Old Friends Never Die

Had a great time following this buck around for a whole summer. I learned a lot about buck behavior and gained even more respect for the elusive nature of these creatures. I saw this buck over 30 times throughout the summer and photographed him many times, several at less than 75 yards. I found the Black Velvet early in the summer when his antlers were barely grown out to where the cheaters were starting to come off. I photographed him the first time a while later but his growth was still early. As I watched him grow I kept waiting for his spread to get wider and frame bigger but it never happened, the one thing that did keep growing was his mass. It took 7 weeks of frequent visits to finally close the gap on him to 25 yards and snap the photo above. While I saw him many times over the seven weeks I couldn’t seem to close the distance to less than 45 to 75 yards until the day this photo was taken.

While this buck is by no means the biggest I have ever photographed it is one of the more fun ones I have chased around.  It was a blast to make trip after trip to try and close the gap on him.  He was very challenging to get close to and the experience of snapping this photo was one of the biggest rushes I have ever experienced. 

My buddy actually scoped the Black Velvet at about a half mile away and we watched him for several hours waiting for him to bed down.  When he finally bedded in a small canyon he did so in a perfect location for a sneak.  My buddy stayed with the scope and watched as I snuck clear around the buck and back up to the draw where he was sleeping.  When I was within several hundred yards of the draw he was in, I slipped of my shoes, snapped a few test photos to adjust my camera settings, and began the slowest creep of  my life.  My buddy later said that he never thought I was going to get to the edge of that draw.  When I was within a few feet of looking over the edge down onto the buck I had to just lay for several minutes, breathe deep, and calm my nerves.  Once my composure was regained I peered over the edge to see this  buck sound asleep approximately 30 feet below me.  With shaking hands I began to snap.  I snapped the first photo and the sound of the shutter rang in my ears like a fire cracker but to my surprise the buck didn’t even flinch.  Once I saw that he wasn’t going to spook at the sound of the shutter I started snapping as fast as I could focus.  In fact I lay there in the dirt and photographed this buck for about 45 minutes.  In order to get the buck to move without spooking him I would scrape a small rock against a boulder laying next to me, each time I did this he would perk up and look with interest toward the sound.  By scraping the rock every so often I was able to snap over 200 photos of  this buck, from every angle imaginable.  I knew the shoot had been a success when I was able to sneak back out of the draw without spooking the deer.  Once back away from the edge I returned to my shoes and just sat with a huge smile on my face, and an incredible sense of accomplishment.  I couldnt quite fathom what had just happened, it wasn’t until I got back to my buddy and we were reviewing the photos that I started to understand what had just transpired.  It was a rush to blast back down the roads towards town to show my brother that we had finally got some exceptional shots of Black Velvet.  Eventually the three of us sat in my brothers office and analyzed each picture one by one and grinned from ear to ear.  It was the perfect culmination to one of the greatest photographing summers I have experienced.

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