Western Finland

Come to NS and I will guide you and take my ELAN II with as well.
Wait a few more days and the rifle season will be over.
Ken in NS

I think you might get more useful advice if you told us what country you
lived in and maybe even where in that country you were from. Just a
thought.
Stan
Visual Arts Photography

Port Mansfield, TX, or in several Texas State Parks. I visited PM a few
years ago and saw a commercial establishment of some variety that I don't
remember put out several bushels of corn nightly. Really big bucks showed
up.

http://www.port-mansfield.com/birding.htm
http://www.lifeadventures.com/texas_keys.htm

Please come and adopt some of ours (Wyoming) if you haven't any where
you live. This month alone, they've caused well over $10,000 worth of
damage to the fleet I dispatch :-(

You can certainly find many of them in my backyard in the burb's to
the west of Hartford CT...  Catching them on film is a little more
difficult...  

Jim

Bill,

Whitetails in the US are pretty widely distributed as you probably already
know. However, they are also hunted in many places and although there may be
some really large bucks around, they are probably going to be relatively
difficult to photograph, especially where they are hunted. There are local
exceptions, of course, where they are fed or are exceptionally numerous.
However to have a consistent opportunity to photograph large whitetail
bucks, you have to find a place where they are usually not hunted, where
they are numerous, where they have genetics capable of growing large
antlers, where there is the necessary nutrition available to take advantage
of those genetics, and where they are habituated to humans.

The best place I've ever been to photograph whitetails has been the Cades
Cove area in Great Smokey Mountains National Park. See the Smokey Mountain
NP website at http://www.nps.gov/grsm/. The deer population and landscape
here satisfy all the characteristics listed above. The deer pretty much
ignore photographers so not only can you get photos of some really huge
bucks, but also capture their behavior as well.

Early morning or evening is best, but in fall the deer seem fairly active
all day. (They may be active the rest of the year as well, but I don't have
any experience there except in fall.)

Bucks often trail does, so if you see a doe moving steadily there may be a
buck trying to catch up to her. I've gotten numerous shots of big bucks by
simply sitting near the path of the doe and waiting for the buck to show.
The advantage in using this technique is that you get to choose the
background that you want the buck photographed against.  Rut runs from
October through early December, with a peak of activity in later October and
early November, but the bucks shed their velvet by late August and are
looking their best by September. (Timing varies slightly from year to year.)
September can be a busy time when the park fills up with visitors looking at
fall color and traffic can be very heavy in the Cades Cove loop during that
time frame.

The best time to go, in my opinion, is after the leaves are off the trees.
The deer are still active, sunlight can penetrate the overhead trees and the
light is better longer in the morning and evening. That usually happens by
mid to late October.

Besides hiking and driving the Cades Cove loop, go for short hikes off the
cutoff roads. There are numerous places for hikes and all of it is good for
deer. There are also black bears in this area and fall is an active time of
the year for them as well. Just exercise a bit of caution, don't approach
them, and make a bit of noise when you are hiking; the deer generally ignore
noisy hikers so making noise isn't a problem in photographing deer.  No need
to try and sneak up on them; in fact, I like to let them know I'm around.

We typically see about a hundred deer a day in the Cades Cove area with a
good proportion of them being bucks. Several of the bucks will be very large
and a couple of them will provide opportunities for photography.  As a
result, a stay of several days will net lots of photographs of a few very
nice bucks.  If the lighting is good, if you are bit lucky, you'll get
photographs of the type you are looking for.

Good luck...

Gordon

Winnipeg (or southeastern Manitoba).  They're all over the place.  City
parks.  Residential areas.  Apparently, it's even worse east of the city,
once you get out of the prairies and into the Canadian Shield area.

I like the late afternoon lighting in Manitoba this time of year.  It has a
very nice warm feeling to it (yeah, I know, that's the only warm thing about
Manitoba this time of year).  The deer in the parks are, for deer, fairly
used to humans.  I run in Assiniboine park and, this time of year,
frequently come around corners to see deer standing right at the edge of the
road.  Usually they watch me run by (I presume they make rude comments about
me after I'm gone), so I know you can get rather close to them.

The deer in Birds Hill Park (just north of the city) are a little more
skittish as hunting is permitted outside the park.  Nevertheless, they do
let me get quite close on my bike before they hightail (or is that
whitetail) it into the bush.

Jeff

Go to the Colonial Natl. Park at Yorktown, Virginia - They stand on the side
of the road with no fear of people since there is no hunting in the park.  I
carry and us a small blind and there are plenty of pull offs to park.  (The
blind is to block me from drawing the attention of other people so that I
can sit in quiet without onlookers disturbing my subjects.)