An Awkward Waltz with a Mule Deer Doe
I've been a bit depressed lately, as is common for me when I return to Lubbock from somewhere else. Usually it takes making myself go for a drive somewhere outside of the city limits to start to snap out of it. There's a place I'd found on the map where I wanted to fly the drone, so I headed out hoping to make it there before sunset. When I realized I'd left too late and it would be dark by the time I got there, I took a turn off the mapped route just to see what I could see before I went back home.
What I saw was pretty great. A herd of mule deer crossed the dirt road ahead of me, so I slowed down and pulled sort of halfway off the road to see if they'd stick around long enough for me to make some photos. Usually wildlife don't stick around long enough to even grab a single image, let alone video, so I wasn't expecting much. These deer ended up milling around for a bit trying to figure me out. I just sat there, with the back end of my Subaru almost in the middle of the dirt road, making photos and video until a car came up behind me. The deer ran, but stayed in the cotton field fairly close to the road. So I slowly drove down to where they'd stopped running, put the car in park and turned off the engine. They came back to check me out again! I was able to make still photos and video of them for quite a long time. So long, in fact, that my arms started shaking from holding the Fuji with a zoom lens attached. If you see what appears as warped video in the footage, that's from applying Final Cut Pro's auto "stabilization" in post. It's amazing how smooth it makes it, but it isn't without some strange, yet overall minor, side effects. Trust me, it's way better than the original shaky footage.
After the first car drove by and the deer relocated farther down, I got out the little DJI Pocket 2 and placed it precariously on my driver's side window sill. That's where the more wide angle views come from to provide some context. Otherwise, all footage was recorded on my Fuji X-T4 and 50-140mm zoom lens, hand-held out the driver's side window of my car. This was such a treat, and I hope you enjoy observing these very curious mule deer as much as I did.
As a side note, while my dad and others like him will not appreciate that I added music to the video (rather than use ambient nature sounds), I thought that using the waltz in the video worked out pretty well, as it looks like that curious doe and I are sharing a very hesitant and awkward waltz. I am a classically trained musician, after all. You should probably expect nothing less of me than skittish waltzes with deer in the middle of random dirt roads in West Texas.
