Huge Bucks In Northern Pa...

This is one of those days I do a photo disclaimer. I know the image quality is poor and it is not something I would normally show someone because of it, BUT these bucks were awesome and I wanted to share them with the wildlife lovers on the site.

This was taken last month in Elk County at Hicks Run. It was early morning still mostly dark and foggy and I was trying to sneak up on them, yea right. A doe spotted me right away and started snorting and waving her flag. The herd started moving slowly across the field with me in stealth mode trying to get closer and got a shot of them. At one point a large buck left the field and entered the woods ahead of me to my left. He stayed their for the duration snorting on a regular basis to alert the herd.

I finally got to an area that I could put the tripod down and get a couple of photographs before they had enough of me and fled the are. I started by shooting left to right getting the nice buck in the first photograph, as I panned I got the buck with the beautiful rack in photo two. At this point I was pleased to see such a quality buck that I never imagined what was further to the right. As I was panning to get the deer on the right the deer began to run so I got the camera around and got one quick shot off. If you look close all four deer on the right are bucks, two of them being the ones in the first two photos. And if you compare racks the one looking at us makes the nice buck in photos two almost seem small compared to him. These four bucks don't include the one that went into the woods and there was also a number of doe in the herd that I didn't have time to shoot.

Now for the shooting information, like I said the sun had not come up yet so it was still almost dark, it rained the night before so it was very foggy also. The photos were taken from a tripod at 600 mm, ISO 6400 (yes I said 6400) 60/sec at 5.6. At that ISO I did not expect quality but I had never seen a rack that big in the wild on a white tail deer before. I hope you enjoy the photographs for what they are and that is beautiful wildlife, I know I had a great time seeing them then and now.