Jim, as a matter of fact I took those from 5 different watering holes over about a 6 week period of time. I took several thousand photos. These are not my best or my worst just some of the ones I liked that fell in between.
As you probably know antelope are very hard to get close to, and unless one is willing to do a lot of work and sit for hours on end and days at a time, most will only be photographed from a long distance. Most of these were from 30 yards or less, and some as close as 10 yards.
I also get to see different birds and quite a few badgers.
Here are a couple photos of those that I took while sitting and waiting for pronghorns.
Very nice work!
I see a lot of antelope around here and have probably never been closer than 50 yards and then only for an instant. Prairie dogs on the other hand almost seem determined to get themselves run over sometimes.
I always have people ask me, that know and understand antelope, how can you get so close to get those photos. Below is a photo of one of my blinds I used to get some of the photos taken above. I was a builder and Realtor all my life and so building a blind was 2nd nature to me. The photo below is the actual setting I used to take some of the photos posted above. I will be in the blind before light and sit all day. It’s a discipline that needs to be acquired, but in the end it pays great dividends.
Here's a photo I took from that blind on Oct 1 of this year, just hours before I tore down the blind and headed home.
That was actually on private land. The blind was made with a "skirt" that I put together on the ground just where I want it. Once I have it facing the way I want, I then dig a shallow hole for my feet. That is the dirt you see around the blind skirt. Once that's done I put the rest of the blind together. It takes about 15 minutes to take it down and back fill the hole, but over double that time to set it up.
I found through the years, that if I don't do them with a skirt that's all attached together, I might end up with something like this:
This is a blind I went to sit some years a back that the cattle who graze in the area, had scratched and rubbed against, loosing it, and then a dirt devil was able to turn it over with its high winds. Since that time I have learned how to "stick" them to the ground so to speak.
Not only can I take wildlife photos but there's some great scenery shots too a person can get.
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