Male1:Our native red deer is our largest land mammal, and although shy of man, it can leave some tell tale signs of its presence. The new born fawns are distinctive with their white spots, and initially they stay close to their mothers for their constant feeding regime. In late spring, the stag prop their antlers then re-grow them again as their tools for combat for the autumn deer war. They come in an amazing variety of shapes and sizes. On Managed Highland Estates, deer are provided with additional food to supplement their diet during the harsher weather. This can present a great opportunity for the photographers to get to these magnificent animals in the wild.
Male2: So we’re making our way down a fairly bumpy track in fairly climate weather, has to be said, to the highest corner of northwest Scotland, to the Aladale Wilderness Reserve in Sutherlands. Traditionally in this part of the highlands, deer, on stalking estates are fed during the winter to maintain their condition. The moorlands that they live on is, is fairly inhospitable, both in terms of weather and also in terms of poor quality of food that it offers. So, supplementary food is often put out at various locations but in this estate, another traditional highland estates. So what we’re gonna do is make our way up the glade to an area where we know the deer congregates. And we’re actually going to try and bait them in using food in the same way that you would do garden birds to a bird feeder. What we’ll actually gonna do is use potatoes, so we’ve got couple of buckets of tattys in the back here, and when we get farther down the glade, assuming we do in this weather, then we’ll see what we can do with them. We’ve arrived at this fairly remote part of the glade, this area is open moorland, and I originally saw what look about 5 or 6 red deer. But, it’s a little bit like Zulu, they keep coming up over the ridge and there’s probably 20, 25 maybe now and still more animal is appearing. You see it sorts of keep seeing heads pop up from behind the knolls. So they’ve seen the land rover, they heard the land rover, they associate it with food and they’re starting to move in slowly. A little bit intimidating really. Okay, we’re gonna get the food out. Oh, the weather’s really, really bad now. Hi guys, come on, it’s dinner time. So what I’m gonna do is try and get the deer to come into the food up on this ridge so that we can, we can photograph them against that distant hill. And because of the moisture in the air, although that looks sort of a drab brown, because the amount of moisture in the air, it will actually render, it’s quite an attractive sort of gray blue color. Although we say on the ridge, I mean right on the ridge, because, you need it to be high on the ridge, you got a fall away. So a deer stood here will be missing its legs. And we’re photographing from over there, so. Right on the very, very rim of this sort of , some mini crater really. But we don’t want the tattys themselves to show in the shot, so I’m putting them in little sort of hollows. What I also want to try and do is spread them out because there are a lot of deer here, and what will happen is that they’ll, they’ll all come in together, so we’ll have real difficulty in separating them. I think what they’ll do is come in fairly quickly, but after a while they might start to, to disperse a little bit and be able to pick up individual animals, and they’re really keen this morning. Okay, guys, there you go. Okay, so what I’m gonna do this morning, although you can see the deer are fairly approachable, I’m gonna use a 500 lens nevertheless. Just to, so we’re not actually on top of them, so we’re not stressing them. But, it also, what it also does, this long lens, is gives that differential focus effect, so, the background will fall away nice and muted. It’s also important in this weather, although, modern cameras are remarkably good at keeping water out in this sort of, in this sort of conditions. I’m just gonna cover the lens with one of this waterproof covers. Just to keep the worst of the water off. So we’re gonna be using a fairly, fairly wide aperture, the light levels are not good this morning, so. I think I’m gonna shoot an ISO 400, something like F4 or maybe 5.6 if we can. But just because the wind is battering the lens, I think we probably need 250th of a second, something like that. Count them all now, one, two, three, four, five, maybe 30, 30 deer there. It’s important that on this springy weather, we’re trying to get the camera, the tripod wedge down as sturdily as possible. It’s very difficult and embrace the camera like a second tripod. And we’re just looking for deer to come up over the ridge, it’s quite nice now, because they got most of the tattys, and they're just sort of foraging around. Shot we’re looking for is and that’s a lot look, but necessarily looking straight at the camera obviously. Looking at the camera maybe, just gives the deer, smartly spook look. Try for one in the horizon. Beautiful light for a minute and… lovely. Welcome to the highlands. As is often the case with wildlife photography, we’ve ridden a rollercoaster fortunes this morning. We’ve driven, probably about 10 miles up this glens to find a herd of red deer who are hungry enough to tolerate our presence, but eventually we did. There was a point where I really did think we won't gonna find any. And then the 6 appeared and then they turned out to be, probably 25, 30 deer in the end. We ran out of food, we had a good run, we have changing light, from dull to very bright, to backlit, and now as you can see the weather’s pretty much close in. It’s pretty awful here now, windy and rainy. Snow in amongst the rain. So we’re gonna wrap things up, we had a good session, and we’re gonna head off back down the glens for warm cup of coffee.
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