Small Bucks Make Good Photographic Subjects Too!

While hunting magazines thrive on publishing photographs of enormous whitetail bucks, these animals are not what most encounter in the outdoors. It is true that large bucks are found in the wild, but they are extremely difficult to photograph. It is more productive to photograph animals in the national parks where they are more easily seen, or in deer enclosures where the animals are usually given the proper diet to produce large body and rack mass quickly.

Personally, I enjoy seeing the smaller animals too, and I thought this yearling whitetail buck made an interesting subject. He was quite aggressive during the past rut and broke one antler. I would like to see what size of buck he was fighting when this happened.

Inquisitive Young Buck

I feel that there are more large bucks in Pennsylvania since antler restrictions were enacted a few years ago, but they are difficult to see. Mature bucks travel in bachelor groups most of the year. They are sometimes seen in early morning or late evening in the summer when they visit farmer's fields. They are more visible during the rut, when the bucks leave the bachelor groups and roam the countryside in search of does in heat. They are the least wary at this time of year.

If the buck pictured here survives, he will likely disperse from his home range by the end of May and join a bachelor group. He should grow an eight-point rack with a 12" and up inside spread. Many whitetails can grow much greater antlers at the same point in time, but they must have ideal feed and habitat to do so and this is an average first year buck for this area of Pennsylvania.