{"id":110803,"date":"2022-05-08T05:20:21","date_gmt":"2022-05-08T11:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=110803"},"modified":"2022-05-08T07:11:48","modified_gmt":"2022-05-08T13:11:48","slug":"portrait-of-a-buck-pronghorn-guarding-his-harem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/08\/portrait-of-a-buck-pronghorn-guarding-his-harem\/","title":{"rendered":"Portrait Of A Buck Pronghorn Guarding His Harem"},"content":{"rendered":"

And a photo to set the scene.<\/p>\n

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Three days ago on Antelope Island I drove up a winding hill and lo and behold, there was a herd of 14 pronghorn does lounging on the hillside right in front of me (here we only see about half of them, on the left). Some were grazing and browsing and others were laying down in the vegetation. I took a few photos with my big lens but many of them were festooned with orange tags and others had their heads down so mostly I just watched, enjoying the spectacle in the still of the early morning.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t until I pulled forward a few feet that I noticed the lone buck, on the right in this photo, laying down on the hill above the does and intently guarding his harem. In the 10 minutes or so I was there he barely took his eyes off of them. He was a handsome devil, he was close and in beautiful morning light so I was intent on taking a few portraits of him.<\/p>\n

I’m including this photo, taken with a standard lens at 35mm, to set the scene. It gives the illusion at least, that there’s a fair amount of water in the Great Salt Lake.<\/p>\n

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This is what I was after, head shots of the buck, but they were harder to get than you might think. He was so incredibly focused on watching and guarding his harem he wouldn’t turn his head in my direction to give me a good look at his face and a catch light in his eye. Finally he glanced my way and I fired short burst of shots before he looked away again. This is one of them.<\/p>\n

I don’t take portraits very often but I’m delighted with how this one turned out. He’s a handsome dude and I like his look of confidence suggesting that he knows it. And as my friend Jim DeWitt said about him, he also looks satiated and just a little bit smug.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And a photo to set the scene. (2 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,373],"tags":[31,402,507,6325,6324,258,311],"class_list":["post-110803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-pronghorns","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-antilocapra-americana","tag-buck","tag-guarding-harem","tag-harem-of-does","tag-pronghorn","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/pronghorn-6997-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-sP9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110803"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110838,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110803\/revisions\/110838"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}