Last Trip of the Season

I decided to take one last trip to the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Range on October 2, 2021. I had not planned on making another trip this fall (my third) but I had a free afternoon so I decided to make the trip. I thought the fall colors in the trees might be at their prime so I should be able to get a few good shots. The afternoon was unseasonably warm (in the mid 80’s) so the elk were a little quite when we first got there. Most of the elk were just lying in the shade of the cottonwood trees. After about an hour the elk started getting up on their feet and started to get active. There were still a lot of elk in the area and there was plenty of bugling to be heard. The bulls seemed to have their harems pretty well established so most of the fighting was just lite tussles between younger bulls. I pretty much used my Canon R5 and my Canon 600mm F4 Version 2 lens for most of the pictures, but I did have my Canon 70-200mm 2.8 Version 3 on my old Canon 5D IV I used to take some wider shots. For it being a Saturday the crowds were actually not too bad. I can only attribute that to it being later in the season and maybe the hot weather.

A mature bull with this cows with the fall colors of the cotton wood trees on full display in the background.

An intimate moment between a bull and a cow while they were still laying down in the heat of the day.

A mature bull strolling around the cows.

This bull was caked in mud that gave him kind of a grey, ghost like appearance.

A mature bull making his way through the sage brush.

A bugling bull seranating a cow.

A large bull amongst the colorful under brush.

A colorful sunset with the elk and fall leaves of the Missouri River.

A bull elk near dark.

Labor Day Weekend Elk

I am still working on trying to post a blog(s) about our trips to Glacier National Park earlier this summer, but I have not had the time to gather everything for that. But I did want to put out something updated, so I thought I would create a post about my quick trip to check out the forthcoming elk rut in the Missouri Breaks in North Central Montana over Labor Day Weekend.

A large herd of elk with a large bull in the center.

Typically I don’t visit the site on the C. M. Russel National Wildlife Refuge until later in September, but I thought I would try going early this year to avoid the crowds. While the crowds were less than they are typically later in the month, it was already pretty busy for my liking. I was hoping if I could avoid the crowds maybe I could get some video with clean audio for once. To me half of the fun of watching the elk is listening to all of the various sounds they make. When the crowds are large and there is so much traffic on the roads, trying to hear the elk clearly is almost impossible. Even with the lesser crowds, it was still impossible to get any clean audio without crowd noise or vehicles driving in the background. I will post a video with unedited audio at the end of this blog. It was still worth the visit however. I would guess there were probably about 100 elk or so. There were two mature bulls and a lot of smaller bulls, spikes, cows and calves. There was a third large bull elk that came out right at dark and he was probably the biggest of the bunch. There was also a large flock of wild turkey’s this year which were a nice bonus. All of these pictures were produced with my Canon R5 and my adapted Canon 600mm F4 II. If you click on an image you will get a full screen version of the images.

The mature bull we saw with the large herd of elk.

The 2nd mature bull elk we saw late in the evening.

With smoke and clouds in the sky, we were treated to a very colorful sunset. The downside is that it did get darker a little sooner than normal with so much of the sunlight being blocked. I may get back to the viewing area again later this fall, but at least if I don’t get the chance, I was able to get this trip in. For more information about the elk on the C.M. Russell NWR please check out my page here: https://www.joshrutledgephotography.com/c-m-russell

The smoke and clouds made for a colorful sunset.

I put together this little video digest from the evening. I decided to leave the audio as is, as there was just not much I could do to save it. You can hear a few bugles and some other vocalization, but there is also a lot of wind, crowd and vehicle noise as well. You will also see the wild turkeys we were enjoying watching along side the elk.