The ranch.

There is a ranch across the valley that is fast becoming a favorite place to photograph wildlife in a mostly undisturbed and natural environment. Yesterday I drove over there at the invitation of the caretaker. I saw several deer laying in the shade of some oak trees before I even reached the caretaker’s trailer. One doe (picture above) had an unusually small fawn for so late in the season. I doubt that it was more than a day old, and was busy at the "lunch counter". I stopped the truck and took a quick grab shot with a still camera, hoping for the best as I shot at high telephoto without any kind of a support. I reached for the video camera and a window mount, but Mama wasn’t going to stand still long enough for that. She moved off with her youngster in tow.

After picking up the ranch caretaker, we took a drive on the hillsides above the ranch. The place was alive with deer, bucks still in velvet. The trick as usual, was to catch them in a suitable spot for pictures, and hope they would stay put long enough to shoot some video footage. This link http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v610/BobMc/Video%20clips/?action=view&current=4448ffdb.flv
will take you to some streaming video that I put together. This is a large file (5.88 mb), so if you have a slow connection you might as well go have a cup of coffee while it downloads. Maybe two cups!