I got up early, a good hour before the rest of my family who was still comfortable snoozing away in our little ‘hunting cabins’. My plan was to head out to a nearby wooded hillside covered in oaks in hopes of using my rattling horns (antlers) to entice a big buck within shooting range. I had scouted the spot the previous day and just about every cedar tree on the hill was marked by bucks in rut. I noted several very fresh scrapes under overhanging limbs that had been nibbled on and rubbed by bucks leaving their calling cards to let receptive doe in the area that they were ready for some serious romance.
This ‘hunt’ differed from my other hunts where meat for the freezer and possibly antlers for the wall is my primary goal. I didn’t have my CVA muzzleloader or Cascade center fire slung over my shoulder on this early morning outing. My trusty Nikon D 3500 camera with 300 mm. zoom lens had replaced my rifle on this hunt. I was in high hopes of getting some great shots for upcoming magazine articles as well as some video footage for this week’s, “A Sportsmans Life” TV show which airs on Carbon TV as well as YouTube each week.
My ‘camp’ for this ‘hunt’ was four very nice, secluded cabins nestled at the end of a park road at Wind Point Park located on the shores of Lake Tawakoni, a few miles west of Lone Oak, Texas. Our family had our little campout planned for several months and it just happened to coincide with the beginning of the whitetail rut. There is a very healthy population of free ranging whitetail deer on the beautiful 200-acre park and I know of no other place that’s better to film deer. Ryan Fergus, the operator at the park, says many of his guests book cabins and RV spaces in the fall primarily because of the great photo opportunities, many just like to ride the serpentine roads with deer feed and entice the normally shy animals out of the cover.
Your outdoor scribe was not the least bit unhappy about not actually hunting this particular day, after all I was hunting wild deer, just not with a rifle or bow. I actually eagerly anticipated this” hunt” for several months. It was a great opportunity to spend time with the family and hopefully shoot some great still photos and video. I was not disappointed!
Rattling antlers to entice rutting bucks in close is definitely a hit or miss endeavor. It usually works best during the early stages of the whitetail rut but can produce late season action as well. After a couple cups of coffee, I eased out of our cabin just at the break of day and walked a couple hundred yards back into the woods, found a comfortable log to set myself and began gently rattling my ‘rattling horns’. I had already spooked a couple of doe that were feeding on acorns on the hillside as I walked into the dense woods. As I began rattling, I noted movement back in the brush and then a fully mature doe appeared. She ambled down the hill toward a dry creek bed and disappeared. Then, in about 5 minutes I again noted movement ahead in the woods, in exactly the same spot where the doe had passed. From the blocky body and occasional glimpse of antler, it was easy to see this was a buck and it appeared to be a big one, hot on the trail of the doe. Nose to the ground the buck came at a trot and was about to head down into the creek bed and out of sight but he paused in his tracks when he heard my rattling horns. I banged away on the antlers, doing my best to create the sound of a ‘sure nuff’ buck fight. I wanted the buck to think there was a couple of bucks fighting over the doe and entice him in for a closer look. My plan worked perfectly. The big eight pointer stopped and made a beeline toward me, his body language through the heavy cover left no doubt his intention, there was a fight going on and he was obviously the dominate buck of the area, no youngsters were moving in on his territory! The lens on the video camera was set wide on a tripod to capture all the action. I had set my rattling antlers down and had the shutter on the Nikon snapping actions shots as the buck made his way toward me through the brush. This was almost-almost- as exciting as if I had been hunting with a rifle or bow!
As the morning progressed, I captured some great footage on film, both still shots and video. I was even fortunate enough to use the ‘long lens’ to get an excellent shot of a big buck marking a ‘licking branch’ above a scrape with his preorbital glands, located just below the corner of its eye. I’ve watched bucks leave their calling card on overhanging branches many times in the past but when I later enlarged the photo I had taken, the tip of the branch was positioned perfectly at the corner of the buck’s eye; a once in a lifetime photo opportunity for me. Had I been actually hunting, this buck would have hopefully been on the ground long before he made it to his scrape.
GEARING UP FOR WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY I defiantly do not consider myself as a professional wildlife photographer but through my many years as an outdoors writer, I have had thousands of photos published and a few even made cover shots. I use what many consider an entry level camera, the same Nikon D3500 I’ve had for the past decade or so. I simply don’t want to pack a very expensive camera around on some of the rough country hunts and have found the 3500 with its 24 megapixels and Nikon lens does a fine job. Quality lenses are a prerequisite to getting good shots and I own only two, a Nikon 18-55 mm. for close shots and the Nikon 70-300 mm. for distance shots. I’m not filming elk at 800 yards with this rig, but it works well for creating clear images of game out to about 100 yards which suffices for most of the photography I do. I do us a monopod to steady the camera and a tripod for staged shots using the camera’s timer. The monopod is simply a pole with adjustable height with a fitting on top to attach the camera. While it’s possible to simply hold a camera still for close in shots such as shooting photos in a boat, when using the telephoto lens, steady is very important.
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