From the apex of a small hill we could see that the biggest and the second biggest bucks had bedded under a burnt out log and we thought if we could get around behind the log and slowly sneak in on them that way we may have a chance.  The unknown was the smallest of the bucks, we had no idea where he was and we knew we could jump him at any time and that would be the end of the sneak and the day.  We hastily made our way to a point we could approach the log from the back and started a painstakingly slow stalk.  With the sun dropping and with it the light, we crested a small hill that allowed us to see the log the deer were bedded under.  As we as we krept closer the back side of the log we could see the antlers of the bigger buck sticking up over the log.  It was a thrill to put a sneak on, always knowing that the buck was still there.  As we got closer and closer our smiles grew and grew.  Once we were about 20 yards away I set up the tripod and camera and tested the lighting.  Once this was complete I signaled my brother to move closer and see if he could stand the deer up without startling them out of the area. 

It only took several minutes for my brother to be within 5 feet of touching the deers antlers.  Here he stopped and started trying to make any little noise he could to stand the deer up.  The plan worked perfectly, we watched as the bigger bucks antlers started turning from side to side trying to figure out what was up.  After a few seconds both bucks stood up and began to look around.  I started snapping photos as my brother lay hidden on the other side of the log, concealed from their searching gaze.  I remember wishing I had a smaller lens with me to get the deer looking right over my brother who was hiding mere feet from them.  We were super excited with the way the photos turned out.  The bucks aren’t necessarily wall hangers but the colors are nice and even small bucks are better than nothing on a long day of scouting around.

Luckily the sheep were in a spot that I thought I had a good chance of getting close to them, unluckily they were at the top of huge cliff and the rocks and scree were going to be difficult to move over quietly.  Since this was the only option, I grabbed my stuff and took off .  The climb was longer than anticipated so I was very nervous the sheep were going to be gone by the time I was in postition.  After I quickly adjusting the camera settings I slowly crawled on my hands and knees to peer over.  To my excitement not only were the sheep all laying there but there were 3 more that had joined their ranks during my stalk.  I set up the camera and began shooting. With the sheep having no idea I was there I got to watch sheep doing what sheep do.

The king of the herd was definitely the grey one I had seen bullying the others earlier.  From my new vantage point about 50 yards from the sheep I watched as the big ram pawed out a bed, throwing rock and dirt about 20 feet behind him.  Once the bed was completed the second biggest ram in the herd came and layed down right in it.  The big ram looked at him for about 5 seconds then rammed him right in the hind quarter.  The ram jumped up and couldn’t get out of the bed fast enough, the big guy, who was taking no guff, immediately laid down in the newly vacated bed.  Later all the sheep stood up and the big ram continued to demonstrate his dominance.  I snapped the photo above seconds after the big ram and the second biggest ram smacked heads.  If you look close you can see dust that was kicked up during the collision still hanging in the air.  It was an awesome experience to watch the herd dynamics of these bachelor bighorns.  I also never knew how many different noises sheep can make.  They were doing a lot of talking as they fed, beat up on each other and wandered around.  The big ram might be going grey and look a little beat up but he is still the undisputed big shot.

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.

There I sat, trapped in the truck by a torrential downpour, occasionally clicking the windshield wipers on as if there was something to see.  Just after one of these random clicks of the wipers, to my surprise, I noticed a ewe standing on the hill directly in front of me.  It was as if she fell from the sky with the drizzling rain.  Excitedly I watched her and waited, hoping more sheep would follow her over the small hill.  It wasn’t 10 minutes later and a few more ewes and a small ram fed over the hill right towards me and my truck.  It was at this point that I decided I needed to sneak out of the truck and get the camera set up just in case a nice ram were to pop over.  Looking at the sheep through the scope, which was positioned under a towel to try and keep it dry, I made a mental note of how cool their coats looked as they were all matted with the soaking rain.  I thought about how unique the photos would be if a soaking wet ram were to join them, as they fed in the continuing drizzle.  I only had to sit protecting my camera and scope from the rain for about 3 minutes when this ram crested the hill.  I was thrilled not because of the great photo op, or the size of the ram although these things were very exciting, I was thrilled to see my old buddy had made it through all the hunts for yet another year.  I have seen this ram several times before and he has eluded me on every occasion.  I have not seen him in about 4 months so I was excited to see him again.  He is hanging out in a very strange place, a location where I have never seen sheep before.  He has also had a rough time of it as he has really broomed his horns back since the last time I saw him.  He is still a great looking ram and I love how the photos turned out.  It was also nice to finally get back on the board with some photos!

So I walked back down to my truck, drove a short distance to the one spot I could begin the long climb up to try and get some photos.  Becasue of the bucks location and the lay of the land there really only was one way I could make stalk and not be seen immediately.  The problem was that there were suddenly deer everywhere and the draw I needed to sneak up was no exception.  I sat pondering what to do, and the thought that perhaps I needed to wait for a better opportunity another day even entered my head breifely before I laughed it out.  I finally decided on a plan which included trying to herd the deer blocking my approach over the hill opposite the big buck.  Once loaded with all the camera gear I started slowly moving in the direction of the does trying to keep myself between them and the direction of the big buck.  Should they run east my chances at photographing the big buck would be lost.  This process of herding does was painstakingly slow as I had to move slowly toward them until they became alert then wait until they were done staring at me, then they would move a little at  a time in the direction I needed them to go.  My fear was that if I jumped them they would scatter or bound in the direction of the buck, so for a good 45 min I had to be content to be a doe herder.  Turns out though, I am either good at herding does or was extremetly luck whichever the case the does fed up and over the hill in the direction I needed them to go.  This left a clean shot at a stalk, I’ll be it straight up hill in a foot of snow.  Long story short, after near cardiac arrest I was able to position myself under the tree that I had picked out earlier while glassing as the one that would put my right above the buck.  With final camera preparations complete I began to sneak over the ridge toward where I last saw the buck 1 hour ago.  Call it intuition, or just again really lucky, but I cut this initial stalk short and went back  to the tree I had left  from.  I decided that if the buck had kept feeding the direction he was headed when I last saw him he would be higher up the hill and I would need to top over higher if I was going to have a chance at seeing him.  Now, as I made my way further up the ridge I began to notice deer tracks in the snow with lines tracing the tracks wherever they would go.  The tracks were in the middle and the lines in the snow were about 1 foot or 1.5 feet on either side.  I thought to myself I would like to see the buck that had antlers big enough to make lines like this in the snow.   Well I picked a new spot to sneak over the hill and once again made ready the camera equipment and began what I hoped would be the final approach.  Sure enough my gamble payed off and as I peered over the edge I was looking right down on the buck.  Two things ran through my mind as I began to snap photos.  First was disappointment as I noticed that he was not in fact super heavy as I first thought but rather had very flattened antlers.  Second was the fact that he had snow accumulated on his front tines and that this was the buck that had made the tracks lined on either side that I had crossed several times during my stalk.

The bucks antlers are unique looking and he is a great buck.  I was thrilled at the way the photos turned out and had a party of one all the way back to town.  Just another great experience doing what I love.    

Unfortunately I watched as the doe with buck in tow ran completely across the burn and into the dense forest on the other side.  For the next several min I caught only glipses of the two as they moved around in the trees.  Finally after about 20 min there was no more movement.  Luckily the deer were in a place that I thought I had a good chance of seeing them should they try to leave so I was confident the deer were still below me.  In considering my next move I had to concider three factors: I didn’t know exactly where the deer were, I needed to get closer, and shooting light would be fading.  After giving my situation some thought I finally decided to make  a move to a spot that would close half the distance to the deer.  Once there I would sit and wait and hope the deer passed through one of several small openings in the trees.  I was able to get to the new vantage point fairly quickly and once there got set up and began the agonizing wait.  Over the next half hour I watched as deer fed out onto the burn and back into the trees but saw no sign of the big buck.  Then by chance I was scanning the trees with my scope and located a doe laying in some deep shade where I had last seen the big buck.  I decided this was the doe that the big buck had been chasing because as all the other deer (does and small bucks )milled around this one doe stayed put.  Experience told me due to its behavior I had the right doe.  I quickly focused the camera on the opening next to the doe and waited another 40 minutes.  During this 40 minute period I thought about every possible scenario that could go down and the completely real chance that I would never see the buck again.  With the odds stacked against me, this 40 minute time period also found me literally praying that the buck would show itself again before the light was gone.  Finally, after 1 hour and 20 min,  in what can only be described as an answer to prayer a two point walked over to the sleeping doe and stood her up.  The two point miraculously pushed the doe right through the clearing I was focused on.  I jumped to my feet and stood shaking in anticipation and again checked the focus on the camera.  No sooner did I finish final camera preparations than the big buck stepped around the tree the doe had been laying under and I snapped three photos as he walked through the small clearing.  I snapped many more as he went through several other clearings but due to lighting and position I knew  it would be difficult to see the antlers in the photos and they wouldn’t be wall hangers.  Now that I at least had reference photos I decided to try and sneak on the buck in the thick trees.  I knew this was a long shot to say the least but I had to try.  Just as I suspected, once I entered the trees visibility was terrible.  I was about to give up and be happy with the photos I had when I heard the unmistakable sound of a buck racking a tree.  This was the break I needed.  I quickly put a stalk on the source of the noise.  I used the landscape to hide my movements as I hiked closer to the source of the noise.  Finally I topped over a small rise and peeked down to where I thought the sound had come from.  Sure enough to my surprise there stood the deer just staring at me.  I quickly set up and began snapping pictures.  Persistence paid off and I was able to get some pretty good photos before the buck took 2 steps disappearing back into the thick trees.  The buck has 7 on one side and 11 on the other with huge forks.  He is a magnificent animal and I hope to see him back next year; he has a good chance of doing just that owing to his affinity for the thick trees.

I think if I was the two point in this photo I woud go ahead and back down; he just doesnt have the weaponry yet.  I have to hand it to the little guy he sure kept trying to get close to the does but every time he was met by an angry charge.  It was fun to watch and photograph this herd of deer for several hours, and watch the herd dynamics.   

These great photos of the buck we call Tree Scraper were taken by Daren Brooks.  I didn’t realize this was Tree Scraper at first as he is smaller this year than he has been the 2 years prior.  He has also not had the one weak fork in the back prior to this year.  He is still a fantastic buck, it will be interesting to see how he looks next year, i am wondering if the antler growth is a result of nutrition or if he is just getting old.  Thanks to Daren for sharing the photos!
Photo by Darren Brooks

I snapped this last photo as old Tree Scraper tried to figure out just what I was and what I was doing.  It is always awesome to see some of these big bucks return year after year.  I cant help but wonder where he goes in the summer and how he consistently avoids the hunters; its as if hes a ghost and appears every year out of nowhere.
Photo by Seth Topham

Here are a couple of fantastic photos my friend Daren Brooks snapped.  Daren has sent in some great photos in the past and this year he is at it again.  He is getting some amazing stuff  and we will be posting more of his work soon.

Photo by Darren Brooks

What a great looking, heavy, 4 by 5.  Not only a great buck but a beautiful photo.   Thanks to Daren for sharing these photos.