2012 In Retrospect-Part III: Shenanodah Whitetails Under Assault

Perhaps the biggest story of 2012,  for those who love to photograph whitetail deer in the Mid-Atlantic area, was the destruction of quality deer photography at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, when most of the mature bucks and many of the does at the prime visitor areas such as Big Meadows were fitted with radio collars.  Some times one can see something bad coming a long way off and have time to mount an offensive against it, or in the worst case scenario accept that it is about to happen and change plans accordingly,  but this happened so quickly that there was no chance for objection before it was an accomplished fact.

Whitetail Buck Before Collaring Craze Began

Young 8 Point Performs Lip-Curl

Little did I realize when my brother Coy and I encountered these bucks in velvet during an August trip to SNP, that things were about to change drastically in the next few weeks.  I will admit that I should have seen this coming as whitetail deer have become a controversial species during the past several years, which has resulted in drastic moves to reduce deer populations in many areas.

Here in Pennsylvania we fist heard of the controversy about too many deer on National Park land when a herd reduction program was proposed and eventually implemented at Gettysburg Military Park. The same situation later happened at Valley Forge National Historical Park near Philadelphia.  Both programs are ongoing.  I have not photographed deer at Gettysburg or Valley Forge, but from what I have heard and read it is no longer worthwhile to pursue this activity there.

We first learned about the problem at SNP from Jim Borden, a wildlife photographer from Pennsylvania, who e-mailed us a link to a post on Flickr by Virginia wildlife photographer, Larry W. Brown.  Mr. Brown went on to publish more posts on the subject.  You may find these posts here:

Public Input Is Important
This Assessment Cannot Be Just About CWD
National Park Toys

The upshot of the situation was that we found Larry Brown's description of the impact on the Big Meadows herd to be extremely accurate when we traveled there to photograph the rut in early November.

Collared Buck At SNP

As one read more about the controversy, it seemed more and more likely that the study was not just about dealing with CWD, but that it was actually much broader in scope.  This concern seems to be validated by a Natural Resource Fact Sheet, "White-tailed Deer Issues and Management" published by the National Park Service. The document states it was last updated on October 24, 2008. 

In the post of October 25, 2012, "Shenandoah Whitetails Under Assault" on this blog, I wrote, "They state on the facebook page (SNP's current Facebook page at the time),  "this research is being done to protect the deer herd from a horrible and fatal disease--Chronic Wasting Disease", but they fail to point out that there are basically only two forms of response to the presence of CWD--either do nothing or kill as many deer as possible in a designated containment area in hopes of eliminating all infected animals."

The Natural Resource Fact Sheet, serves to validate the claim that the deer study is really not about CWD.

It  addresses CWD to a certain extent at the end of the fact sheet as quoted below:

"• In 2006, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries implemented Statewide chronic wasting disease (CWD) deer movement restrictions. This effectively ended all capture / relocation of beggar deer in the Park developed areas.
• CWD is discovered in Slainsville, WV in free- ranging deer. This location is less than 35 miles from Front Royal and the Northern end of the park.
• In December 2007 a CDW positive deer is discovered in Yellow Spring , WV. This location is less than 25 miles from Front Royal and the Northern end of the park.
• Since 2007 the park has been in the process of developing an Environmental Assessment Plan for CWD detection and initial response."

This serves to partially validate their claim that the study is about CWD, but a close perusal of the rest of the Fact Sheet  reveals that the main concern in 2008 was really about herd reduction. Again I quote from the Fact Sheet: (Note: BMA is Big Meadows Area, and LMA is Loft Mountain Area.)

"Park staff is currently attempting to secure funding for a deer population dynamics study at the BMA and LMA. This study will help us determine the cultural carrying capacity for the BMA and LMA deer herds which in turn will help us maintain more natural deer populations, prevent further landscape degradation, and prevent historical scene degradation. Ultimately, more natural deer populations in park developed areas will help preserve the natural landscape features (rare wildflowers, etc.) that visitors have come to expect in places like the unique highelevation Big Meadow. The findings of this study will generate tangible deer management recommendations. These recommendations along with the results from future studies will be used to update the park’s Deer Management Plan and to formulate an Environmental Impact Statement. This will allow park managers to better manage the park’s deer populations in developed areas."

So we find that CWD is not the foremost concern at all in 2008, but it seems that with CWD being found in more and more areas that the NPS latched on this as a means of convincing the public of the need for a study in SNP. (Note: As best as I can tell no CWD cases have been found closer to SNP than had been discovered in 2008.)

Stay tuned as we pursue this subject from time to time as more information becomes available,  Hopefully this will have only a short term impact on whitetail photography at SNP, but I would not hold my breath waiting for the good old days to return.

A special thanks to Jim Borden, Larry W. Brown, Jim Fields,Todd Mann, Tom  and others who shared their insights on the situation, either through e-mails or in comments on previous posts in the series.

Originally published at Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.

2012 In Retrospect Part 2

By far the most extensive project that I was involved with was the post production and release of a new film about Pennsylvania's elk herd, "Running Wild In Pennsylvania Elk Country"  While my first film, "The Truth About Pennsylvania's Elk Herd", did show other species of wildlife besides elk, they were shown only in passing and I decided to make the new film more inclusive.  While it still focused primarily on elk, Whitetail Deer came in a close second, with Eastern Wild Turkey not too far behind.  

Originally I had planned on calling the film "Pennsylvania Elk Country", but as it dealt with the other wildlife that could be found in elk country also, my brother Coy suggested that the "Running Wild" be added to the title and after some thought on the matter I decided to do so.  Coy also provided the cover photograph for the film.  This is a dramatic photographic of the character bull "Limpy" taken at sunset on top of "The Saddle".

Cover Photo by Coy D. Hill

Since Whitetail Deer were featured almost as much as elk, several  buck fights were included.  In my experience, it is not too difficult to film sparring matches between bucks during the pre-rut and rut, but it is very seldom that one sees an actual  serious whitetail fight and I have only filmed a few in my life.  The most dramatic I have seen was between two mature bucks in November of 2002.  In this case a large eight-point was standing guard over a doe in heat. At times smaller bucks would appear, but none would challenge him and they would move on, until a slightly smaller, but aggressive eight-point arrived and pitched into him.  This was back in standard definition 4:3 aspect ratio days and the fight was filmed with a Canon XL-1s and stock lens. Since it was so dramatic, I decided to include it in the film, even thought it was not shot in HD.  It was cropped to 16:9 Widescreen aspect ratio to better fit the format of the film.

Below is a brief segment of the first part of the fight.  




Also while I am on the subject of Whitetail Deer I would recommend that you read Coy's series on Whitetail Deer management in Pennsylvania.  He has written two posts about this on Country Captures, which provide a good balanced look at this situation.

 Whitetail Deer Management: My View Part 1
 Whitetail Deer Management: My View Part 2

He plans to write at least one more segment and possibly two more to cover the subject in the depth which it deserves.

Originally published at Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.

2012 In Retrospect-Part 1

Mature Bull Eating Apples

2012 was a challenging and rewarding year.  This marked my 38th year of photographing wildlife,my 21st year of video filming, and the fifth year of publishing the Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer blog

I was especially pleased to win first place in the Wilderness category of the Pennsylvania Magazine 2012 Photo Contest.  One is only notified if they place or win in the competition--they are not told the official reason why. I do have a good idea why this photograph was selected, however, and will pass those ideas along in hopes of helping other photographers.

First some technical information:  The photo was taken along Winslow Hill Road at 6:06 in the morning of July 14, 201. The lens used was a Canon 300mm f2.8 lens mounted on a Gitzo tripod with Wimberley Head.  The Camera was a Canon 7D, with ISO set at 400.  Exposure was 1/125 sec. f2.8, with the camera being set in manual mode. Evaluative metering mode was used with the reading being taken from the brightest part of the grass beside the elk.  I captured numerous poses that morning, some of which were portraits of the animal in the traditional alert pose, but most of my efforts were focused on capturing him getting apples from the tree.  In many cases he used the tips of his antlers to dislodge them and then ate them once they were on the ground. The photo above yielded the most pleasing composition as he attempted to reach an apple by stretching for it.

This reminds me of a piece of advice that PGC photographer/videographer Hal Korber shared many years ago.  He emphasized that one should try to capture wildlife doing something.  A certain amount of photographs of animals grazing, etc. are fine, but it is the ones that capture the animal doing something dramatic or unusual that are most likely to be successful.

In summary, I think this photograph succeeded because it captures an impressive animal in a beautiful natural setting,  the photo is technically acceptable, and most of all it captures the bull doing something unusual in an attractive way.

Originally published at Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.

Merry Christmas & A Short Elk Video

I wish all a Merry Christmas. For an added bonus today, I am posting a short video of the highlights of the 2012 Pennsylvania elk rut.  This is an extremely short (2min.-45 sec.), action packed video of the best action and most dramatic scenes I filmed during the 2012 Pennsylvania elk rut.

The film begins shortly after dawn. Early morning  fog shrouds elk country as the scream of bugling bulls fills the air.  There are several clips of bulls locking antlers in brief fights or sparring matches and three segments of a lengthy dominance fight.  Much of the footage of both elk and scenery is exposed and processed somewhat on the dark side as it was taken extremely early or late and I tried to maintain this type of look.



Cameras used were the Canon 5D MK III and the Panasonic GH2. The Canon 500mm F4 was the lens of choice for the dramatic close-ups and the Canon 24-105mm L was used for the scenic clips.  The lengthy fight that was far away and very late in the evening was filmed with the GH2 and Canon 300mm F2.8 L at ISO 3200.

Originally published at Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.