18x24 acrylic on canvas

One of my favourite hobbies in the late winter and spring is hiking blacktail deer winter ranges in pursuit of deer sightings, photographs and shed antlers. These pursuits will lead you many kilometers away from any road, very deep into old forests and far up steep mountain sides. My love for of these fascinating and beautiful animals makes these activities quite addicting.

A typical winter range includes certain habitat features that benefit deer in key ways. Normally, they are on very steep, south facing slopes, have some aspect of mossy bluff outcroppings and have very mature or old growth timber. This old growth fir not only intercepts snowfall but provides lichen litterfall as a major food source. In heavy snowfall years, making it to their winter range is the difference between life and death. In late spring and summer, as the snow begins to retreat, they begin their upward migration back to the alpine where they remain until the snow returns.

Something I’ve been wanting to do for some time is paint blacktail deer on their winter range. While I hike places like this on a regular basis, on this particular day I liked the ruggedness of this hillside as the mature, lichen covered douglas firs faded into the coastal mountain mist. While the deer weren’t there at the time, there was much evidence of their daily use and I could just imagine a couple of does casually feeding and a young buck pauses his feeding to scan for predators.

Piece will be shipped within 5 business days.