Guessing those who read my last post may need some Um to counteract the scary Yang from the last post. I was looking through my queue of posts and noticed this set of shots. Nothing says calm and tranquility like a shot of a harmless deer!
There, your nerves should be returning to normal. This also seemed appropriate due to the fact that my local park, where all my training occurs, is loaded with people trying to kill these creatures. Nothing says a training run like jogging past a person coming out of the woods in a Ghillie suit. One thing for sure is the deer population is down in our specific area which is often referred to as Big Buck Country. In fact, I have not seen a buck this year at all and just a few does that have crossed the road ahead of me while coming home from work. In the past Chronic Wasting has been pretty hard on them, but as of late the main killer has been Bluetongue which is a particularly nasty insect born viral disease.
Ooops, I think it heard me say that.
Hit the jump to see and read a bit more about this particular shoot – oh, and see something I haven’t done for a loooooong time.
I need to ask my hunting friend if they have reduced the deer tags this year to account for the decrease in population as a result of these sicknesses (let’s hope they did). I don’t have a problem with controlled hunting but you can’t let the balance get out of whack. This particular deer was found while visiting the Porcupine Mountains. The trip itself was pretty devoid of animal activity beyond having my first sighting of a Pileated Woodpecker. On the way out there was great anticipation of shooting a porcupine – those things are cool. Little did I know that the Porcupine Mountains have NOTHING to do with the abundance of that animal. Nope, essentially the native Ojibwa people thought the mountain silhouette LOOKED like a porcupine. Deceived once again. Once that realization came it was all about what else I could find to take a picture of. Drive for hours and hours to experience an animal that walks up to my back door.
This particular deer was came up to me while I was taking pictures of a mushroom – not nearly as fun as taking pictures of a porcupine would have been. At first it didn’t see me hanging out off the trail allowing me to get some fairly decent shots. I did get to practice my quiet tracking as I stalked it about a quarter mile while it meandered around.
Eventually it noticed me (or at least the Beast) and became a little concerned. “Hey, you biped over there in the woods with the big ass glass.. yes, you! .. Stop taking pictures of my ass”
“Seriously.. STOP taking a picture of my ass or I’m going to go over there and get medieval on your butt”
Sorry, just trying to get my signature shot. Can you just like meander over there a bit, turn your body like so and then look back at me – maybe work it a bit for the camera…” Yes!!!!!
At this time I decided it was time to get back to Linda. She was up on top of the mountain taking pictures of a lake which is always my cue to go out and investigate the surroundings.
Before I leave you, thought I would show you something I haven’t done for at least 10 years. Back in the day, animated GIFs were all the rage. I was cranking them out one after the other usually in combination with a newly created solid model created in TrueSpace – you could rotate the coordinate system, generate the ray traced model at set intervals until 360, collect them up into PSP Animation Shop and presto – one image to amaze you friends. Turns out two of my deer shots were almost identical except for one part (actually it turned out there were a few differences that I had to clean up once I got into it). to relive some of those fun years, I fired up the animation software and pumped a new one out.
Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom hehehe.
Sorry, it just cracks me up. Hope you enjoyed this calm and tranquil post. Think this is number five which means only one more required for the month – truth is that post will actually play out at an event scheduled for tonight.
See ya’ soon (pending things go well tonight of course)
Very cool and colorful. I particularly like the kooky deer look in the second picture and the third picture where he’s munching on shrubby ferns. I really love that GIF at the end! It looks like he’s mocking you.
Strange coloring on its face and the back of its neck. Hmm, looked it up and this is indeed a White-tailed Deer like you might expect–I thought it could have been a different species, but the only members of the deer family in Michigan are this type plus elk and moose.
BTW, here’s an interesting paragraph from the Michigan DNR site:
“Males and occasionally females have antlers, which are made from bone and are shed annually, usually mid-winter (new ones are grown in the spring). It may be surprising then that antlers are rarely found in the woods. Since they are rich in calcium and other nutrients, antlers are usually eaten by animals such as porcupines, rabbits and rodents soon after they are shed. Although older bucks generally do have larger antlers, the size and number of points of a buck’s antlers are primarily dependent upon the amount of nutrients, vitamins and minerals in the deer’s diet, not their age.”
Thanks for the cute pictures!
Ron
Oh great, now not only does my wife mock me, the wildlife has jumped on the bandwagon! To be honest I thought it was a mule deer in the field because of the coloring. You can usually tell by the huge ears mule deer have but when I looked it up that species has more white on the nose. So. I was right there with you.
Never heard of females having antlers – must make for some awkward encounters hehehe. I was well aware of other animal’s fondness for gnawing on shed antlers. I made the mistake of leaving a nice pair I had found on the ground. Over the course of like two months they had basically gnawed up enter points by the time I figured out what was happening. I try to go out every year and find them on our lot. Last year we were able to add a few to our collection but like I mentioned in the post the numbers are down.
Thanks for commenting!!!!