~A conclusion to this latest series of the Whitetail rut..~
All too often in the game of love, the contenders do not know when to quit. And as these two beautiful boys show…. in any battle, there will always be a looser.

Even though he faces a long recovery and may have already lost the sight in his right eye, I believe the buck in the second photograph will live to compete another year.

I fear that the fate of the buck in the first photograph will not be the same. These creatures do not only have each other to contend with, they live in an area that is also home to wolves, and I doubt that he survived for more than a few days.

Hmmm, kind of makes you think doesn’t it.. ?

Photo taken in Yellowstone National Park~3/25/2008~F13~ISO160~1/500~400mm

I came across this healthy young wolf last March. It had just finished filling it’s belly and was chasing a coyote around the hillside away from its supper, when they both came over the hill and side-hilled along the road right next to the jeep… a photographic dream come true..

On an impromptu trip to Yellowstone yesterday I got the rare opportunity to photograph this fantastic Yellowstone wolf. To capture a close up photo of one of these beautiful carnivores you either have to be lucky enough to be “In the right place at the right time” or have a telephoto lens, which I would have given almost anything for yesterday; as we found a pack of wolves resting on an open hillside about a half mile away. There were at least 11 of them in this particular pack and we watched them as they traveled across the ridge. They moved down to an elk carcass to feed, and one particular dark colored wolf proceeded to antagonize a bull bison that happened to wander through their feast, but in the end he decided that it was not “his time“. We moved on up the road and I was photographing some Canadian Geese feeding in the river when this beauty came over the hillside chasing a coyote that had also been scavenging on the carcass.
As all this activity and more took place around us a few miles down the road another pack of wolves was taking down another cow elk only about 100 yards from the road. The people stopping along the road ended up spooking them away, leaving a feast for the coyote and other scavengers of the area, which moved in within minutes. The snow is melting in the park and it was a beautiful day with the weather alternating back and forth from blinding, bright sunshine to almost whiteout conditions as the fog settled in and the snow would fall in large hypnotizing flakes. This time of year the North entrance is the only way into the park by automobile, leaving access through the Lamar Valley to the small town of Cooke City, Montana. In one day, along this 55 mile stretch road, we saw 9 different wolf kills, cow, bull and calf bison, bull and cow elk, magpies, white-tailed deer, antelope (buck and doe), mule deer, coyote, fox, Big Horn sheep, Canadian geese, golden eye ducks, mallards, bald and golden eagles, ravens, wolves and even Grizzly bear tracks.