A few years back, when I was co-leading a Hokkaido Photo Tour with Jim Zuckerman, and he wanted to photograph the Sapporo Ice Festival with our clients. My response at Sapporo international airport's domestic terminal was, “I’m going to the wild frontier,” and I promptly boarded a plane. At the same time, a colleague, Koji Endo, made his preparations to leave from Tokyo. We met in Nakashibetsu Hokkaido, so while my team and the rest of the group were in Sapporo enjoying the annual Snow Festival, Koji and I availed ourselves of an opportunity to do some off-roading and see if we could make tales of folklore and myth into reality and find the largest herd of Ezo sika deer on the planet rumored to be gathered in the region, similar to the Thunderbird legends, "so I thought." In all honesty, I hope to one day encounter a thunderbird; you never know? This adventure took us seeking new locations on the eastern part of Hokkaido, spanning Rausu, Nakashibetsu, and Nemuro. I have spent over 15 years in Hokkaido, and there were a few back roads/paths that had yet eluded me, so I was excited about the chance to find more off-the-beaten-path locations and do more exploration on the Hokkaido Pacific Coastline.
As Koji and I were traveling in my Prado SUV in my home district of eastern Hokkaido, spanning Shiretoko National park Rausu to Nemuro, I passed a path that I thought was exclusively for walking to the Pacific Ocean to fish. As I passed this trail, I began to run through the catalog of roads, paths, trails, and Hokkaido highways in my mind and Garmin GPS, but I couldn’t place the path that I had just seen. I brought my SUV to a stop and asked myself, “This is just a walking trail, isn’t it?” While referring to my travel journal, as if to answer my question, I glanced down and saw what I would later understand to be fresh tire tracks leading up to and on to this trail. More thoughts raced through my head, “I’ve traveled almost every path, even resembling a road in this area. I had no choice but to take a closer look!” This was a path I had yet to explore, so I decided to begin a new adventure, but I had to drive partially out on pack ice to dry ground. I have spent most of my life exploring in the deep backcountry. Still, here I was exploring new locations for adventure wilderness photographers in what I thought was the Hokkaido semi-backcountry! I would never imagine taking this kind of adventure for the first time with clients. Still, Koji and I were ready to see what lay ahead, so we went for it, and the going was rough. We had to drive on the pack ice for about 100 meters, but being born in Canada, driving winter roads, this was nothing new to me. Plus, having explored the north and south poles and sleeping in tents on the ice, and by the way, "while sleeping on thick ice, at night it sometimes cracks, and the sound can be as loud as thunder. So, before we set out on the short drive on pack-ice, I walked the 100 meters checking the ice conditions and probing it with a tire iron. Then I walked back to my SUV, and I knew it was safe and drove across the ice with ease and ease of mind.
After about an hour of off-roading, we slowly drove to approximately a 1 km distance reaching a sea of wildlife. As we inched forward, I began to distinguish antlers and other shapes belonging to the largest herd of Ezo sika deer on the planet, 1000+ deer. We ultimately stopped only 200 yards (180 meters) away on a thin parcel of land with water everywhere except behind us, about 40 yards (36 meters) wide, and I could see a pathway to the left, and I knew that would be the deers’ stampede route once they caught wind of us. We experienced 20 uninterrupted minutes of pure blissful viewing of nature, viewing wildlife the way it was meant to be! I had heard stories from the First Nations Elders of Japan, the Ainu, of past ages of large herds of Ezo Sika Deer numbering in the thousands, but I never in my wildest dreams ever dreamt I would get to photograph the largest herd of ezo sika deer currently on our planet. While photographing the deer, I thought to myself for a flash, "I wonder how the Sapporo ice festival is going"? And then the thought quickly faded as I was in the perfect meditative state, visiting with the largest herd of Ezo Sika Deer on our planet.
The Ezo Sika deer had modeled given us the wilderness experience of a lifetime that few have experienced. I have heard many whisper and dream of such an experience from time to time, such as photographing the porcupine caribou herds in north Canada. Still, most of these persons are the armchair tv adventures watching a NatGeo special or another wilderness program. TV is not for me; I love being in the field, especially in the backcountry, spotting and photographing wildlife. It's my home; this private Hokkaido photo tour with the largest herd of sika deer felt it lasted a lifetime, and then deer caught wind of us and collectively decided to take the pathway out. They returned into the wild frontier of Hokkaido, 3 – 5 abreast, a flood of hooves, antlers, and fur. They represent a once in a lifetime experience that everyone should have, and their wild and beautiful ferocity is something to behold; it brought tears to my eyes and Koji’s, and I knew from that moment forward, I had to have this experience again to share with my clients, team, family, and friends.