Richmond park deer

Hi all,

Yesterday, I got up at 5:30am to drive into London to photograph the deer there with my friend Josh. It was a brilliant day and there were lots of great opportunities for photographing the deer. Although the deer rut hasn't quite kicked off yet, we saw plenty of roaring stags and youngsters practicing their technique which they can hopefully use later on. The red deer were very easy to approach and I was able to come within 3 metres of a roaring stag. Even the stags with their females were fairly easy to approach, although I did back off when the stag came towards me. Unfortunately, there was no morning mist or strong enough light for using fast shutter speeds so we were mainly exploring and trying not to get chased for the first hour at the park. There was a group of low-flying gees that flew right under the sunrise.

Canada geese at sunrise

After very little success in this part of the park, a walk down to the playing fields saw that we had much more.  This Fallow buck ran right in front of us.

Pacing Fallow Buck

The stags with the females were very difficult to approach but there was a small group of stags on their own which were incredibly easy to approach. These deer didn't mind our presence, nor the loud buzzing sound of a man out with his remote control helicopter. At one point, two pairs of the stags started to practice fight right in front of us.

Practice

We stayed there for a while and then moved up to the woods. It was at this point, while eating a sandwich, that I saw a huge red stag coming out of the bracken right behind us. We came with metres of this deer and I was able to get this shot of it calling.

Call of the wild

After this stag had left, we contemplated going to the other end of the park to see if there were any deer in the bracken. However, we decided to stay where we were as we could hear many roaring stags close-by. Because of this, we were able to get quite close to a small group of young stags sitting on a grassy patch. These stags also presented many opportunities.

Black and white red

Yuck!

I decided to move on as there was a roaring stag surrounded by does around 200 metres from where we were. This stag, despite being surrounded by females, was very approachable and, quite frankly, wouldn't shut up. It was brilliant. He was always roaring (not necessarily at me) and showing off.

Intruder

Calling stag

Watching doe

Phone snap

It was nearly time to go home after this so we decided to hang around the car park. Luckily though, there were three stags just sitting there next to it. At this point I only had 10 photos left on the final memory card and both my batteries were almost depleted so every shot had to be timed well. I kept approaching the deer by crawling on the ground. I eventually got within 3 metres of the closest deer. I was able to get close-ups of the head and the stag roaring.

Stag portrait

Bellowing

Calling out

After that, I got in the car and went home. It was a brilliant day and I can't wait to go back there again.

All images © Samuel Aron