He has heard something — or smelled something, or sensed something in the way that mature whitetail bucks sense the world around them with a precision and a comprehensiveness that makes the human sensorium seem blunt and approximate by comparison — and he has stopped, turned, and is regarding the world behind him with the particular combination of alertness and self-possession that belongs to a mature buck who has survived enough seasons to know when to run and when to hold his ground. The Whitetail Buck captures that moment of suspended decision in a portrait of exceptional clarity and natural authority: a heavy-bodied mature buck standing in a frost-covered autumn meadow, his multi-point rack rising above him with the dark, heavy authority of a fully developed adult male in his prime, his mouth slightly open in the characteristic posture of a buck working the air for information with every sense simultaneously engaged. The autumn meadow stretches around him in every direction — the frost-touched grass a soft palette of amber and grey and the pale lavender of cold morning light, the scattered red stems of dormant forbs adding the single warm note of color in an otherwise cool and muted landscape. The buck's coat is thick and rich with the season, his body heavy with the weight he has built through the summer and will burn through the rut, his bearing one of complete and unhurried authority — an animal that knows this meadow and every creature in it and has decided, for the moment, that none of them warrant immediate action. A natural companion to Ghost of the Prairie — Pronghorn Fine Art Wildlife Print, Full Curl — Bighorn Ram, Yellowstone, and The Sovereign's Call — Bull Elk Fine Art Print, The Whitetail Buck completes a portrait of North American ungulates across their full and magnificent range — the pronghorn of the open prairie, the bighorn of the high rock, the elk of the mountain meadow, and this most widely distributed and most intimately known of all North American deer, caught in a moment of complete and quietly commanding natural authority. Available as a limited edition of 50 worldwide on ChromaLuxe Metal, Lumachrome HD TruLife Acrylic, or DuraPlaq® FloatPlaqs. Photo © copyright by Tamara Gooch.

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