 |
| Bachelor Group Of Whitetail Bucks In Pennsylvania Elk Country-4K Video Still Capture |
This summer I have been filming and photographing
wildlife as much as I ever have, but one would not know it by looking at
this blog. I am usually in the field each morning and evening
photographing and observing whitetail deer when I am not in elk
country. It has been a busy summer what with a major refurbishing
project on a large deck on the house and a lot of work on the family
farm so it seems that it has been the writing and video editing that has
suffered and I have done very little of either. At any rate, I was
still a bit surprised to see when I took time to review the blog, that I
have not posted about whitetail deer since early June.
I
saw a bachelor group of extremely nice whitetail bucks late one evening
during the mid-August trip to elk country, but didn't have the still
camera along so I extracted some stills from the video footage using
Vegas Pro 13.
 |
| 8 Point Pauses From Feeding |
|
|
Back home in Fulton County, the beautiful
six-point shown below was the biggest that I photographed with a DSLR
although I filmed several much larger bucks on video. Nonetheless he is
a beautiful buck and I was able to document his development throughout
the summer.
 |
| As His Velvet Cracks In Preparation For Shedding, A Fine 6 Point Buck Lip-curls |
He was a small spike last year and the marked
increase in size from last year to now proves that a spike can develop
in to a fine buck and in fact many, if not most, do so if they survive
to their second year.
 |
| Same Buck-October 17, 2015 |
This year the velvet was cracked on August 28th. When
he appeared shortly after dawn on the 30th, the velvet was mostly gone
on the left antler and a long strand dangled alongside his head. This
seemed to irritate him greatly and he spent a lot of time rubbing
branches and also trying to grab the velvet in his teeth and dislodge
it.
 |
| Buck Pauses From Horning Trees And Round Bale |
 |
| Grooming And Attempting To Tear Velvet Strip Free |
The velvet was completely gone by the following
morning and the buck roamed about the meadows interacting with other
deer and feeding.
 |
| Bucks Nuzzle When Pausing From Sparring |
 |
| Buck Pauses From Feeding |
What a thrill it was to be able to document the
velvet shedding process once again. Another buck that I see frequently
has had bloody spots on his antlers, but has not shed yet. In the photo
below he is watching the larger buck from inside the tree line. He
tries to avoid close contact with him as it seems he does not want to
spar until the velvet is gone.
 |
| Smaller Buck Looks On |
I hope I have the opportunity to document at least a
portion of his velvet shedding process as well. With the shedding of
the velvet, the pre-rut gets underway and will continue until late
October or early November when it will explode into the full-blown rut.
Originally published at
Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.
