Thursday, August 27, 2009

Help Has Arrived...







I wanted to start today's Elk rescue series off with one more set of photos of the Elk trying to escape the chains. The first five photographs are in order and were taken in a two second time period starting at 8:08:58 and ending at 8:09:00. All were recorded at the same settings, 292 mm, ISO 640, 1/500 at f4.5. As I mentioned on a previous post I found it necessary to keep the ISO up to get a fast enough shutter speed to record the action.

Around 8:20 a.m. another conservation officer arrived equipped with a gun to shoot darts and the equipment needed to handle the situation. He quickly surveyed the scene and at 8:25 fired a tranquilizer dart into the hind quarters of the bull. The photo of him standing at the tree was taken at 8:25:36 at the time the dart struck the rear quarters of the Elk (note the dart in the side that the leg is lifted). The video was taken by Shane, turn up the volume as he was recording when the officer fired the dart. The next photo shows the two conservation officers waiting for the drugs to take effect, it was shot at 8:28 with my D70. The last two photographs show the dart in the hind quarters of the bull and the drugs beginning to take effect on him. It took about 5 minutes for them to work allowing the officers to move in and help the Elk.

Tomorrow will be my last post on this incident, if you have not already looked at Shane's blog please do so as he posted two videos that are different than what I posted hereand he made another new post today. I also want to remind everyone that I am not trying to glorify the incident as no one there could have felt worse for the animal than what I did. I am thankful that the outcome was good and that we did not have to leave on a sad note.

4 comments:

Sparky said...

I think this is a good series, it is like reading a good book hard to stay away. And no I don't think it is a bad thing. It shows what happens when people move in around our wildlife. Have you talked to the state about using some of the videos and/or pictures for their training?

This Is My Blog - fishing guy said...

Brad: What a neat time to share with your son. I read through all your posts and it was a neat story. Thanks for sharing your time in the PA mountains.
BTW: Check out the young buck that came into my yard.

Willard said...

You are doing a wonderful job reporting the story, Brad.

I have been getting a small amount of spam on the Camera Critters posts, and will have to go the word verification route too if it gets worse.

poefusion said...

i'm glad to see someone came with a tranquilizer gun so as to help this elk. it's looking like he's finally getting the help he needs.