Arkansas Elk in Boxley Valley
Over the past weekend, I spent some time up at Ponca AR to photograph the Elk herd. The Elk in Arkansas are considered a great success as the heard now has grown to close to 500 animals. The viewing of the herd has become a big item at Ponca and on the weekends you can expect to get a lot of traffic along Hwy 43 as people stop to look. There were more photographers out looking for the Elk that I expected. Enough that it reminded me of photography in Yellowstone during the fall rut.
The Elk will come down into the main fields near Ponca early in the morning and later in the afternoon. I found that the later afternoon shooting provided the best opportunities for my shooting style. If you are working the fields around Boxley Valley, you are limited to the fence line. This means that most of the visible Elk are between 100 to 200 years out. Even with a 400mm lens, the distance was really too great to take a photo to feature an elk without an extreme amount of cropping. To really bring the animals into view, you would be better suited with at least a 500mm lens, even a 600 or 800mm. There were plenty of people using these huge pieces of glass. Enough that it reminded me of a sporting event.
As you determine the best shot, you run into the question of which lens to use. If you have the ability to use a large fixed telephoto like a 500mm F4 lens, they you can add a 1.4x tele-converter and extend that range to 700mm at F5.6. The only issue here is the cost of such a lens which is around 5K. The other option is to use a traditional zoom telephoto say a 100 to 400mm. This will not give you the same low light abilities, but with the same 1.4x tele-converter you can get to 560mm at around F6.7. This solution should still give you a good crisp image, but will not work as well in the early morning low light. The other thing to consider is your ISO setting. I shot most of the images I took at around ISO 160 to 250 since I was using an older Canon 1Ds MKII which really doesn’t have a great high ISO performance due to the noise that is created. Some of the new cameras out there will operate all the way up to 3200 ISO or higher and that is a real plus for this type of mixed lighting shooting.
It became obvious to me that the real trick is to find a spot where the Elk may appear outside the normal fields in the Boxley Balley. When you are shooting into the fields you basically have a canebrake and fence line as your backdrop. Unfortunately for me, this means getting up the area more often and most likely not on the weekends. I am hopeful that as winter approaches, the Elk may migrate into different fields that will allow for a better photography opportunity.
I was lucky to spend Saturday with Michael Dougherty, a photographer living in Compton AR, who has become a local expert on the Elk. Michael has created a large knowledge base about the Elk in Boxley Valley, and keeps a running blog on one of his websites that contains a great amount of information. You can find the blog here.
If you are considering a trip up to either view or photograph the Elk, make sure you check out Michael’s site, Arkansas Wildlife Photography.com/, before you go.
Tags: Arkansas, Boxley Valley, Elk, Ponca, Yellowstone
