Ask any YNP Park Service employee about Bighorns.  ‘Go to Gardiner’, will be their response, or perhaps ‘Go to Gardner’, but it’s the same.  Regardless, that advice is not quite definitive.  They  may mean to refer to the city on the banks of the Yellowstone River, or they may mean the river that meets the Yellowstone just north of the park entrance, or they may mean the area between the confluence and Yankee Jim Canyon…

You are in fact most likely to find Bighorns in Gardner Canyon, although they appear semi-randomly, that is, unpredictably but always in weak light. In our experience, we find that the herds that wander close to the North Entrance Road below the McMinn Bench and Eagle Nest Rock consist mostly of mature ewes and young sheep of both sexes.

If you are so lucky as to be in the Canyon when the Bighorns are there, I suggest that you shoot them at f/5.6, since you’ll need the isolation.  These clever sheep…they are almost invisible in their native environment – the little teasers…  When they do emerge, ‘excess’ DOF is not a positive contribution, since it helps them hide, well, in the image that is…

Images in this entry were recorded at around 17:00 MDT using the Nikon D3s and the AF-S NIKKOR 200-400mm f/4G ED VR II.  Exposures were all at f/5.6 and around 1/640s, ISO 3200.  Yeah, that was ISO 3200.  If you are serious about stalking the Bighorns, bring your D3s, seriously.

Images were processed to reduce noise using Nik Dfine, then capture sharpening was applied using Photokit Sharpener 2.0.  The image was then processed to enhance contrast using Nik Viveza 2 and Nik Color Efex Pro 3.

 Copyright 2011 Peter F. Flynn.  No usage permitted without prior written consent. All rights reserved.