After a half-day, the prospects didn't look so swell. I guess it all comes down to a matter of perspective: For most, a bright sunny day in the low 80s in Yellowstone seems like a slice of heaven. For us, however, the warm temperatures and the harsh light were a death knell for the prospects of getting any compelling wildlife photography.
By now, it's the second day of the private nature photography workshop in Yellowstone National Park. Sure, wildlife is plentiful here, but in late September, when the temperatures are supposed to top out twenty degrees cooler than what they are now, the animals seem to be laying low. Sure, we see bison (whose plentiful numbers make them an iconic staple of the park). Still, the bear sightings are scant, coyotes and wolves are far across the valley, and even the elk seem reticent towards activity.
For seven years, I've been coming to Yellowstone on multiple occasions each year but this excursion is proving to be the toughest. The answer: figure out a plan B and keep plugging along.
After a day and a half, the temperatures cooled, but the lack of clouds made the best photography a manic exercise because we only had a short time in the morning and evening while the light was at its best. The cooling temperatures were like a switch, however. As if on cue, the elk rut became more urgent. In a frenzy, the bull elk, who heretofore had organized and herded harems of females, started patrolling their prospective breeding candidates with a frenzy.
"Hrrrr-uh!" The bark echoes through the aspens, whose leaves are burnished gold by the cooling temperatures. I'd think the sound was a bear if I didn't know better. If you've spent much time in elk country during the rut, you know that during the two to three-week breeding season, the bulls are highly vocal. They bark, chuckle, and glunk as a way of corralling the females to keep them in the harem and as a warning to carpet-bagging bulls to keep their distance.
It's the bugle, however, that gets in your soul. The high-pitched, plaintive call is a mix of a whistle and a growl that comes from a guttural place. It is a siren song that permeates the woods and echoes through the mountains.
So, instead of trying to capture the menagerie of wildlife found in Yellowstone, we decided to try to capture all the faces of the elk rut. The sage meadows and ponderosa pine flats were full of testosterone-filled drama, so we set out to find and photograph as many bulls as we could.
Now, instead of driving around safari-style and covering a lot of ground looking for all kinds of animals, we relegate our area of effort to just a few square miles in search of a few distinct bulls and any other ancillary wildlife we see.
It's a big gamble.
While it doesn't seem like it should, the pace of our efforts increased. We're covering less ground than launching out and driving all the way to Hayden or Lamar Valleys, but we're looking behind every tree and every sage bush, looking for that memorable scene or that not-seen-so-far bull.
It only takes a short time until we spot a nice bull in the aspens. He's got a harem of cows, and it's clear from his vocalizing and posturing that he's highly protective. He doesn't fear us. He's protective of his cows because every day during the rut is like a high-stakes chess match. The bulls compete with one another to take cows from another bull's harem. The cows even try to leave and join up with other groups, but the bulls will try to keep them corralled. It's constant action that rarely ceases during the rut.
One day, you may see a bull with a dozen cows in his harem; the next, he may only have three. Overnight, chances are he'd been bested by a more dominant bull, and to the victor goes the spoils. This mixing and matching of harems creates the genetic diversity needed for these ungulates to thrive in an inhospitable land.
The bull we've spotted will have well over 340 inches of antlers. He's an excellent specimen by anyone's standards. Long ago, the Boone & Crockett Club (a conservation organization founded by Teddy Roosevelt and American Naturalist George Grinnell in 1887) set the protocol for measuring antlered and horned animals to develop what they considered "trophy" standards. In elk, the overall measurements take into account the main beam length, the tine length, the circumference of the main beams between the tines, and the amount of space (or spread) between the right and left antlers at their widest point. While we can't go out and take measurements of a live elk, once you've seen a lot of bull elk you can develop a feel for estimating the size of live animals.
We're about fifty yards away from him and well beyond the minimum distance that the park requires you to be from wildlife. He's slipping through the woods and keeping an eye on the perimeter to ensure no bulls are sneaking in to steal his cows. The cows mew and communicate with one another, and he's frantically watching all around him. He stops, looks in the distance, and bugles. WAYYY in the distance, another bull bugles back. It's an ancient call and response that's been going on in these hills since time immemorial. Elk country stands in detente.
At least for now...
The same scene plays out over and over for the next few days. In our search for elk, we photograph pronghorns, pika, and a curious great horned owl, so our portfolios are rounded out by these bonus sightings. In the end, we get some fantastic images of the things that make elk country so exciting each fall.
I can't wait until next year.
Additional Images from our Yellowstone Nature Photography Workshop
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