{"id":164982,"date":"2024-10-24T06:57:53","date_gmt":"2024-10-24T12:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=164982"},"modified":"2024-10-24T18:55:51","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T00:55:51","slug":"a-bison-spectacle-on-antelope-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/10\/24\/a-bison-spectacle-on-antelope-island\/","title":{"rendered":"A Bison Spectacle On Antelope Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fairly early in the morning three days ago on Antelope Island I had just turned off the main road onto the Frary Peak Trailhead road when I spotted fairly large herd of bison cows and calves on the side of the mountain. So I drove most of the way up the very steep road to the trailhead for a better, more elevated look at the herd, rather than taking closup photos of individual bison.<\/p>\n

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As I expected, the bison were on their way to freshwater springs near the mudflats on the east side of the island for a morning drink. Here we see the main body of the herd at bottom with trailing individuals coming down the hill between the ancient Farmington Complex rocks at left center to join the rest of the herd.<\/p>\n

A small portion of Farmington Bay can be seen below the Wasatch Mountains in the upper background. There isn’t much water in the bay these days but there’s more than there has been in recent years.<\/p>\n

The photo has a counterclockwise tilt but I didn’t rotate it to level because that would cause me to cut off the tips of the Wasatch Mountains.<\/p>\n

At first the herd was moving slowly but deliberately downhill and to my right. I knew they’d have to cross the road, running diagonally at center, so I…<\/p>\n

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drove down the steep trailhead road for a closer look. From this vantage point I was using three different cameras and lenses in order to get whichever perspective I chose.<\/p>\n

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In this slightly closer look at the herd from a different angle, the bison had come down from the mountain from the right side of the rocks at upper right. But traditionally they come down from the other side of the rocks, from over the hill just below the blue sky in this photo. If you look closely you can see some of their old trails coming from that direction.<\/p>\n

Let’s go back in time for a moment.<\/p>\n

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In this nearly 15 year old photo we see the deep tracks and ruts made by bison herds coming down the same mountainside as they were approaching the fresh water springs. It may look like there’s a dirt road running diagonally in the photo but it’s a wide and deeply worn bison trail with feeder trails coming from up above. I just thought I’d throw this photo in for comparison.<\/p>\n

OK, back to three days ago.<\/p>\n

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I was parked near the bathroom of the trailhead road and watching the herd, which was now beginning to run (it was nearly a stampede) toward the road they had to cross to get to the springs. That’s when this fellow drove up and chose to get out of his car so he could photograph\/video the herd with his cell phone. The bison were running at the bottom of a shallow ravine so he felt he had to get this close to get the photos\/video he wanted.<\/p>\n

It’s closer than I’d ever want to be to a near-stampeding herd of bison but then I can’t run anywhere near as fast as I used to. This guy looks like he could turn on his afterburners if he had to. My afterburners no longer light.<\/p>\n

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It gave me a rather unusual perspective, where I could actually see what he was seeing on his phone screen. The running herd is the darkest diagonal line near the center of his screen.<\/p>\n

At that point I drove down to the main road, trying to anticipate where the bison would cross it.<\/p>\n

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For good or for bad, I chose to use my longest lens as the bison approached the road. Here we see a cow and her calf as they were running flat out toward the road, which is just out of frame to the right. With my big lens they were a little too close so I could barely keep them in frame. If I had a do-over, I’d probably use my intermediate lens in this situation.<\/p>\n

The annual bison roundup on Antelope Island<\/a><\/span><\/span> is this Saturday so if you’re a bison\/cowboy\/horse fan and you’re local, you might want to join in the fun. It’s an incredible spectacle.<\/p>\n

As for me, I have exactly zero tolerance for crowds so I’ll be staying home or going elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Three days ago on Antelope Island I was in the right place at the right time. (7 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164983,"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":[3,334,347],"tags":[31,7664,7665,7663,7662,311],"class_list":["post-164982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-bison-mammals","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-antelope-island-bison-roundup-2024","tag-farmington-complex-rocks","tag-frary-peak-trailhead-road","tag-stampeding-bison","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/bison-1803-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-GV0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164982","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=164982"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165033,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164982\/revisions\/165033"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}