The highlight of my recent trip through the Carolinas, Georgia, and the Atlantic Coast of Florida was a mammal. In spite of it being primarily a bird photography trip.
The Red Wolf is one of the rarest mammals, anywhere, with perhaps seventeen individuals in the wild. All of them occur in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina. I was fortunate to see one, and beyond fortunate to get the looks (and photographs) that I did.
I'll tell the story of the Red Wolf in more detail here, soon, as it will be the subject of my next Columbus Dispatch newspaper column. Suffice to say it was an unexpected and thrilling experience. Fortune also literally shined on me as the light was beautiful and golden, and the sun was setting behind me.
A bit about how I came into such proximity to the beast. I had just turned onto a seldom-used gravel lane, headed towards a spot that American Black Bears frequent. Shortly after turning, I saw an object nearly a half-mile down the road, stopped, and glassed it with 10x binoculars. It was obviously a canid, although I could not tell if it was an Eastern Coyote or wolf from that range. But it seemed to be working my way.
I pulled the Jeep off the road, grabbed the 800mm lens/rig, eased out of the vehicle onto my knees, gently pushed the door shut (never slam doors!) and crawled around the back of the Jeep. It would have to serve as my blind, there was no time or opportunity to explore other options.
Amazingly, the animal kept ambling my way, stopping occasionally to look around and test the air. A few times it made brief forays into the vegetation. Perhaps it was hunting rabbits, which often come to roadsides around dusk. Fortunately for me, I was downwind so it couldn't get any scents, and the sidelined Jeep did not seem to interest it. As it drew nearer, I realized what I was looking at, crossed my fingers, and hoped it kept coming.
VEHICLE NOTE: My Jeep has auto headlights - they might have been deployed by this time. Fortunately, I had remembered to turn them off. When working from the vehicle in sparsely peopled areas, I usually keep the headlights off as long as possible. Had they been on when I turned onto the wolf road, the lights might have spooked the animal.
I've been forced to use the Jeep as a blind before, and when doing so rest the big lens butted up against part of the bumper, keep my body behind the vehicle, and thus offer the subject only a view of the lens' working end (the lens body is clad in camo) and a small part of my head and arm. It seems to break up my bipedal profile enough to sometimes keep warier animals from skedaddling.
Nearly everyone into natural history that visits this place knows about the wolves, me included. I just didn't expect to see one. Anyway, the animal eventually got to within 75-80 feet or so and was an easy mark for my big lens. The second shot above was my last, by which point she certainly realized that something was amiss. Her last pose was a beauty, though.
I probably could have just turned around and headed for home after this experience :-)