Mid-July Wildlife In PA Elk Country

Today's post features wildlife from this week's trip to Pennsylvania Elk Country.  As usual I am doing most of my shooting with video and have gotten some good footage of a variety of subjects.  I will hopefully post some of the video clips in the near future

Waiting In The Wilderness For Wildlife To Appear-Panasonic GH4 In Standby Mode

While video usually comes first with me I have gotten a few still photos.  The first is of a bachelor group of young bulls that frequents the meadows along the upper end of Winslow Hill.

Bachelor Group Along Winslow Hill Road

I photographed two respectable whitetail bucks while checking out a remote, wilderness area.   This was a bit far for good stills from the GH4 and the 100-300mm and I had to crop tightly for good composition.

Wilderness Whitetails

Unfortunately I did not see any large bulls in the wilderness areas, but I did photograph a few decent bulls in the area immediately surrounding Benezette.  Bulls are usually seen either very early or very late and the one immediately below was taken at 5:56 a.m.  It was a heavy overcast morning with scattered areas of fog, which made the 300mm f 2.8 the lens of choice.  The shot was taken from a tripod at ISO 1600-1/100 sec. f2.8.

Early Morning Bull

A bit later I found the largest bull of the trip so far.  This bull appears to share the genetic characteristics of the famous bull "Crazy Legs" and "Crazy Legs, Jr".

Bull May Be Descendant Of "Crazy Legs" Line

So far I have taken no good stills of calves, but have I gotten a lot of video of them. It seems it is too easy for me to get sidetracked concentrating on bulls.

Originally published at Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.