Elk Rut Season - Benezette, Pennsylvania

okay so this weekend and last weekend I've been in Penza benna's at Pennsylvania for the elk rutting season and I can honestly tell you that I never even heard banners up before and tell her I spoke to a photographer another photographer and he did let me know about this I'm gonna get back to him in a little while but if it wasn't for him I wouldn't have known anything about this or like I said are the up rutting season and this is a this is a five hour drive from my house to here so once I did hear about it it was pretty much a gimme to come out here and kind of enjoy the experience that I did and I'll show you a lot more here in coming moments now as I like to do when I go either landscape or wildlife photography I'd like to do some research of the area as well as or the animals that I'm we taking pictures of and in this case I did some research on the animals which is the elk and some of the stuff that I did find was that the the bull elk they can weigh up to if not more than 900 pounds and the the cows they can weigh a dainty 700 pounds now I've never seen them in person before this is the first time I did see them and to see them up close you know within 100 yards of view is when you see 900 pounds or 700 pound animal you really do get an appreciation for how incredibly powerful they are and how incredibly beautiful they are so some other things I did find out is that the bull elk especially during the rut season they demand respect and they get that respect some of the things that I witnessed when I was here now I'm certainly not really knowledgeable and alcohol but some of the things I did witness as I was watching them is they do that out those calls and it's such an incredibly beautiful call that the Bulls let out as well as the zoo cows but the some of the calls that I did notice is one is to tell the herd get back here you belong to me you get back here the other thing is to tell them well let's go it's time to move on we're gonna go and we're gonna hide out in the woods for a while and that's the other call the last one and the most important call that I noticed is to tell competitors stay away this is my herd and if you get any closer we're gonna fight unfortunately because of the the rut season those fights do happen now being down here and the time that I've been here I wit aspiring more than I did any fights however I did speak to a couple people who who are camping here and they did mention that they were they had a hard time sleeping at night because they did hear the the fighting as well as that bugling that the the the bullet out now unfortunately in the morning that happens all through the night and then in the morning you kind of see the results of what happens to some of those guys as a matter of fact I watched as two bulls were kind of crossing in front of me you know distance in front of me and they could barely put any pressure on your leg because I took a beating the night before you know it when somebody comes down here and they kind of you know when they're taking pictures they kind of expect that type of thing that happen and and I didn't expect that to kind of see that kind of thing but that doesn't make any less heartbreaking to see these these poor guys you know they just took a beating a night before and nine hundred pounds and it can barely put any pressure on her leg and you can only imagine how horrible that must be and you know they were because they couldn't put any pressure on there they would you know sit down and lay down and do whatever they can just to kind of take that pressure off of them now as far as the cows they are equally as impressive as the Bulls everybody goes and takes the pictures of the bulls and rightfully so they're they're just there's something about them that just that you want to take that picture out of them but the cows are equally impressive they are so incredibly beautiful and they had this this beautiful little meek little call that they put out now you know I probably use this term heartbreak of heartbreaking a little bit too much here but I did witness one time a a cow crossed the the river but the baby did not cross I know if it was scared to cross the river or just know it was lagging behind whatever the reason was and you could hear that that cow calling its little baby and if you ever hear a cow it's call it is so incredibly cute and you just he can't help but to smile listening to that but again it was a little bit heartbreaking because she was calling her baby eventually did I did witness them get back together but they're they're equally as impressive now another thing that I kind of witnessed was there you know kind of a give-and-take between the the the bulls and the cows the cows they need the protection of the Bulls as well as when it's mating season they need the bolts for that reason as well and the the the Bulls there there and in and they run the show they don't that anything happened when they're around we'd say try not say anything happened when they're around so now one of the the best parts coming down here and I didn't know that really until I did come down here was that the elk are protected which means that they could not be hunted and as a result of that the elk are pretty a climatic two people more so than deer you know dear it can be five hundred yards away and they and they see or smell a human being and they take off whereas the elk what I notice is you know they really didn't take off because like I said they bit they're a little bit more acclimated to people than the deer are so anyways before I get going too much further here what I wanted to do is I wanted to show you some of the sights and sound of the time that I've been down here so here we go [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so now before I move on to showing you the images that I'm really looking forward to sharing with you guys I just wanted to kind of let you know that it really wasn't gonna be practical for me to kind of walk you through those settings as I was you know taking the pictures and the reason why I say that is because it was literally changing from day to day even moment to moment it was just changing especially in the fog it was so incredibly thick and as a result of that the it was pretty dark and the ISO was just it was skyrocketing it sometimes I was at one point I was actually using a 3200 ISO and when you're up that high that the pictures are just so incredibly grainy that sometimes if not most of the time they're just unusable and it just really wasn't it wasn't kind of worth talking talking through those so what I can't tell you though is that I was in a manual setting the entire time and one of the constants that I was that I was in was my aperture setting that was either at a 5.0 or 6.3 depending on how far I was zooming out that was one of the constants other than that everything it was just changing as I went along so one last thing one to mention is I kind of want to give a special thank you and a shout out to Harry Collins of Harry Collins photography if it wasn't for him I wouldn't even known about as that Pennsylvania and certainly wouldn't even come down here so I really do appreciate the fact that he mentioned that to me and you know spent a little time down there with them so I left a description I sorry I left the link in the description below if you have an opportunity please visit site he's an incredible talent and you won't be disappointed if you do there's a site so anyways yeah I'm gonna go hide right now and I'm gonna show you these pictures and I hope you enjoy them [Music] okay guys I really do hope you enjoyed those pictures it was quite an incredible experience to be down here and see everything in person as I mentioned before I see them only on TV I never seen them in person so it's just an incredible experience you know when you have your lens out there and you're zoomed in so incredibly far it's you can see them like right there in front of you it's it's absolutely incredible I mean you can see when they're walking you could see their muscle their muscle mass and in their legs and then also when you zoom in even closer you could see the details in their eyes it's just again just an incredible experience one that I definitely will take with me as for as long as I possibly can now I'll kind of give you some of the positives and negatives I'll go with the negatives first it kind of just not goes out of the way I guess myself and and maybe all of us need to have a lot more patience with people who are using their cell phone to take pictures just because other people have you know camera equipment and camera gear and we're walking around with all this expensive camera gear while people who are using their cell phones don't have that that doesn't mean the people who don't have that equipment or not don't have the right to take the pictures they they definitely do and sometimes those pictures come out incredibly beautiful as well but to do that and to get sodam credibly close to these animals some of them are upwards near hunt 900 pounds and you're getting so incredibly close to these to these animals not knowing what they can do in any given moment it's just it just a little bit scary and it's you know there's a safety thing there that I just wish people would really be more cognizant of than than they really are the other thing to kind of really horrify me actually happened today and that was we were you know kind of going to this area where we got a lot of our pictures and I saw the elk they actually cross the river to go up up the hill you know all the way through the debt throughout the day and they'll stay up in the hill and then at night they'll come back down or at sunset they'll come back down and people were lined up all along the river which was actually preventing the outcome crossing the river they were actually literally scared to cross the river now imagine that a whole entire herd I was trying to cross the river and they just couldn't because there was something people just trying to get that ideal shot and it was just horrifying to me III actually watch from a distance and I said to myself ex I said to my daughter I just can't do this anymore I had to walk away from it so that was the kind of the negative Spearin PSA's however that does not diminish the positive experiences it was just absolutely amazing to me to see these to see these animals up close again when you see them when you haver zoom on you can see every single part of them you know how strong they look and you can see the details in their eyes and in kind of their actions towards each other it's just good I'm unbelievably impressive and one kind of experience that I'll take with me for quite a long time so I hope this video kind of you know when I share this with you I hope it does kind of show that and you know it was like I said just an incredible experience and who knows maybe I'll do this again so anyways yeah I have to reluctantly go back home now and it's going to be about a 5-hour trip but while I was here it was it was definitely impressive and I I again I hope you guys enjoyed this video if you did I appreciate if you can please give me a thumbs up as well as subscribe and share it if you can I would really mean a lot to me so anyways again thank you so much for watching this video and I'll see you again soon

Channel: Time Raider Films

Views: 7,412

Rating: 4.8974357 out of 5

Keywords: Elk, Bull Elk, Cow Elk, Benezette, Benezette Pennsylvania, Wildlife Photography, Joseph Piotter, Canon 7d mark II, Elk Bugling, Elk Fight, Wildlife Vlog, Wildlife Tutorial, Fling Squirrel, Autumn, Elk Rut, Elk Rutting Season, Joseph Piotter Photography, Photographing Elk, Photography, Tutorial, How to Photograph, Hiking in Benezette, Bull

Id: 0pHnJL_FFso

Length: 13min 27sec (807 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 22 2018