The Waterton elk rut

These are fabulous photos Clive. It must have been lovely to see these animals in real life like this.

Very true. I tend to be a but fussy and have "liked"  Facebook posts with photos that look okay. Then I look on my computer at the posts the images are horrid glop. 
I use a Samsung 10-inch tablet for reading news at night. I sometimes look at my own post images on it. Provided I am not on Facebook (that tortures images sometimes), the images are so sharp and crisp on that screen. 

Okay ... here is an edited version of my Facebook post last night. 

Where to start—and end? Last Friday, ____ , who lives near Waterton Lakes NP, tagged me in a post about the elk she photographed that day. Thanks ___. ☺

So, on Saturday, October 29, I drove to Waterton. When I arrived, there were a lot of elk at the usual rutting-area location—but they were quite far away. Over close to 4 hours they drifted closer and then farther back to the trees—I even left two times but fortunately, they came back. By 4:30 PM, there were no other people along the viewing road and the elk seemed to lose their caution and moved out and eventually came quite close to the viewing road—where I was sitting in the Nissan Rogue. When I left the main viewing area at 5:45 PM, a separate herd was close to another nearby road. I went there and took more photos.

There were 400 and 500 elk in the general area—perhaps more. In the panorama photo there are close to 200 elk and this was just a small part of the overall herd(s).


NOTE: For you photography geeks, I need to explain the light (or lack of light) because it changed all afternoon and was never constant. For a short while around 2:30, there was short-lived, patchy sunlight and then diffuse light. But most of the time it was cloudy and got duller as the day progressed. When I left, the camera was set at ISO 2,000. White balance was all over the map.


Could not decide to post a lot of photos (that I done) or just a few. You know where the back button is. 😉I just wanted to share what a wonderful experience this was—despite the light. (And miserable howling, cold wind. But well worth it.) Short comments with a few of these photos. You’ll catch on—there were a lot of elk.

Photos are in random order. No logic here...

Thanks Helen. Yes, the bulls bugle. It is very cool. I took some video on Saturday and learned something about the cows. I knew they don't bugle but they bleat...something I never knew. As they were leaving the staging area for the night they walked by me (perhaps 200 feet or more away) and were bleating. Very cool. 

This short video shows bull elk bugling... you can hear the high-pitch bugle quite well. 



This 40-second video shows some of the herd last Saturday. Sorry for the wind noise. (Was chilly.) I do not know how to mute only portions of a video in Elements Premiere. Be sure to have the sound up in the last half.  

The videos are in DropBox. Let me know if there are problems. 

Yes. I recall my first digital camera that produced noisy photos at ISOs below 1,000. APS-C sensors were much better and then there was a huge leap in high-ISO quality when cameras jumped to full-frame sensors.