Fall season in Monterey, VA was nothing but beautiful scenery, wildlife encounters, and great photography. We stayed at our favorite place, the Wilson House in Monterey, VA located in beautiful Highland County, VA. Hoping fall season might happen a little sooner up there this year, we took off early for vacation. We timed it perfect this year and the weather was perfect. You always hope for cold nights, not a lot of wind or rain that would knock off the leaves, and that combination happened.
Usually in the fall season the song bird activity drops off a good bit, so we plan our photography in Virginia around the deer, raptors, landscapes, butterflies and insects for macro photography. This year was a great year for all of our photography list items.
The deer were everywhere this year and especially the bucks. We got more photos of bucks this year than all previous years combined. We were there before the Pre-rut and they could care less who saw them or that you were even there. As the days went on the bachelor group bucks finally began to separated. Until that happened though we were seeing several large bucks grouped up, and it was some incredible photography sessions. Some bucks would stand feeding 15 feet from our vehicle and they didn't care long as you didn't move suddenly.
We spend hours just riding around in the mornings and evenings on certain roads trying to find wildlife photography shots or landscape photography shots. As always we seek interaction photos of animals. Our preference is either finding a deer touching another deer or a buck jumping a fence. We got a lot of both this year, way too many photos to put here. While you are trying to spot deer you need to keep an eye out for Raptors too. We found eagles pretty easily as they love anything dead already, especially road kill. If you see vultures flying around look for Eagles, because Eagles are usually on the scene first. We saw lots of Crab Spiders this year, more than we normally see.
Highland County VA is just sheer beauty in the fall season. You can take a ride to Mustoe and take the back road of 607 to Bolar Va, or jump over to Meadowdale Rd (640) off Hwy 84 and ride the LOOP as we call it. 640 takes you into Blue Grass VA and from there you go to the stop sign and turn left on Wimer Mountain Rd and go till you hit Hardscrabble Rd (644) and turn left and then left again on 643 and then left again on 642 and when you get to the end your back on 640. Many of our shots come from regularly riding these roads. The roads never seem to end in this county, and we do enjoy that journey a lot.
