A Rutting Good Day

Since I started my journey into wildlife photography at the beginning if the year, the deer rut has been at the top of my list to try and capture. As we have no deer near us (wild or in a park) I set to work, trying to find a location that was accessible to me and came up trumps with Tatton Park in Cheshire.

Tatton Park, is a national trust site, that is run by the East Cheshire Council. There are 1000 acres of parkland open to the public which are home to wild Red and Fallow deer herds. Entry into the parkland coast £8 per car during the high season, there is also the mansion, gardens and farm that you can choose to explore (for an additional fee), but for me, it was all about the parkland and the deer. 

I arrived just after 10:30 am, having had an hour and a half drive to get to the Knutsford entrance. Upon paying my parkland fee (you can save 10% if you are organised and book online) and receiving my map, I was in. The ranger at the ticket office, pointed me to where the deer were that morning and I headed off towards the Old Hall, parking just at the end of Tatton Mere (which is conveniently, where some toilets are open, during high season only). On my drive down, the excitement started to build as I could see deer everywhere!

Having parked up I grabbed my gear and headed out. Now, today was doubly exciting for me, as it is the first time I am going to be using my new to me lens, the Sony 200-600 G!! It’s been a long time coming, but I can now finally call it mine, thanks to my wonderful fella Tim for getting it for me ❤️ I have also brought with me my tripod and the Kentfaith gimbal head to help me get some stable video footage as well as images.

I have to say, that to start with (and for most the day) it was quite overwhelming, as like I said there were deer everywhere, but I didn’t want to end up rushing around and be in a flap all day chasing after everything. So, I took some deep breaths, and started out, heading to a fenced tree where I could rest the camera and get my first images of a stag on the road. Now, these images are not anything much to write home about, but I wanted to get something to start with, so I could slow down and take my time.

I continued up the road I was on, and saw a group of hinds, with some stags, I set myself up next to a tree, balancing my camera on the gimbal (as I now know that I need to do that…😂). It was just amazing to be able to watch the deer behaviour and hear the bellow of the numerous stags within the park, and I am really happy with the first set of images I captured with this small group.

After a while, this group moved on and from behind me, I could hear an enormous roar from some woodland, so I had a look, only to find out that that particular male had moved on. There were some younger males here, so I captured an image of one of them, before moving on.

I choose to head over into the woods I was next to originally, as there were a lot of photographers on site, also doing their best to capture these stunning creatures, and I didn’t want to get in anyone’s way.

In the woods, there was a large male, with a very impressive headset, just chilling out. I got a few clips on the tripod, before taking the camera off to try and get some different compositions. As Tatton Park, is a parkland, there are lots of fences protecting the trees from the browsing deer, and I was trying to work my way around, to try and exclude these from my image. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do that in this particular spot, and there was an annoying branch right in front of the deer.

Back at the tripod, a yellow Labrador turned up and rolled in some poop, before continuing on his merry way, I didn’t see an owner, but he was content enough and not bothering the deer, so I left him to it. The stag I was watching, eventually got up and went off to find himself some hinds, and I was able to get what ended up being one of my favourite images of the day as he sniffed the air whilst walking in the woods.

As that stag had moved on, I headed back towards the car and the woodland where I had heard some more bellowing stags. Here I met up with another creator, who was filming for his YouTube channel, unfortunately, I didn’t have the foresight to ask for his channel name, but he was happy for me to buddy with him in the woods. We were here for a while, watching and listening to the other males in the park, but there was not much in the way of photo opportunities and the woodland was quite messy and the main stag in this area was just chilled out, laying down amongst his harem.

I parted with my new buddy and made my way around the woodland to the next car park along. There was not much going on in the way of photo opportunities, though I did get some nice video of a stag, playing with a substantial tree branch.

Into the afternoon, I moved up to the car park, which was now behind me, as in the meadow beyond there was a massive stag, with a substantial harem. He was a stunning specimen and was on full guard, running off any potential competition. He was a joy to watch, and I captured some beautiful images of him calling with a variety of backdrops (due to him running all over the place).

I am particularly chuffed with the image below, of him calling and about to chase after a competitor, and love the autumnal colours of the trees in the background and the long grasses of the meadow.

This particular stag, started to get more agitated, and so I decided to make a tactical retreat away into the car park. Here I met another photographer called John, who was really friendly, and it was great to have a nice chat about the deer and see some of his images.

Just off the car park, was a stag having a lay down, but he was pretty alert, so I had my camera set on him, to see if he’d get up, he actually got up charging at a younger male, and I managed to capture a couple images of that exact moment. It was quite eye opening to see just how fast these large animals can move when they want to.

Once he had chased off the younger stag, he was up and about, roaring and making himself a fancy headdress to impress the hinds. It was great to see this behaviour, even if it meant that I couldn’t include the video clip of it in my YouTube video, due to monetisation rules and consider animal sexual behaviour as adult content… (he was peeing on himself to musk up for the ladies and, you can’t not look at it 😂) However, luckily for me, he put it away when I took my photos 😂😂 also lucky for you that you can’t smell though the internet as these stags were proper stinky.

There was a bit of a lull in proceedings, so I took advantage of this and headed back to the car for a quick bite to eat (it was gone 3pm), move the car to the car park I was just at, and warm up a bit as I was freezing! Lucky for me, my winter cap and gloves were in the car, so I swapped into them and headed back, under the trees that surrounded the meadow.

There were lots of stags, getting in closer to the large harem I was photographing earlier. I was with some other photographers now, and the main stag was fending off the competition away from where we were, so I felt that I was safe here, though I did check my back a lot, just to be sure no one was sneaking up on me.

While I got some good video clips here, I only really got a couple of keeper images, however I am so happy with them. I love the colours of the leaves and the long grass in front of the stag here.

There was some more action going on behind us, and I managed to set up in a good spot and actually caught another charge in sequence which again, I am super chuffed with.

Up until now, there had been 0 rutting action, there was lots of bellowing, chasing and some parallel walking (which is usually the precursor to a rut) but no clashing of antlers so far. I was getting very cold now, and aware of the time, the gate I was wanting to exit from was closing at 6pm. I captured a few more images of the stag from earlier and then waited it out as long as I could to see if I could at the least, see a rut first hand. At 17:44 pm, I got my wish! It was incredibly far away across the park, but with my camera ready to film, I quickly set it into crop mode (to give me an equivalent focal range of 900mm on the long end) and managed to film a few seconds of rutting.

Is it the best footage out there? Definitely not, but I am happy that I went away with at least a short clip of a rut to go along with all my images from an amazing day of photography.