Repeat Performance

By the second week of August, I can be found somewhere in the Utah Mountains trying to photograph big velvet antlered bucks. The first year I photographed this buck was no different.

I’d been seeing a neat looking wide racked buck in a basin I liked to hunt. Unfortunately I had a hard time stalking him within photo range. I wanted some decent shots so I kept visiting the basin each morning of my hunt. This particular basin sits on the southeast flank of the mountain, so it’s a great morning light type of photo area.

My persistence was rewarded on a beautiful clear morning when I came around a ridge towards the basin and saw two sets of antlers, the wide buck and a nice four point.

I couldn’t have asked for a better photo setup, the bucks were slightly above me in great light. A short stalk, and enough curiosity and confusion on the part of these pretty bucks allowed me to take some of my favorite velvet buck shots.

One year later I encountered the same scenario while trying to find and photograph big velvet bucks; however locating and stalking a good buck close enough to photograph was more difficult. I kept glassing a big buck in the same basin I’d shot the wide buck in the previous year, and again my initial attempts to get close to the deer failed. This particular basin is a good place to find deer, but the oak brush makes staking them quite a challenge. While glassing, I located this great looking typical buck. The big buck was feeding with six or eight other bucks, as usual they were in an area that didn’t look very promising for a stalk, but I had to try anyway. Actually, I tried several stalks on the feeding bucks, bad attempts in the noisy brush, each time I had to tell myself there was no hurry. I decided the best thing to do would be to back off and watch them, maybe I could form a better plan. I watched the deer feeding for awhile and figured they might end up on the east rim of the basin. Without any other ideas I hurried to the place were I thought I’d be in the bucks path. I picked a spot for an ambush with a couple decent shooting lanes, got my camera set up and hoped for the best.

The first deer on the scene wore wide velvet covered antlers and he was feeding right towards me! Words cannot describe the immense feeling of excitement that comes from being in the right place at the right time, it just dosn’t happen to me often enough that I will ever get used to it. At this point I needed to stay steady until the shooting stopped, I did stay steady enough to capture these images of a great buck, but just barely.

This buck looked allot like the wide three by four from the previous year, but without any telling signature points it was hard to say. I wasn’t sure if it was the same buck or not until I looked closer at the photos of him from both years and saw what looks like a scar above his left eye.

I love seeing the same big wild bucks several years running, it is a real testament to these great animals.

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