Bill Silliker, Jr.

The Camera Hunter

     Some folks seem to view a great wildlife photograph as a matter of pure luck.  Indeed, anyone who's attempted to capture a wild animal on film knows that you almost always need more than camera technique to get a picture of anything but a tiny fuzzy blob unless the subject is as large as an elephant.

     Since Maine has only boasted one free running elephant to my knowledge - a runaway from a visiting circus many years ago that was killed and buried in Alfred - I usually recommend looking for moose in the early summer as the best way to get into wildlife photography.  No kidding, there's an elephant grave with a monument along Route 4!

     Of course, you'll also want to test your skills with other critters.  And when you begin to look at what Maine has to offer as targets for the camera, it truly boggles the mind.  We've got whitetail and coyote, puffin and peregrine, snowshoe hare and lynx, loon and bald eagle, bullfrog and snapping turtle, piping plover and osprey, red-winged blackbird and crow, pine marten and black bear, red fox and bobcat and hundreds of other species.

     Photographing most of these species will never be as easy as photographing most moose.  And so you will need to develop other than camera skills to be a real Maine camera hunter.  Let's take a look at a few of those other skills.

Know Your Target

     Some folks seem to think that professional wildlife photographers get their shots with super long telephoto lenses.  At slide shows somebody usually asks me: "What's the longest lens you use?"  While it's an honest question, sometimes it seems that they think that if they only had the same equipment, they could get the same pictures.  Wrong.

     Those who hunt a species with a weapon benefit by learning as much as they can about their intended target.  It's no different with a camera.  In fact, it's often a damned sight harder for folks with a camera to get close enough to get a telling shot than it is for those with a rifle.  And so successful camera hunters learn as much as they can about the species that they seek to photograph.

     What do you need to know?  Here are a few essentials:  What does it eat?  When?  Where?  What habitats does it prefer?  Where does it sleep?  Is it nocturnal or diurnal?  How well does it see?  Hear?  Smell?  When does it mate?  Does it show itself on windy days?  If it migrates, when does it return?  When is it born? Is it afraid of people?  How big is it?

     If you're a weekend shooter, knowing the answers to these questions can make for a fun day in the field.  And if your interest is in professional wildlife photography, you'd better pay attention to such details or you'll not often get close enough to wildlife to get publishable images.

     Your approach technique to get photographs will differ depending upon your target species.

     For example, most folks who've never hunted or tried to photograph whitetails think that if they hide they'll be able to get close enough for good pictures.  Anyone with a bit of experience with deer knows that keeping your scent from them is also vitally important.  And so knowledgeable camera hunters keep the wind advantage as they approach.

     But is a keen sense of smell the greatest of the whitetail's defenses?  Did you ever hear the one about the old native American saying that goes something like this: "A leaf fell in the forest.  The eagle sees it, the bear smells it and the deer hears it."  Anyone trying to get close to a whitetail better consider its acute sense of hearing too.

     Sometimes you can use a deer's great sense of hearing to your advantage.  Would you believe that a whitetail's curiosity rises when it hears the click of a 35mm camera shutter?  If you're concealed well enough to hide your human form and the breeze blows towards you and not the deer, it might just approach you after it hears that first click!  But if it sees any motion as you shoot, it's all over.  Bow hunters know that: it's part of knowing your species.

Does Luck Help?

     Every individual animal of any given species will also react based upon its experience with humans.  You should know that you become part of that animal's experience as soon as you attempt to photograph it.  The wildlife photographer who consistently brings home great images spends many hours in the field and seeks subjects he can "work" with.  While some folks satisfy themselves with a grab shot, a real wildlife photographer wants to shoot rolls of film on a subject.

     If you're ambition is to be a professional wildlife photographer, you should also know that you'll be lucky to keep 10 publishable images from every 36 exposure roll of film.  So shooting more will improve your chances.

     And so the camera hunter needs to learn how to work with an animal to develop its trust.  While that's not so easy to do at places where wildlife is hunted or trapped, it can sometimes be done - if you know your species.

     One of this month's photographs show better than words how developing trust with a subject pays big dividends. I'd worked with this red fox's den from a respectful distance for five days from sun-up to sundown.  And then one afternoon she stopped in the open right in front of me and called two of the pups out to nurse.  She knew I was there. In fact, she'd known that I was there after the first click of the camera on day one.

     Maybe the fact that I'd delivered a few road-killed rabbits to the site helped to earn her trust.  To those who say that you shouldn't feed wildlife to get a picture, I'll only say that this fox mother needed all of the help that she could get to feed her five hungry pups.  I never once saw the dog fox, and can only surmise that he must have gotten killed somehow, perhaps a road-kill himself.  You see the male fox helps to provide food for the litter.

     Knowing that helped me to get these "lucky" photographs.

Bill Silliker, Jr. teaches wildlife & nature photography for L.L. Bean's Outdoor Discovery Schools and has done the photography for 5 books, several of which he also wrote. He is editor of the website www.wildlifewatcher.com as well as for his own website at www.camerahunter.com

© Copyright 2000 Bill Silliker, Jr. all rights reserved.