Making His Point

Hi everyone! Brad mentioned there had been a lot of bear pictures lately, and as that's been Jenaya and my primary focus for a month or so, that's most of what I've been shooting myself! I'm sure I'll be sharing a few of my own shortly, but in the interest of posting something different I thought I would finally take the time to reformat one of my favourite pictures from last fall's elk rut here in SW Alberta.

Probably one of the reasons this image is one of my favourites is the context in which it was taken.

Three days after we gave Jenaya her first DSLR we headed back to Waterton Lakes National Park to see if we could find any critters for her to photograph. To be honest, we were mostly after muley bucks and black bears, but as the light began to fade we spotted a herd of elk making its way through the forest. Jenaya, Marlise and I headed out in hopes there might be a bull gathering cows already (it was at least three weeks before the normal start to the rut), but by the time we got to the opening in the forest we thought they were heading to, there was nothing but tracks and scat. We started to head back to the truck somewhat dejected, but my wife flagged us down en route and pointed us around the back end of the finger of forest, and sure enough, there they were.

"They" were about 40-50 cows and weanlings and a spectacular bull my youngest daughter later named "The Big Kahuna." We snuck through the forest for some pictures through the trees, but God made these guys pretty adept at sensing other critters trying to sneak up on them, and the bull was at full alert and ready to move the herd off when the silence was broken by a spectacular bugle coming from our right. I couldn't believe my ears, because this was crazy early from the norm up here, but sure enough, a striking bull marched defiantly in from the south with his own harem of a dozen or so cows. The three of us were burning pixels as fast as we could, but truthfully the shootable light for our sensors was long gone. We did get some neat personal natural history images of the initial moments as the challenger bull entered the herd and Kahuna sized him up, then several cool images as they pawed (hoofed?) the ground and threw willow branches into the air with their antlers before making their move.

I've seen a lot of battles between bulls over the years, but honestly I was not prepared for the way these two engaged. I think they had been watching the local bighorns or something. They backed off until 80yds or so separated them and then simply charged. We were tucked into the edge of the forest about 200yds from them, but when they impacted at full speed Marlise turned to me and said with wide-eyes, "I think I felt that!" So did I! They battled for over seven minutes according to the time stamps on our images. Their second charge resulted in a huge willow branch being thrown 15ft or more into the air...we thought one of their antlers had shattered!

I chose to shoot at a slower, transitional shutter speed to keep the noise under control and capture a sense of motion, which meant a lot of rejects but some very cool looks from the action sequences, though ultimately the lack of light and IQ keeps them from the top shelf.

In the end though, it was clear...Kahuna is simply a bull in his absolute prime, and every battle for ground went his way until the challenger realized he had walked into the wrong meadow and turned to leave. Kahuna didn't seem satisfied that he had made his point strongly enough and followed, and as the challenger began to trot, so did he, then they both broke into a flat-out run. I was simply holding the shutter release down on my D2X as I panned with them, and right as they were about to disappear from view I captured this image.

It's not the most incredible image I've seen of the rut or a chase (particularly given the overall IQ), but the excitement in my girls beside me was palpable and our own adrenaline was firing along with these bulls. It was a very cool 12-15 minutes to share together, accentuated by the utter surprise of it occuring in the first place!

Thanks for letting me share...I welcome your suggestions for improvement!

Nikon D2X
Tamron SP 70-210mm f/2.8 LD @ 210mm
ISO 400
1/30sec @ f/3.5
Tripod mounted
cropped to about 60% of original width