Mid Sierra Musings: January 2020

Friday, January 24, 2020

Endangered Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep 2020

Dale Matson

Click On Photographs To Enlarge

Endangered Sierra Nevada Ram

Sharon and I had an opportunity to spend a couple of days in the eastern Sierra Nevada canyons from Lone Pine to Big Pine. These are some of the places the endangered sheep hang out in the winter to find better grazing and get out of the snow and cold.

Additionally, I bought a new Sony 200-600mm lens and put it on my Sony A7R4. With a 1.4 TC this gave me quite a reach especially when cropped. Even cropped, the files are big. I was very happy with the performance and used boulders as my tripod.

Monday was an overcast day but it has advantages in how the photographs come out in some ways. Sharon and I hit a couple of new places and one old place to no avail. We just couldn’t find any sheep using our 10X binoculars and were getting discouraged. Our feet were wet from hiking in snow.

The last canyon we went to, I finally spotted a group of sheep and we stayed there till near dark. The following morning, we stopped by Steve Yeager’s (the Sheep Whisperer) place and we told him we were going up Pine Creek above Rovana. After glassing that area with no sightings, we met Steve and Moose his Grand dog in the place we found the sheep on Monday. After being there until about noon, we decided to look for some Tule Elk but first we were going to check the canyon to the south. As it turned out, we found more sheep and decided to climb up as far as we could to get closer shots and get a better angle.

It is difficult when you are 75, a mile up and have to climb with the weight of a big lens and camera but sheep fever had taken me up these steep slopes before many times. There was one ram in particular I wanted to get closer to.

All in all, it was a great two days and we even photographed and filmed the Tule Elk which were not far below us near the road back to highway 395.

We then headed back to Fresno and arrived home about 8:30pm.

At Least I Photographed A Deer Near Rovana

Sheep Nearly Hidden In Brush

Can You See The Sheep On This Rock Formation?

The Ram At The Bottom Is Mainly Why I Climbed

This Is The Guy I Was After

Tule Elk

Steve and Sharon

24 Sheep

You can support the sheep here: https://sierrabighorn.org/

YouTube Video Here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWu8hHmmf84

Sunday, January 12, 2020

The San Luis National Wildlife Refuge: The Tule Elk

Dale Matson

https://www.fws.gov/refuge/san_luis/

Click On Photographs To Enlarge

It was a very foggy morning here in Fresno but we had planned a trip to the San Luis Wildlife Refuge near Los Banos CA to see the Tule Elk. The three refuges are located in the San Joaquin Valley and total about 44,000 acres.

The Tule Elk is the smallest of the four subspecies of elk in North America. The herd was started in 1974 with elk from the Detroit and San Diego Zoos placed in an enclosure of about 800 acres. Since that time this “seed” herd has been used to relocate elk around the state and there are now about 4,000 elk. We have seen Tule Elk near Big Pine from highway 395.

There is a five-mile trail (one way) around the high fence enclosure and the photographs were taken along that drive. The Tule fog only allowed us to see the elks that were near the fence. The fence mesh is large and my 200-600mm Sony lens could easily be placed through the mesh. My camera was the Sony A9. We really enjoyed the experience seeing about 25 of the 50 resident elks.