White-tailed Deer, doe and fawn, Green Island Wetlands, Iowa
Me and a lot of other fellow wildlife photographers, we all have them somewhere in our picture library, the photo of a White-tailed Deer, looking at the camera with their beautiful eyes. No doubt about it, this is cute and people love to look at this kind of a picture. But does it really tell the story about what’s different between a ”White-tailed” or any other deer in the world? I don’t think it does. Even at most images taken from the side, the unique white on its tail is mostly hidden and hardly visible. Since many years I wanted to make the photo I show you today here in my blog.
We see this gesture with their erected white tail when the deer is on the run quite often here in our woods, but it is mostly a very brief moment that is hard to capture. Yesterday at sunset time I took a last slow drive on the gravel road that borders the Green Island Wetlands on the west side when I saw a doe with her last year born fawn. They moved parallel to the road on my left hand side between prairie grass and were not overly concerned about my presence. There is a water-filled canal between us and I figured out they wanted to cross it at a small bridge down the road. I let them be always a little bit ahead of my car. They stopped, looked at me, I made some clicks, and they moved on. As we approached the bridge I stopped, turned the car and blocked the road, hoping for a shot from the side as they would cross the road. It turned out even better. Both deer crossed the bridge and after that ran for a short distance before they turned towards the woods on the right. I know, ”butt shots” are rude and usually a sign of a missed moment in wildlife photography. This time the photographer drove home with a smile on his face…
P.S.: In case you ask, I have plenty of photos of both deer from this encounter, but this photo sums it all up for the story about White-tailed Deer. There are not too many animals that justify their name by just an iconic gesture…