Vics Blog

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.