Saturday was a great day on the property. The morning had the Lewis’s Woodpecker and then in the afternoon, these guys wondered in. Now we have had deer on our property in the past, but normally we only know about it when our beagle’s nose tells us. We rarely see them. So to have a 6 & 4pt buck and doe come in and make themselves at home, that floored us. For the first 30-45min we just watched them as they went through and munched on the greenest plants they could find. Why were they there in the first place? There is a semi annual migration of the Mule deer through the area. Normally it’s on the other side of the valley but with the drought, I think they game through the area with all the green plants from folks watering (had a doe and fawn come through on Sunday). After that time, I decided I’d go outside and see if there were any photo opps to be had.
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I grabbed my favorite backyard set up, D4s / 300PF and headed out. I didn’t “sneak up” on them but didn’t rush out either. I stayed in the shadow of the house and slowly, smoothly, sundered up to were they were. They were no more than 20-30′ from the house and with no effort, was able to walk right up to them. With this seemingly big hurdle no hurdle at all, I dealt with the next big one, the background. I’ve put up a number of the images so you can see the progress of the shoot which lasted 90min. We were really shocked with my just standing right there when the doe laid down. At one point, the 4pt buck went over and nozzled her and then made her get up. And another point when a person walked by with a dog, they froze and watched them. In the end, the light got dark and I got bored because, it was way too easy a shoot. But it was fun to sit with the 6pt, talk to him and have him walk up to me for his portrait. That image is above and my favorite. But it was just cool to have this time with these wild critters on their own world.