Charles Reace

South Dakota Wildlife Photos

During my recent trip to South Dakota, our tour group was fortunate to have several close encouters with some of the larger mammals in the area. The following shots were all taken from the safety of our bus, so they needed a bit more tweaking in Lightroom to deal with the greenish tint the windows added to them. All in all, though, I'm pretty pleased with the results of shooting through a plate of glass not designed for photographic quality. (Clicking on any image will open an expanded view, though probably of little/no use on smaller devices.)

Here's one of a pair of coyotes (which, at least in SD, is a two-syllable word, I learned) who looked as if they were searching for a wayward prairie dog or such.

This is a male pronghorn antelope herding one of his(?) does back to his harem. While the other ten or so does were just peacefully grazing away, this one kept trying to "escape." I put that in quotes because she always ran generally toward the buck, as if she wanted him to catch her and herd her back. Yeah, I'll never understand females.

Finally, here's a bison looking up from lunch, only a few yards off of the road. I made sure to over-expose this a bit, as their blackish-brown fur can lose all detail in a photo if you don't. (Besides, it makes the back-lighting a bit more dramatic, don't you think?)

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