7D digital camera and a 100-400 mm zoom lens, most of the predator images I take are within ten to twenty five yards or close enough to see the whites of their eyes.
One of the great secrets for finding predators is to know what they feed on and carrion is at the top of the list. Harsh winter conditions such as long weeks of subzero temperatures, deep snow and lack of feed kill larger animals. The trick is to find their remains and I let the raptors, magpies, crows and buzzards keep watch for me. Driving down long stretches of lonely county roads or hiking in the back country, I search the fields and sky for flocks of them which can be the giveaway of a frozen carcass. I believe that the predators do exactly the same thing and it’s usually a short wait before one of them shows up at the scene if there not there already. Last winter I saw a group of magpies in a field of sage in southern Wyoming twenty miles west of Cheyenne. At about two hundred yards a coyote was trying to chase them off for a piece of deer kill. Sneaking down a small gulch, I stalked to within thirty yards but he saw me first and split. I sat still and watched him retreat to a snowfield about a quarter of mile away a clean the blood from his face in a snow bank. I knelt behind some sage and after a half hour he snuck back slowly to within twenty feet. Staying downwind, dressing in warm camo and moving very, very slowly usually brings good success. Remember that a predator is an opportunist and drops his guard somewhat if the meal is already prepared.
Late spring and early summer is a wonderful time for finding dens. Hiking along small creeks, canyons and dry river beds, I look for the signs of them continually. Lots of fresh tracks, kill remains and matted grass near burrows can be a dead give that predators are in the vicinity. Early morning and late evening is a great time to sit patiently and wait for them to leave to hunt and bring home their prey. Recently I saw a coyote returning to the den with a dead badger in its jaws. It was so late in the evening that a photo was impossible but the sight was incredible. I’ve never hunted during these months, but found that as summer passes into fall these creatures never stray far from the area and winter brings beautiful coats and easy sightings. My most successful photographs have been taken when the temperature is below zero and hours after a snowstorm.
I spend about 300 days a year in the field. When photographing large animals such as deer and elk, I watch their eyes and body constantly which can give away the presence of a passing predator. Stay low, keep quiet, move at turtle speed and keep the camo on. Sometimes you’ll have a fox or coyote walk right next to you. The biggest secrets of finding predators are patience, knowing the habits of your prey, and sitting still in areas that they frequent for long periods of time. Sometimes boredom or the cold sets in and all you want to do is leave. On numerous occasions, after hours of sitting motionless, I’ve gotten up to call it quits and had to cuss myself as a startled coyote made for the next county.
Pika Mouthful
Storing Food for the Long Winters Duration
For all of you that haven’t had the chance to visit Rocky Mountain National Park this year I’d sure recommend taking the time get up there. Last week, a couple from south Texas joined me on a little photo expedition and we shot animals and scenery at every turn in the road for almost twelve hours. We met for coffee in Estes Park about 8:30 am and after a short visit to get acquainted we hopped in the truck and were on our way. The first stop we made was close to a little stream that flowed through a meadow filled with Lupine and Indian paintbrush not too far from Horseshoe Park. Because of all the snowfall and rain we’ve had this year, photographing wildflowers has been spectacular although the bugs have been a bit pesky. I was sitting in the high grass trying to tell my student how to use the right F stop for getting flowers and mountains in focus at the same time when I noticed a stinging bite on my backside. That was followed quickly by another and in an instant I realized that sitting in an ant pile is not exactly the place you want to be. I rocketed off the ground and for the next couple of minutes slapped myself silly trying to get rid of those little pests rooting around in my shorts. I am now living proof that you really do a dance when you get ants in your pants.
We thought it best to move on and in a few minutes we were above timberline photographing cow elk nursing their young, spotted calves. A few miles later we took pictures of pika running between broken rocks and stuffing their mouths with yellow buttercups. Around the next bend and close to the alpine visitors center we watched a heard of twenty bull elk grazing and sunning themselves in the high mountain light. Our digital shutters blazed and we took hundreds of images of their magnificent velvet antlers and laughed as the little bulls annoyed the big ones.
We took a break for lunch in Grand Lake and after a brief rainstorm started looking for landscape pictures. Taking a small, gravel road that meandered through old growth aspen groves about ten miles west of town, we found a incredible field of perfect purple and blue columbines nestled on the forest floor. We shot pictures for more than two hours and even got a few shots of hummingbirds as they zipped through the flowers and trees. Moving back toward the west entrance of the park, we spied a huge bull moose lounging under some willows and chewing his cud at Columbine Lake. He was magnificent and stood up and posed for several more shots before retiring into the forest. The sun set behind dark clouds cloaking the Never Summer Range, but in the last few minutes of half light, we saw a cow moose grazing with her twin calves in a small grove of lodge pole pines and snapped many more images. We spent an hour motoring back to Estes, and as a full moon rose in the east, we all knew that Rocky had granted us a perfect day.
One of the great places to improve your wildlife and landscape photography is Snowy Range, Wyoming. Just a short distance from Fort Collins, Colorado or Cheyenne, Wyoming, the high peaks of the Medicine Bow Range are reflected in many of the small alpine lakes that dot the region. The best time to photograph is early morning when the sun highlights the peaks and reflects on still water. July through September are spectacular and are great times to take pictures, although alpine wildflowers abound in the middle of summer and learning to take images of them is a workshop I teach. After a few hours of instruction, my students learn to capture pictures like the pros. Students need to layer their clothing as mornings and evening can be very cool and midday’s can be hot. Because of the high altitude it’s also advisable to wear sunscreen to keep from burning. Colorado and the West offer some of the greatest wildlife and scenery opportunities for photography in the world. Snowy Range is right at the top of the list and is virtually missed by most.
Last week I conducted one of my one on one digital photography workshops in Fort Collins, Colorado. My student and I spent ten hours shooting images of Osprey, Great Horned Owls and Red Fox. One of the things that I have found I can really help photographers with is learning the specifics of their cameras. How to focus properly, how to set up quickly for great wildlife shots and how to capture great detail. I also help with Adobe Photoshop ideas and field photo instruction detailing balance, color and composition. I feel that workshops with more than three or four students lose some of the quality time I can spend helping them individually so I prefer to keep sessions small. We had a very successful day and I know my student learned a lot. His comment was it was like “Trying to take a drink through a firehose”.
