From his earliest days in Montana, Russell was an avid student of wildlife. Through countless hours of observation, drawing, and modeling, he developed a facility for capturing the natural movements of the animals of the forest. One of Russell’s friends, the wildlife artist Philip Goodwin, was among many who were astonished at Russell’s skill. “He has a remarkable faculty for seizing upon the instantaneous movement of animals in action and nailing it down, and he gets character in everything he touches,” Goodwin marveled. After he began spending his summers at Bull Head Lodge in Glacier National Park, Russell began creating small painted models of animals like this white-tailed deer feeding, which he would place out-of-doors in a natural setting and photograph. Sometimes he would arrange small natural objects, such as stones or pine roots, around the model to confound the sense of scale, making the modeled animal look more real. This particular model was made of a red-bodied beeswax that was subsequently shellacked and painted. The antlers were fashioned from small cut pieces of sheet tin, then coated with bits of wax and painted. The tufts of marsh grass at the animal’s feet were made of bits of unstranded hemp tucked into holes drilled into the wooden base. Russell then painted the hemp strands to make them look more natural.