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I hunt. I hunt deer. I hunt them with rifle, bow or camera. I am proud to be each kind of deer hunter. My love affair with deer hunting began when I was a child watching my parents getting geared up to go deer hunting, then anxiously waiting for them to get back home, hopefully with a buck. I loved hearing the stories of the hunts. I couldn’t wait to turn 14, the minimum legal age for deer hunting when I was a boy. The various youth hunts of recent years did not exist then, but when I was 12, my parents started to allow me to come along on their hunting expeditions in the sand dune area of what is now the Nordhouse Dunes Federal Wilderness. My family hunted from dawn to dark. Most of our time was spent sitting alone in fox holes with small charcoal fires in five-pound coffee cans to keep us from freezing to death. It was a great training ground for outdoor photography, which in my early years of hunting I had no idea I would become interested in someday. In between the fleeting moments of adrenaline rush upon spotting a deer and perhaps attempting to bag it, I spent untold hours perched high atop a sand dune taking in and learning to know and appreciate the spectacular dune landscape surrounding me for as far as the eye could see. The deer hunting quest, the incredible view, and even the fresh air ramming into my lungs made me feel most alive. Some of the greatest adrenaline rushes of my life have continued to involve stalking deer with rifle, bow or camera. But my greatest joy in hunting has derived from simply being in the outdoors, studying the landscape, learning to better see and appreciate its beauty, learning to be prepared, comfortable and at home there, having Mother Nature remind me time after time that this is where I belonged and still belong. In recent years, I have enjoyed spending a lot of time in hunting blinds with my camera. For the past several years, Brad and I have been blessed to have a wonderful business/friendship relationship with Legends Ranch near Bitely, Michigan, one of the finest whitetail deer hunting ranches in North America. Manager Robert Sergi and his highly skilled staff have treated us like family, giving us widespread access to their more than 2,000 acres of hunting land. My son Brad and I knew exactly which blind we wanted to be in on this Christmas card morning in 2016. The pine background of Strip Blind provided a beautiful, contrasting background for the falling snow. If a deer came out close enough, it would be framed against the contrasting snow on the ground. We saw several bucks that morning, a couple of them with much larger racks. Brad was photographing a massive buck to our right when I spotted a buck with a smaller but picture-perfect rack coming out from our left only 30 yards away. The shot I had been making in my mind for many years was materializing. Perhaps scenting us or hearing Brad’s shutter fire as he photographed the other buck, the wary buck stopped, looking in our direction. I fired. My “Legendary” experience making the wintertime deer photograph of my dreams was made. The buck walked on.

Wednesday Carferry in Fog

With the spring thaw in progress, a white deer stands out in a West Michigan forest on an April morning. Brad and I have spent hours hunting for albino and piebald white deer in a secret location we cannot divulge for the sake of the rare animals. Brad spotted this all-white piebald whitetail. The rare deer lacks the pink nose and eyes of a full albino but the dark eyes and nose made it look to me more like a polar bear. Photographing a polar bear in the wild remains on my bucket list.

Panorama

Legends Ranch Veterans Ceremony August

A Winter Legend

Bucks at Hydro Electric Plant

I was sitting in one of my favorite blinds at Legends Ranch on a cool mid-September morning. The ground fog was so thick in dawn’s early light that I could barely make out the bottom half of some small pine trees a few hundred yards away. As the fog began to lift, I noticed a smaller tree or bush underneath the edge of one of the pines. As I was about to look elsewhere, the bush moved and then grew two to three times in width. It was then that I realized I was actually looking at one of the most magnificent whitetail bucks I had seen in the several years of stalking bucks at the world-renowned hunting ranch near Bitely, Michigan. He was pivoting his head in my direction. I decided to name him Christmas Tree Buck due to the tree he chose to bed down by and because of the size of his rack. This was one of my most memorable mornings of my life deer hunting with camera or rifle.

Do you see them? Look closely. Do you see them now? Two fawns lying in the wet leaves. I made this image in my Uncle Rod’s backyard. He had spotted them while standing on his deck. He called me and I came out and stood in the rain to make this image.

Sep-08

Spotted Fawn Redone

I made my almost-daily stop at Northside Market near my home today to grab some stuff for dinner. When I came out and looked across Bryant Road, I spotted my first fawn of the season standing with her mom. My guess is this fawn had been born earlier today.

Ed Sanders called me today from Lincoln Hills and told me they found a fawn near the clubhouse next to the driving range. I drove there a short time later and made this image. Using my biggest lens, so I could keep my distance from the fawn, I lay down on my stomach to get eye to eye with the tiny whitetail deer.

One of our workshop students and I stumbled upon this fawn near one of the trails north of the Beechwood Campground inside Ludington State Park this morning. The fog and light rain add to the mood. F2.8 at 1/25, ISO 400, 70-200 mm lens at 200 mm

Whitetail deer are beautiful by themselves. This one looks especially pretty amidst cow vetch and green grasses. The doe glances my way momentarily after spotting me. I make two exposures and leave. F2.8 at 1/500, ISO 400, 300 mm lens at 300 mm

I have spent much of my life along the Pere Marquette River and have seen many deer swimming in the river. At this moment I am experiencing a first: a deer has decided to leap in the river and cross directly in front of our drift boat. At automobile speeds, our vessel would have hit it. Deer swim fast so at river current speed our boat left the deer time to safely cross and join its mother on the opposite bank. F3.5 at 1/800, ISO 400, 80-200mm lens at 135mm

Michigan views like this one on the Pere Marquette River make me feel unbelievably fortunate to be a guest in nature's home. As we float past these deer, they pause long enough to decide whether we are forest friends or foes. Photographing from a moving boat is like watching a moving picture. I study the constantly changing relationship between the deer and the forest, clicking the shutter to "stop the movie" and make still-shots only at what I see as optimum moments. Anticipating, seeing, and acting quickly are the keys to voyage photography. F2.8 at 1/640, ISO 1600, 80-200mm lens at 155mm

This fawn was born near my home recently and I have been trying to get a good picture of it for days. Now here it is, right in front of me on the Buttersville peninsula in a beautiful quality of light with a nice wooded background. I savor the view and make the picture. F2.8 at 1/60, ISO 800, 80-200 mm lens at 138 mm

When I finished playing soccer tonight at the fields along Bryant Road, I noticed two deer in the field of flowers across the street. Not wasting time to take my cleats or shin guards off, I snuck across the street and made this photograph. It was totally worth being sighted by innocent passers-by who must have thought I looked very strange. F5.6 at 1/400, ISO 1000, 600 mm lens with 1.4 extender at 850 mm