I kind of forgot about these photos of a male elk and his harem along the Madison River in the first week of October.
I think they are representative of what the elk rut should look like of any elk we found this year because the grass looks so “fallish.” Somewhere I have some clips of the male with his females and some babies but I can’t find them to save my life.
Organization is not my strong suit. So enjoy the male while I look for the photos of the females.
We don’t spend as much time along the Madison River as we used to, mostly because we live 10 miles north of Gardiner and the construction between Mammoth and Norris was a pain this year. That is a shame because the river is absolutely beautiful and we have seen some neat stuff along that road. Everything from wolves and bald eagles to President Obama. Well we didn’t really see the President but we did see his helicopter surrounded by a bunch of other helicopters with big guns. It was really a neat experience. We knew he and his family were going to Old Faithful that day so we got to a spot on the Madison, parked our truck, and got out the cameras and big lenses. We thought they were going to be driving from West Yellowstone to Old Faithful. Then a ranger came up to us and asked us if our truck was parked along the road. We said it was. He said we would have to move it. We said we had parked it legally on the correct side of the while line. He said that was right but because the president needed an emergency escape route we had to move the truck. We moved the truck and then realized they would be flying into Old Faithful instead of driving. We felt like naïve idiots but we decided to stay there anyway and see if a bald eagle came by. About 45 minutes later we heard a helicopter coming our way. Then we heard what sounded like a herd of helicopters coming our way. We saw a bunch of black helicopters coming from the north. They were headed straight towards us. I quickly whipped my camera around and started filming. Afterwards my husband commented on all of the guns on the helicopters. I then thought about my camera. It was a RED ONE which is a rectangular shaped black camera and I had a 500mm lens on it with a big hood. From a distance it probably looked like a machine gun. A pretty stupid thing to be pointing at the president of the United States. Right after I started realizing how stupid we were the ranger that talked to us earlier came out from behind a tree and asked us if we filmed the helicopters. I told him we did. He then held up his camera and said he did too, with a really big smile on his face. We hung around and the helicopters came back along exactly the same route as the came in on. It wasn’t a bald eagle but it was lots of fun.
If you would like to see more photos of elk, as well as read many stories about other Yellowstone animals, with lots of photos, go to www.yellowstonedaily.com.
Our photos are available at www.vernelehmberg.com where you will find over 4,000 photos from Africa to Yellowstone.
I liked where the story went from looking for photos to the president. I miss the rut along the Madison because, in the Fall, it is one of the prettiest places in the park.