NORTHERN EXPOSURE

They were watching Steve Guill from the moment he stepped out of his truck--and he could see them as well.

Five beautiful bucks perched on the sunny slope of Sheepy Ridge, blending in so perfectly that nobody else had any idea what Guill (rhymes with quill) was looking at--until he passed the binoculars around and pointed from deer to deer.

Unfortunately, the animals were too far up the hill for Guill to get off a good shot. He casually climbed back into his truck and continued down the road. The bucks, which had been watching Guill’s every move, blended back into the hillside, unaware that all he wanted was to immortalize the stately creatures in his vast collection of photographs.

Guill, 47, a Redding produce manager, gave up guns in favor of cameras several years ago. And after logging more than 200 trips through the wilderness, wetlands and agricultural fields that make up the Lower Klamath and Tule Lake national wildlife refuges in and just beyond north-central California, he has shot more than 50,000 deer and other animals without spilling a drop of blood.

“I hunted for years,” he says, scanning the hillside. “I still do occasionally, but I’ve killed enough things in my life and I don’t need to kill anything else. Besides, [by using a camera] you don’t have to pack any of them suckers out of a bottom of a canyon.”

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The back roads that wind through this region atop the Golden State are never congested and during the winter are all but deserted, which is fine with Guill because he doesn’t have to worry much about oncoming traffic.

There was the foggy morning, though, that he narrowly avoided a head-on collision with a herd of pronghorn antelope, which turned left at a stop sign out of Oregon and onto Highway 161, which separates the states.

Guill was heading east and saw the antelope appear out of the fog, sprinting toward him.

“They were all together, shoulder to shoulder,” he recalls, pulling over just past the same spot to admire a flight of ducks settling as one upon a roadside pond. “It was so darned foggy and they just didn’t have any damn headlights. I thought it was a truck at first. Luckily, they stayed in their lane.”

Guill’s eyes never stay on the road for long and it’s a wonder he’s able to stay in his lane. His focus is mostly on the hillsides, the buttes and ridges, the wetlands and pastures.

This man, who makes the 400-mile round trip from Redding once a week, has turned wildlife viewing into a passion and, as a result, seems to have developed the cunning and awareness the animals have.

And he rarely even gets out of his truck!

“When I’m driving anyplace, I’m just constantly looking back and forth across the road,” he explains, pointing out a trio of bald eagles atop the ice, a red-tailed hawk in one tree and an owl in another. “Most people, all they see are the white lines on the highway.”

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To be sure, Guill sees more than the truckers on the highways and the casual passersby on the back roads. But he points out that all anyone has to do is take the time to look around to see what he sees--the deer and antelope, the bobcats and raccoons, the eagles and hawks, and ducks and geese enough to blot out the sun.

Moreover, prospective camera hunters--hunters in general, for that matter--do not have to drive 200 miles from Redding, up Interstate 5 and onto Highway 97 through Dorris and onto Highway 161, to check out this wilderness bounty.

In fact, Southland wildlife enthusiasts considering a drive through this area might find it easier to fly into Klamath Falls, Ore., which would also give them access to the other four refuges within the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge complex, three of which are entirely in Oregon.

There are also two state-run wildlife areas on the California side, Butte Valley Wildlife Area in western Butte Valley, southwest of the Lower Klamath refuge, and Ash Creek Wildlife Area, south of the Tule Lake refuge. Just beneath the Tule Lake refuge is Lava Beds National Monument, site of the Modoc War and of hundreds of explorable caves formed by ancient lava flows.

Guill concentrates his efforts, though, on the Lower Klamath and Tule Lake refuges, because of their accessibility and the incredible number of animals he encounters there.

More than a million ducks, geese and swans stop at the fields and wetlands of the Klamath Basin each fall and again in spring as they migrate south and north along the Pacific Flyway.

In the winter, the basin holds the largest concentration of bald eagles in the contiguous United States. They share a bountiful supply of fish, rodents, waterfowl and carrion with other raptors, among them the majestic golden eagle and several species of owl.

Winter in the basin is a favorite time for Guill, because for all the animals he loves to shoot, there is nothing like a brisk sunny morning for a romp in the snow. And when the snow comes, it brings the animals down from the high country to areas that invariably are cut by roads.

Guill has shot bobcats who only think they’re hiding from the man and his camera. He has framed coyotes leaping from one spot to another, trying to land on rodents they hear burrowing through the snow.

“You can have eight to 10 of them working a field at once,” he says. “I was taking a picture of one last year and . . . I swear that thing set a world record. It must have jumped four feet off the ground.”

As for deer, Guill keeps a counter and one day stopped counting at 1,500.

On a recent tour with a reporter, he counted more than 300 and considered that only an average day, most of the sightings having been made on the farms of Butte Valley just south of the Lower Klamath refuge.

But then, this was another balmy day in an unusually balmy winter, with little snow on the ground. The deer had little reason to leave the high country and those that did were mostly does, and sluggish ones at that. The bucks, as usual, were particularly elusive, remaining high on the hills, but not altogether invisible, as Guill eventually proved on the eastern flank of Sheepy Ridge, with that eagle eye of his.

“In the heydays of 1985 and ‘86, I would see anywhere from 60 to about 98 bucks a day,” he says. “And those were just bucks. I would see anywhere from 600 to 800 deer in all--without much effort.”

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One of Guill’s favorite deer photographs is of a doe and a spotted fawn she had just escorted across a large pond to a small island, “for safety reasons, I assume,” Guill says. “And he was standing there soaking wet and shivering. He had to wade through water and mama just went through casually. A photo like that, you can never expect to get and it tells a story. That’s what I like.”

Guill has a series of photographs of an old mule deer he named “Big Eye-Guard” because of the unusual protrusions of part of its antlers over its eyes, a feature more commonly associated with black-tailed deer.

Among these is a 1998 photo of the deer crumpled in a heap in the snow, in the final hours of its life. Guill might just as well have shot this poor animal with a gun instead of his camera, to put it out of its misery. Its eyes were barely open. Its flickering ear was the only movement it could muster as Guill slowly approached. In the distance were a couple of coyotes, waiting for nature to take its course.

It was the same buck Guill had seen in the same field alongside Sheepy Ridge--which separates Lower Klamath and Tule Lake refuges--every few years since 1990, always by itself and in the same area, and always in December. It had always seen him too, and kept a safe distance--until it could do so no longer.

“When I walked up to him, I knew his time was about up,” Guill says, pointing out the now-empty field. “Somehow I hoped he saw me for this one last time.”

It was 9:15 a.m. when he took his pictures and drove off. When he returned at 11, Big Eye-Guard was dead, an obvious victim of starvation. Its backbone was visible through its skin. Its teeth had been worn to the gum line and it had no longer been able to feed effectively. Once a large and proud 5-by-4 buck, it had withered to about 80 pounds.

“What’s odd is that I never saw him hanging out with other deer,” Guill says nostalgically. “He seemed to be a loner.”

Much like Guill on a weekend drive through the country.

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* FISH REPORT, PAGE 13