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| Winslow Hill Bull |
When I first began going to Pennsylvania Elk Country
in 1995 it was a much different place than it is today with little in
the way of food plots planted for wildlife. There was some planting at
the Dents Run Viewing Area and a portion of The Saddle and the plot
behind Busy Bee Campground were usually mowed sometime during the
summer. Back then my summer elk filming usually consisted of taking a
tour around Winslow Hill and out to Hick's Run or Driftwood and to Medix
Run in the mornings and evenings. Since many fed elk and there were few
food plots, the elk were attracted to the feeding and the green lawn
grass. As a result many of the bulls were to be found in the lawns
eating the grass and nibbling on the flowers.
Today
there is a lot of high quality forage in elk country and there are a lot
more elk than in 1995. Now it is relatively common so see large
bachelor groups of bulls feeding in the food plots while they are less
likely to be seen in town.
During my June trip, I saw
two bulls along the road on Winslow Hill every day. The first was the
6x6 at the beginning of the post and the second is the bull below.
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| Largest Bull Seen on Winslow Hill |
At this juncture I am not going to speculate on the
number of points on the rack. A point must be at least an inch in
length to be counted and this bull has a lot of points that are still
too short to meet that criteria. Some are on the borderline and may
become long enough or they may not.
I spent most
evenings on foot in remote areas and sometimes did not get back to the
vehicle until well after dark. As usual I concentrated on taking video
and carried a Panasonic FZ2500 on the tripod for that purpose, and a
Canon 1DXMKII with the Canon 100-400mm IS II in a camera bag to take
still images.
One evening I walked back a field road
and came upon a fine bull. After taking video I put the still camera in
action and captured several frames.
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| 5x5 Bull Pauses From Feeding |
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| 5x5 Bull Scents For Danger |
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| 5x5 |
This bull is currently a 5x5, but looks like he will
be at least a 6x6 and possible a 7x7 when antler development is
completed. A bit later I found a bachelor group sharing a food plot
with a solitary cow.
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| Bachelor Group and Cow Share Food Plot |
I saw two more similar bachelor groups that evening,
but the photo below was taken on the following evening when I didn't
find nearly as many bulls overall on the same walk, but found more of
them together so I suspect these were some of the same bulls
concentrated in one place.
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| Seven Rack Bulls-One Spike |
On Friday morning the last day of the trip I drove
the roads around Benezette before leaving for home and photographed the
largest bull of the trip. In this case the images were taken from the
tripod with the old Canon 500mm f4.0 IS and the 1DXMKII.
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| Mature 7x7 |
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| Mature 7x7-A Different Angle |
It will be interesting to see how much larger the bulls have grown if I am able to go back this month.
Originally published at
Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.
