I recently returned from my annual fall trip to Colorado. Overall the weather was great, but the aspen seemed to have a weird change in the fall. I many areas, you could find trees in peak color, some still very green, and still others where the leaves had already completely dropped, all right next to each other. Regardless, it is a beautiful time to visit the Rockies for those of you that haven’t done so , yet.
I ended up staying there for almost 3 months, during which I had incredible opportunities to shoot (photograph) elk, moose, bighorn sheep, pronghorn, mule and white tailed deer. I finally found my first bull moose, shot probably the best pictures I have ever taken of elk, and got to experience bighorn and both deer species up close and personal. My favorite place to see bighorn sheep is Waterton Canyon, west of Denver. It is owned by Denver Water and they closed it the day after I got there because like most of the west, they had had a very dry summer. As a result, the bears were showing up in the canyon in much larger numbers than normal and it seemed they were attracting a bunch of idiots who seemed to think it was a good idea to take selfies of themselves and the bears! They finally re-opened the canyon in November, so I eventually got to go up the canyon and got some incredible shots of bighorn rams, up close and personal. The sound that rams butting heads makes is quite impressive at close range!
One of the best places to see large bucks is the Rocky Mountain Arsenal NWR. This year I saw more white tailed bucks than I had ever seen previously. What was really amazing were the mule deer bucks this year. I saw deer with the largest racks, ever. It was not uncommon to see deer with 7,8,9 or more points on each side. These deer haven’t been hunted in over 30 years, and they have grown some big bucks out there!
All in all, it was a great time and I will have lots of pictures to edit for a while and will be adding a lot of new ones to the web site. Stay tuned!!