I had a chance to visit the Slippery Ann elk viewing area on the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge area again earlier this October. It is always a good time along the Missouri River in Central Montana. Typically I try to make the trip a little earlier in the season, but this was an unusually hot and dry fall so I did not figure the elk would be all that active anyway. From visiting with others, and from personal observation, it does appear the elk rut was a little later this year and maybe not quite as intense. The day that I finally decided to visit it was actually a cool rainy day. I decided to switch things up a bit and I first visited the area in the morning. This was nice as there were less people around and the elk were fairly active. Unfortunately it started to rain pretty good not long after we got there. I still had the chance to get a few photos and some video before it got too bad. We spent the rest of the morning mostly just observing the elk from inside of the car.
Not the biggest bull elk, but he had interesting antlers and was able to maintain a pretty good group of cows.
The same bull, but a wider full body view.
Since the weather was so wet, the roads in the area were not very good, so rather than risking getting stuck anywhere, we decided to just head back home. If it had been a nicer day we probably would have spent some time looking around for some other photographic opportunities.
A big bull elk with his cows later in the afternoon.
More of an environmental shot as I wanted to include some of the fall foliage and set the scene.
By the afternoon the weather had improved in town, so we decided to head back out for the evening show hoping the weather was better out there too. Being the afternoon, the crowds were much bigger than they were in the morning, but with it still being a little wet and later in the season the crowds were slightly smaller than they probably would have been otherwise. The evening weather was similar to the morning. There were periods when the rain would let up a bit and things would improve, but then it would start raining pretty hard again. I did not come away with any particularly interesting photographs, but it was still a good time. With the bad weather I was not really able to set up my tripod or microphones how I would have liked, so my video ended up being a little less professional then I would have liked, but I still posted it for viewing if you want to take a look below.
If you want more information about the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge I have a page linked here on my website. You may also be interested in checking out my previous blogs from last year.
https://www.joshrutledgephotography.com/blog/last-trip-of-the-season
https://www.joshrutledgephotography.com/blog/labor-day-weekend-elk