With the sound of gunfire seemingly all around my rural Missouri home (firearms deer season opened a few days ago), I’m re-posting a blog post from 6 years ago today … enjoy!
This past weekend I drove to central Kansas in hopes of photographing some rare and endangered Whooping Cranes that are migrating to their wintering grounds at Aransas NWR in southern Texas. Unfortunately, as we reached our destination, the area was under a severe storm. Winds of up to 90 mph were recorded, along with a deluge of 2″ of rain (in a very short time) and hail up to 2″ in diameter. Seemed the Whoopers were frightened off … imagine that!
But, just as every cloud has a silver lining, every trip to a National Wildlife Refuge has a good side, too. During my brief stay at Quivira NWR, I was able to photograph some really nice White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) bucks as they wandered the refuge and wooed the does. Here are a few of my favorite images of some of the bucks we encountered:
Ironically, about an hour later I left the refuge. Along the highway, an even larger buck ran out in front of me. $3,000 later we were able to pick up our car at the body shop! I had insurance, but needless to say I still haven’t recouped the “travel costs” from this trip! :o)