Montana Bull Elk Jumping A Fence At Dawn

The elk near the Centennial Valley spend most of their time in the nearby mountains that border the valley on the south. They’re spooky of humans and our trappings for good reason as they’re hunted relentlessly in season and poachers are a risk year-round in that remote location. But occasionally small groups of them dare to come down to the valley at night to graze and browse and when they do, if you’re an early bird like I am, you stand a chance of catching them out in the open in the very early morning. When they see you coming they invariably high-tail it to the cover of the mountains so whatever glimpse of them you might get isn’t likely to last long and it’ll probably be a view of their strikingly blonde butts as they run away from you.

We always leave camp just before dawn (in Montana that’s about 5:50 AM in late June and early July) to look for birds but I’m always on the lookout for the possibility of elk. On the morning of June 30 just before the sun came up and as we were leaving camp we spotted a group of four elk out in the open and over a half-mile away and I knew that as we got closer on the dirt road I was driving they would make a break for the cover of the mountains to my left. My goal was to photograph them jumping one of several fences between them and the mountains but timing was critical – the sun wasn’t even up yet but it was very close. I watched the light move across the valley floor and tried to time two unpredictable forces of nature – the movement of elk reacting to a possible threat (my pickup) and the sporadic movement of light across the uneven and sloping valley floor as I alternately accelerated and slowed down in an effort to get the timing right.

My mind was racing. What camera settings should I use in such low light (if I had any at all) when they jumped the fence? How close should I try to get to where I predicted they might jump it? They were on my right as I drove up the road so I knew I’d have to allow time to stop my pickup, get out and shoot without a tripod in very low light which meant slow shutter speeds for action shots.

Sheesh, there was a lot going on and I hadn’t yet had enough coffee to effectively process it all.

1/640, f/6.3, ISO 1000, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc

Amazingly, the timing worked out well. There were three bulls and a cow and the lead and larger bull jumped first. All I could do was fire off a burst as he went over the fence and hope I had enough shutter speed, even at ISO 1000. I wish I’d gone to f/5.6 for a little more SS but that’s water under the bridge (or elk over the fence…).

Note: The transition between the background mountains and the sky looks a little funky and I don’t know why. It happened in all 40 shots I took of the three elk jumping and it’s in the RAW files so it’s not from processing. Perhaps it was caused by atmospheric conditions at that time of morning or what we call “lake fog” that was in the valley in the background.