I spent most of last week in Pennsylvania Elk Country with my primary
objective being to film and photograph the shedding of the velvet from
the bulls' antlers. Many of the bulls had already shed by the time I
arrived late Monday afternoon, but I found a bachelor group on Tuesday
morning in which some of the bulls still had velvet.
 |
| 6x6 With Velvet |
This was a dark, overcast morning with a light shower
of rain or two so the Canon 5D MK III and the 300mm f2.8 lens were the
perfect choice for this situation. This bull was in the edge of the
woods along a meadow and most of the other bulls were feeding and
horning bushes that were scattered throughout the meadow. While I took a
few still images, I spent most of the time filming them on video with
the Panasonic GH4 and Canon 100-400mm lens.
This is a
4K camera and I film in UHD mode. With this one is able to capture 8
megapixel stills from the video. Panasonic has a method for doing this,
but I have not tried it. I simply load the video into my video
editing program, Vegas Pro 13, and scroll through the timeline until I
find a suitable frame and then capture it. Below are two stills
captured in this manner that shows how the velvet cracks and bloody
spots appear before the actual shedding occurs.
On
Thursday morning I photographed two bulls that were feeding on apples.
The first photo shows how the velvet shedding process progresses from
the stage depicted in the the photos above.
 |
| Almost Shed |
The second photo shows a bull that is
completely shed and also documents how bulls dislodge apples from the
trees by striking the branches with their antlers.
 |
| Trying To Dislodge Apples |
With the shedding of the velvet, the bulls begin
sparring with other bulls and engaging in other pre-rut activity. On
this trip I did not get to photograph this activity , but I did get to
see a mature bulls herding cows late one evening as darkness fell in a
remote wilderness meadow.
Originally published at
Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.
