Fun In The Field

It's great to be able to combine two things I like doing - 1) being outside, hiking, observing wildlife and 2) photography. My son and I went out to Meadowood the other day with the hopes of getting close to some deer. The challenge was to position ourselves in an open field (the grass was about mid-thigh high), concealed and ready to photograph. He served as a spotter and I had my camera mounted on a tripod. The camera was high enough just so the lens cleared the grass. This profile was not below the top of the grass, but that's not really needed when dealing with wildlife. It's more about being concealed, breaking the pattern of human form. And, if possible, being down wind. This is not always possible, especially when you have set up what amounts to a "hasty" blind and when you don't know which way the animal may approach.

We were dressed in camouflage clothing (hunting attire, basically). We sat on the ground with a large piece of burlap (painted with different shades of green and brown) draped over us as well as the camera and tripod. We were lucky in that two deer made their way towards us. However, most of the time all we could see were their backs because they were eating grass near the ground (meaning their heads were buried below the high grass line). So, we mostly just observed and thought how great it was that we were in the middle of this field and the deer were 1) either not aware of our presence or 2) aware of the lump of camouflaged burlap and determined it to not be a threat.

One did pop her head up from time to time -

After awhile, my son decided to move down the hill to the rear of where we set up our blind. By standing up and moving, the deer figured out we weren't what they thought we were.

He had a hunch that there may be some deer just over a rise about 100 yards from our location. He kept a low profile and moved in that direction. He was right, he flushed out about 8 deer. I just stood there at the top of the hill and just took in the sight. I wasn't ready with the camera. Anyway, he made his way back up to me (see the first image in this post) and we headed out a little wiser to the art of stealth and stalking.