The Minnesota and Mississippi rivers are running high this time of year. Lot of lowland areas around Fort Snelling State Park are filled with flooded foliage. The two access points to Picnic and Pike island are also flooded.
The seasonal color has almost faded completely out. If you look hard enough though you can still spy some #notreadyforwinteryet.
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Fort Snelling State Park is a great place to go to photograph Whitetail deer. My wife Cyndie and I, along with our photog friend Linnae, made the chilly early November trip to in hopes of photographing deer.
In previous years, it seemed that we started out seeing smaller bucks and worked our way up. Not this year. When we arrived around 8 a.m., we found the big guy with a single doe in a ditch along side the road. We didn’t have much time with this guy. A truck pulled up shortly after we did and was a bit close for his comfort. The doe trotted off with him closely behind.
We never pass over the boat landing on Picnic Island. There is usually something interesting there to see.
It didn’t take long into our walk on Pike Island and my wife spotted another big fella laying down in the thick stuff. Another fine looking buck. He had a couple of does next to him.
There was just as much photographer activity as deer. Another photographer told us about a piebald spike buck he had seen earlier. It wasn’t too long after that and we have the fortune of seeing him as well.
Pike Island is pretty large, but not so large that you cannot cover the area at a leisurely pace. It seemed like we saw way more deer this trip compared to years past.
There is quite an abundance of other wildlife and nature to behold in the park. Here are a few other things that caught my eye.
Another great visit to a wonder Minnesota State Park. If you have never been, I highly recommend this experience.
Previous trips to Fort Snelling State Park
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Eagle Nest
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Riverside Seating
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Gobble Gobble
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Gobble Gobble. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
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I neglected to post the sunrise shot from my visit to Fort Snelling State Park yesterday. This particular landing on Snelling Lake doesn’t afford a direct line to sunrise at this time of year. It does offer a view of the Hwy 55 Mendota Bridge along with reflections from its lights; with some clouds in the sky, it is a rather picturesque view.
I also skipped over posting photos from the previous day when I scouted out Pike Island. I arrived at noon and the park was pretty quiet. I met one photographer returning to the parking lot as I headed out. He said he photographed a few bucks. That’s all I needed to hear. I found one buck out on Pike Island along with a doe and a several turkeys. All good signs that the trip tomorrow morning would no doubt be action-packed; it was. Here are some photos from the 2 hours I spent on Pike Island on Friday afternoon.
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Today marked another successful trip to Fort Snelling State Park. To be in the presence of and photograph magnificent Whitetail deer is exhilarating. Last year was my first time at the state park hunting deer with a camera. The experience this year was very similar to last. The weather was much warmer and the timing a week later in November. I could ramble on about the deer I saw and wild turkeys that where everywhere, but I’ll let the photos speak for the experience.
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It was a bone-chilling 19 degrees when we awoke Saturday morning. It felt cold, but it wasn’t the cold that chills your core and burns your face, you know that type of cold that hits you around the end of January when you wish Winter were over. Cyndie & I, along with our good friend Linnae, arrived at Fort Snelling State Park shortly after sunrise. Traces of Autumn can still be seen, but for the most part the brilliant colors are gone – almost. We found some lovely color enhanced by the rising sun along the western shore of Snelling Lake.
Our primary purpose of this trip was to photograph Whitetail deer – specifically [& hopefully] big bucks. It is that time of the year when bucks break away from their traditional habits and venture out of the thick stuff in search of receptive does in the day light.
We found such activity quickly on Picnic Island. We noticed several scrapes and rubs. Pre-rut signs galore. There were no shortages of photographers on-hand to witness this spectacle. We spent a good amount of time watching a dandy 9-pointer pursue does all over Picnic Island. There were other smaller bucks darting about and avoiding direct contact with the bigger buck.
We decided to delve further in and explore another area of the park. Pike Island, a walk in only area, was just down the road. I am glad we opted to do this. The temperature was rising as was our excitement; we had buck fever.
We walked around the perimeter of Pike Island (mostly; except the eastern third) without seeing so much as a yearling. We decided to walk a game trail up the center. There were brush piles everywhere – all kinds of places for deer to bed down for a mid-day rest. It wasn’t long and we located a small buck. As I began to photograph him I noticed there was another buck behind him – a much bigger one. I continued to shoot and eventually saw the doe that was hunkered down in the grass next to them. I think we spent the next hour hanging out with those three deer. At one point a dozen or so turkeys came wandering down the trail and just walked on by like we were not even there. That was fun. What a great day.
*Just a side note on gear, you regularly see photographers hauling out the big lenses for wildlife. Thousands of dollars of gear. With the exception of the first few landscape shot, the balance of these images were shot with a Tamron 70-300mm f/4.0-5.6 – a $449.00 lens; not a $2500 or $10k lens. The 70-300 was attached to a Nikon D700 shooting at ISO 2000 between f/5.6 – f/7.1. I am not going to lie, I would gladly shoot with a $10k lens if I had it. This is a simply demonstration that you do not need all that if you want to get out there and have a great time – especially at this location. The high-ISO performance of a full-frame sensor was beneficial given the low light.
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