{"id":24970,"date":"2014-07-09T05:07:30","date_gmt":"2014-07-09T11:07:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=24970"},"modified":"2014-07-09T08:48:47","modified_gmt":"2014-07-09T14:48:47","slug":"montana-bull-elk-jumping-a-fence-at-dawn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/09\/montana-bull-elk-jumping-a-fence-at-dawn\/","title":{"rendered":"Montana Bull Elk Jumping A Fence At Dawn"},"content":{"rendered":"

The elk near the Centennial Valley spend most of their time in the nearby\u00a0mountains that border the valley on the south.\u00a0 They’re spooky of humans and\u00a0our trappings for good reason as they’re hunted relentlessly in season and poachers\u00a0are\u00a0a\u00a0risk year-round\u00a0in that remote\u00a0location.\u00a0 But\u00a0occasionally small groups of them dare to come down to the valley at night\u00a0to 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.\u00a0 When they see you coming they invariably high-tail it to the cover of the mountains so whatever glimpse of them\u00a0you 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.<\/p>\n

We always leave camp just before dawn (in Montana that’s about 5:50\u00a0AM\u00a0in\u00a0late June and early July)\u00a0to look for birds but I’m always on the lookout for the possibility of elk.\u00a0 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\u00a0dirt road I was driving they would make a break for the cover of the mountains to my left.\u00a0 My goal was to photograph them jumping one of\u00a0several fences between them and the mountains but timing was critical – the sun wasn’t even up yet but it was very close.\u00a0 I watched the light move across the valley floor\u00a0and tried to time two unpredictable forces of nature –\u00a0the movement of elk reacting to a possible threat (my pickup) and the sporadic movement of light across the uneven and sloping\u00a0valley floor as\u00a0I alternately accelerated and slowed down in an effort to get the timing right.<\/p>\n

My mind was racing.\u00a0 What camera settings should I use in such low light (if I had any at all) when they jumped the fence?\u00a0 How close should I try to get to where I predicted they might jump it?\u00a0 They were on my right as I drove up the road so I\u00a0knew I’d\u00a0have 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.<\/p>\n

Sheesh, there was a lot\u00a0going on and I hadn’t yet had enough coffee to effectively process it all.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"elk<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/640, f\/6.3, ISO 1000, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Amazingly, the\u00a0timing worked out well.\u00a0 There were three bulls and a cow and the lead and larger bull jumped first.\u00a0\u00a0 All I could do was fire off a burst as he went over\u00a0the fence and\u00a0hope I had enough shutter speed, even at ISO 1000.\u00a0 I\u00a0wish I’d gone to f\/5.6 for a little more SS but that’s water under the bridge (or elk over the fence…).<\/p>\n

Note: The transition between the background mountains and the sky looks a little funky and I don’t know why.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"elk<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/640, f\/6.3, ISO 1000, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0The light angle didn’t quite give me any light in the eye but I thought the action and behavior compensated to some degree.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"elk<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/640, f\/6.3, ISO 1000, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Here the jump looks effortless – almost like the bull is floating over the fence.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"elk<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/640, f\/6.3, ISO 1000, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0The back feet seem to barely clear the wire.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"elk<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/640, f\/6.3, ISO 1000, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

While I was processing this image I was puzzled for a moment by the horizontal lines near the upper left leg which made it appear as if the wires were between me and the elk.\u00a0 But those lines are only shadows of wire out of frame to the right (they also indicate how very low the sun was).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"elk<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/640, f\/6.3, ISO 1000, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The bull cleared the fence without mishap and I focused my attention (and my lens) on the other three elk.\u00a0 Perhaps I’ll post some of those images sometime down the road.<\/p>\n

Whenever I see a large bull elk at this stage of antler\u00a0development I always wonder how large\u00a0those antlers will\u00a0be after another month or 6 weeks of growth (incredibly, sources indicate that antler growth can be as much as 1-2 inches per day).\u00a0 I don’t know a lot about elk but I suspect that this bull will be\u00a0a very impressive specimen come September.<\/p>\n

I hope he makes it through the\u00a0hunting season.<\/p>\n

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

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.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24973,"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":[334,1601,1493,360],"tags":[2097,1637,555,2096,1510,1413,220],"class_list":["post-24970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-elk-mammals","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge-favorite-locations","tag-antler-growth","tag-camera-settings","tag-centennial-valley","tag-cervus-elaphus","tag-elk","tag-jumping","tag-montana-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/elk-0783-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6uK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24970","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=24970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}