{"id":50224,"date":"2017-07-25T11:20:21","date_gmt":"2017-07-25T17:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=50224"},"modified":"2017-07-25T11:41:42","modified_gmt":"2017-07-25T17:41:42","slug":"a-wary-bull-elk-in-montanas-centennial-valley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/25\/a-wary-bull-elk-in-montanas-centennial-valley\/","title":{"rendered":"A Wary Bull Elk In Montana\u2019s Centennial Valley"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note: As of a little while ago my blog has now been moved to the new server and that has caused some issues\u00a0with this post. I originally posted it early this morning but when the blog was moved that post was lost in the transition so\u00a0I’ve now posted it again. That’s why subscribers got a second email with the link to the post. All comments made on the old post this morning were lost – sorry about that! <\/strong><\/p>\n

Hopefully there will be no more problems but if you notice something “haywire” on your end please let me know. Apologies for the inconvenience and confusion!<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This bull was far from a relatively “tame” National Park elk. He was wild, extremely wary, nervous and high-strung.<\/p>\n

There’s a robust elk herd in Montana’s Centennial Mountains but the hunting pressure on them is intense so in my experience it’s unusual to find them out in the open and exposed Centennial Valley to the north. But during the night some of them occasionally come out to feed in the valley and if you’re the first to drive the “South Road” at sunrise you have a small chance of catching them out in the open.<\/p>\n

\"elk
\n1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender<\/p>\n

That’s exactly what happened with this bull in velvet two weeks ago during my camping trip to the area. The road runs between the mountains and the valley where he was feeding so he and another bull with him felt cut off and threatened by my pickup because I blocked their quick access to the safety of the wooded and largely roadless mountains. They spotted my pickup before we saw them and they took off running to the west in order to get far enough away from us before they headed back to the mountains.<\/p>\n

At one point they both stopped and turned toward me to see what I was doing and that’s when I got this photo and a handful of others. Seconds later they turned their pale butts to me and were gone.<\/p>\n

Some regular blog followers may have noticed that I spend very little time in National Parks photographing mammals. Yellowstone for example is only a hop, skip and a short jump from the Centennial Valley but I’ve only been there twice in recent decades and each time I beat a quick retreat. Crowds, traffic, congestion and wildlife that is often so acclimated to humans that they hardly bat an eye in our presence holds little appeal for me – especially when my experience in the “wild” is ruined by the cacophony of dozens of other cameras sounding like Gatling guns in my ears every time a critter scratches, blinks or farts.<\/p>\n

Photographers in places like Yellowstone, Grand Tetons or Hardware Ranch may routinely get better photos of elk than this one. But I watched the truly wild and naturally evasive behavior of this bull and I didn’t have to share the experience with hordes of others and for me that flavors the image in a way that I’d be less likely to duplicate in a National Park.<\/p>\n

If that sounds selfish and\/or elitist of me, so be it. I really don’t mean it that way but I yam what I yam…<\/p>\n

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

Note: As of a little while ago my blog has now been moved to the new server and that has caused some issues\u00a0with this post. I originally posted it early this morning but when the blog was moved that post was lost in the transition so\u00a0I’ve now posted it again. That’s why subscribers got a second email with the link to the post. All comments made on the old post this morning were lost – sorry about that! Hopefully there will be no more problems but if you notice something “haywire” on your end please let me know. Apologies for the inconvenience and confusion!   This bull was far from a relatively “tame” National Park elk. He was wild, extremely wary, nervous and high-strung. There’s a robust elk herd in Montana’s Centennial Mountains but the hunting pressure on them is intense so in my experience it’s unusual to find them out in the open and exposed Centennial Valley to the north. But during the night some of them occasionally come out to feed in the valley and if you’re the first to drive the “South Road” at sunrise you have a small chance of catching them out in the open. 1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender That’s exactly what happened with this bull in velvet two weeks ago during my camping trip to the area. The road runs between the mountains and the valley where he was feeding so he and…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50225,"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":[1601,1493],"tags":[1403,555,220,3470],"class_list":["post-50224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-elk-mammals","category-montana-favorite-locations","tag-bull","tag-centennial-valley","tag-montana-2","tag-velvet"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/elk-2577-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-d44","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50224","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=50224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}