[Leica] A morning by the river (long)

[Doug Herr <Telyt@compuserve.com>]

Sunday mornings are my time for wildlife photography, and for the last
several Sundays I've been visiting Ancil Hoffman Park, a wilderness area in
the floodplain of the American River in Sacramento County.  This park is
the scene of last spring's Turkey and Telyts adventures first reported here
on the LUG.

For much of the summer the turkeys' activities were under cover as hens
brooded their chicks and kept them hidden from predators.  Now that the
daylength is once again similar to spring, the males are gobbling and
displaying, but with reduced fervor and no attention from the hens.  The
resident Mule Deer, OTOH, are most active and visible in the fall as the
bucks gather and keep their bands of does, and defend their herds from
interlopers.  It has been Mule Deer, particularly the bucks, that I've been
after with my ever-present Telyts.

The deer are not diurnal animals.  Whether they're nocturnal or crepuscular
I don't know but what I do know is that by the time the sun is much above
the horizon the deer have bedded down for the day in dense thickets. 
Ordinarily I hate using a tripod but shutter speeds of 1/15 sec generally
are not hand-holdable with a 400mm lens so accepting the hassles of the
beast was better than missing the photos I wanted.

My experience this morning with the tripod in dense underbrush did nothing
to change my opinion of the evil contraptions.  As I carried it, weeds
grabbing the distant end of the tripod's leg made it swing unpredicatably
in to trees or bushes, and as I untagled the thing I'd be knocked off
balance or step on a branch hidden under the grass and find myself sprawled
on the ground or in a bush with tripods and Telyts landing under or on top
of me.  So much for the stealthy approach.

I missed several photos while getting the tripod stabilized on uneven
ground or while fighting weeds pulling on the legs as I spread the tripod
for stability.  In comparison, the Leica shoulder stock is a stroke of
genius.

Having gotten the tripod set up I did manage some photos.  The lens of
choice is the 400mm f/5.6 Telyt with Televit rapid-focus device.  Not only
is this lens a half-stop faster than the f/6.8 Telyt, but the Televit is
(IMHO) much easier to use on a tripod than the f/6.8 Telyts.  For a film
box I used the Leicaflex SL, not only for its continuously-variable shutter
speeds whit manual exposure control, but also for the viewfinder.  A number
of years ago I was talking with Helen and Cecil Rhode, wildlife
photographers in Kenai, Alaska.  Cecil claimed (and I agree) that the SL's
viewfinder is hard on the film budget.  The view is so fantastic that each
view through the camera seems so dazzlingly new and fresh that the index
finger's reflex is to make another (and another, and another...) exposure.

Last weekend I found the main herd's favorite hangout; got several photos
of a couple of small bucks sparring with each other, and caught sight of
the buck I wanted photos of.  Today I found the big buck and used more
film.  Photographing large mammals not the same as photographing birds. 
For one thing, I hardly ever get the belly-view shots with mammals that I
get too often with birds.  For another, there are few birds that can
actually injure me.

My approach has been to act like a prey species: be aware of everything
around me, don't stare, no sudden movements.  Before I work much more with
testosterone-loaded antlered animals I GOTTA LEARN THEIR BODY LANGUAGE!!! 
These guys walked within 20 feet of me, and though they didn't exhibit any
threatening behavior, if I had accidentally said anything treatening or
insulting I could have been seriously injured.  I've been chased before
(see moose photo on my website) and it's not much fun.

The 400 + Televit worked very well.  I'll post a message when I've gotten
these photo on my website.

Doug Herr
Sacramento
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/telyt