Chasing the Rut pt 1
With fall approaching, wildlife photographers all across the Northern Hemisphere are beginning to think about one thing: the rut.
Spanning some 6 months of the year, the rut is that magical time when ungulates (hooved mammals) descend into madness. Or, more accurately, it’s that time of the year when the males of the species stop eating and devote 100% of their efforts toward winning the hearts and minds of the ladies.
In the wild, ungulates are what researchers like to call tournament species. This means that the males must fight for the right to breed. And for this reason, the fall is when these animals are at their peak physical condition, strutting their stuff, and for the antlered, sporting their full regalia freshly shed of velvet.
A couple years ago I wrote a massive article all about photographing the rut in North America. Seeing how we are inching our way into this extraordinary time of the year once again, I am going to share that article as a series here.
If you like to photograph moose, whitetail deer, elk, mule deer, pronghorn, bison, bighorn sheep, etc. then you don’t want to miss this series of articles where I discuss some of the most important information you need to know to photograph these different species as well as my favorite locations to find them.
Chasing the Rut
Stepping out into the pre-dawn darkness, my breath hangs in the air - momentarily frozen in time. There’s the sting of cold on my face. The burn of my hands. It’s not like Yellowstone in the winter, with minus 40-degree temperatures that reaches deep inside your chest and steals the oxygen from your lungs, but it’s enough to let you know that it’s here. A time of change.
Each year I make an annual pilgrimage to Alberta, Canada. Packing my Land Rover, I shove camping gear next to pelican cases filled with camera equipment and pull out onto interstate. North is the new west.
My itinerary is always the same. I like my back roads, especially in Montana where speed limits on two lane roads are faster than 4 lane interstates in the east. You drive for hours without passing another vehicle sometimes. 287 north, to 89 – that super scenic highway of the west. From here I skirt the eastern edge of Glacier National Park before jumping the border at the Chief Mountain Port of Entry. Then it’s on to Calgary, Banff, the Icefields Parkway, Jasper.
Though I come to Jasper to lead a workshop every year now, I typically spend an extra week or two on my own in the Canadian Rockies in search of one thing: Cervus canadensis – elk.
Mid to late September is the peak of the elk rut in North America. Whether you are in New Mexico, Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, Yellowstone, or Jasper: elk do battle with each other when the aspen leaves are changing colors.
For a western wildlife photographer, the rut is something of a sacred time. You find yourself thinking about it around March or so. Three feet of snow can still be found in my yard in Montana. And quite frankly I’m usually someplace more tropical by this point. Honduras, maybe. Panama probably. The cloud forests of the high Andes in Ecuador are beautiful this time of year. Yet the thought of battle, the adrenaline pumping excitement of the fight and the chase begin to nag at me.
I come to Canada to photograph the elk rut for a number of reasons, but I can distill them all down to two things.
1. It’s colder
2. The glacial past of the area is still a lingering memory.
I don’t expect you to understand this second one, at least not yet. But you will.
First, let’s talk about the cold.
All animal behavior is, to some degree, driven by temperature. Forget elk for a minute. Ducks, geese, and swans don’t have to feed in the winter if the temperature rises above 45 degrees. This means on a 50-degree day, flight shots will be few and far between, behavior will be nil, and by and large waterfowl will be lounging around doing very little. On warm days during cold months, bears on the other hand will often emerge from so called “hibernation,” leave their dens, wander around looking for gainful employment before retreating back into their hibernaculum to toss and turn for a few more months.
Though temperature dictates the behavior of all animals, when it comes to the rut, and especially the elk rut, it becomes crucial for when and where these animals will be active. When the mercury climbs above 55 degree, the rut turns off. Elk retreat to the cooler temperatures of the shadowy forest and riverbeds. On September 5th, of 2019, the temperature was 104 degree in my adopted home of Bozeman, Montana. Elk rut, you ask? Not hardly. With the way things are going down in the lower 48 states, I haven’t seen a good elk rut in years. When it’s 80 degrees at the beginning of October, you know two things. First, we have completely broken the planet. And two, any and all rut behavior will be confined to after hours when temperatures aren’t going to give the elk a heat stroke. But up here, in the land of Tim Hortons and poutine fries, things are different. Things aren’t perfect. But they are at least a whole lot closer to normal than Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado these days.
Temperature plays a bigger role in my decision to travel to Canada than just the timing of the rut itself. Temperature impacts the way animals evolve, how they grow, who lives, and who dies. Think of it this way: colder temperatures mean bigger elk.
We call it Bergman’s rule. The farther north you find individuals of a species, the physically larger they will be from their southern counterparts. The average size grey wolf in Yellowstone is a mere 80lbs. I’ve had dogs bigger than these guys. However, the average sized wolf in the interior of Alaska is 120lbs. The same goes for elk. Where bulls in Colorado can reach up to 1,100lbs, those in Alberta can reach up to 1,500lbs. This is a 400-pound difference.
All of this has to do with an animal’s surface to volume ratio. Basically, the larger the animal, the more volume it has in relationship to its surface area. Surface area equals heat loss. Volume equals heat generation and retention. More volume, and you handle the cold better. Meaning, the bigger you are, the more heat you generate and retain. This is my excuse. It’s Bergman’s rule. I’m just prepared for the next ice age.
Then there is the glacier thing. Yes, there are photographs that can be made with glaciers in the background. Yes, these mountains and valleys were recently carved out by glaciers which makes them more dramatic than the 65-million-year-old Rocky Mountains in the States. However, my interest in glaciers has more to do with the size of the elk’s antlers than it does back drops.
I bet you didn’t see that one coming.
Glaciers act like giant bulldozers. They plow up the landscape and leave piles of powdered mountain laying around in the form of moraines. All this glacial till means that entire mountains have been pulverized into minerals that are taken up by the roots of plants; minerals that are eaten by the likes of elk; minerals that are important to the growth of antlers.
Yes, there is a dose of science behind what I do, how I plan my year, where I travel, and spend my time and money photographing.
And so, north for elk. This is my motto.
But elk are just one of many species out here that biologists like to call tournament species.
Don’t let this name turn you off. This isn’t the same as calling them a trophy species. A tournament species is one that fights for the right to breed. They fight with each other for the hearts and minds of women. Some might call it the survival of the fittest. Routine annual tournaments between men to guarantee that only the strongest and most capable males are breeding. In the world of elk, everybody is a would-be alpha male.
This is the rut in all of its glory.
When it comes to this time of year in North America, we find that just about every species of hooved mammal enters this hormonal phase. The one big exception to the rule are wild horses – which fight year-round. As for the other species, wildlife photographers have a grocery list to choose from. Whitetail deer, mule deer, moose, bison, pronghorn, mountain goats, and bighorn sheep. Each of these species has their own time to fight, their own time to shine. And an ambitious wildlife photographer could literally spend a solid six months, August through December, photographing the rut in all its many forms – nonstop.
One of these days I’m going to do this. I fantasize about it each year. I daydream about taking six months to chase the rut. And don’t worry, if I finally do it, you will get to read all about it right here.
In this article, I am going to do something a little bit different. Given that it is fall, or, well, technically autumn – there is a difference – I am going to lay out a road map for the rut. Species by species, month by month, I am going to divulge my favorite locations for chasing down one of North America’s greatest wildlife spectacles.
For all my readers outside of the US, I offer up my sincerest apologies about this. This is a truly international community of readers and thus I don’t want this publication to be yet another form of American exceptionalism. But for the record, part of this does takes place in Canada, where I am now, sitting next to a campfire high up in the mountains writing this particular article.
The idea behind this article is to give readers the knowledge that they need to truly take advantage of the North American rut. As noted above, for the wildlife photographer, this is one of the most exciting things to happen on this continent each year. But it’s not just about the fighting. Although we can create some great images of those fights, the real reasons for why I focus on species when they are in the rut is two-fold.
First, this is when the males of those species in question look their best, when they are dressed in their finest. Antlers are fully grown. Velvet has been shed. Males are swollen with testosterone, making them larger and more regal. Secondly, this is when they are the most preoccupied with other things. Most species that enter the rut actually stop eating throughout the entire process. They become hyper focused on one thing and one thing only. You can witness and photograph a litany of natural behavior, and all without the animals paying us any mind in the process. It’s as if the universe looks down upon us poor wildlife photographers and finally takes pity for all the times we have been sent home with empty cards.
For ease of use, I have decided to break this down chronologically – in order of happening. Thus, we begin with August and move species by species right on through until December. Time of year, my favorite locations, and a few pointers will be thrown in along the way. This is a location guide. A seasonal guide. It’s natural history. And treatise on all things rut.
There are several species that I have purposefully left out of this list: caribou, musk ox, mountain goats, stone sheep, Dall sheep, and desert bighorns (which are different from the Rocky Mountain bighorns discussed below). I have never photographed these animals during the rut and therefore they are excluded.
To Be continued . . .