This turned out to be a great lens with its 300mm focal length (effectively a 480mm on my 20D with the 1.6x crop factor) since we couldn't get very close to the deer. Its image stabilization was also extremely effective. You can tell instantly when it kicks in a fraction of a second after you press the shutter button down halfway and the focus locks on. And with the lens fully extended, I couldn't imagine going handheld without the IS feature.
Once The Professor and I got to our location we were pleased to see no one else was there... until this hunter-looking dude shows up in his pickup complete with hunting dog in tow. With our hopes of finding calm deer in their natural habitat successfully crushed, we head out on our way. We tried to head in an opposite direction from Hunter and his dog Spot, but after over an hour trudging through the snow we were still empty handed. So after cursing the duo for the thirteenth or fourteenth time, we then see them coming back our direction. We bite our tongues and oddly enough strike up a civil conversation that ended up something like, "the deer are all to the north. There's probably 30 or so up there." How ironic. Sorry about the harsh words, Spot.
After heading north for 15 minutes or so we hit the mother-load and find a nice little herd of doe (the deer, the female deer.) There must have been 50 of them in all and below are some of the better shots. The Professor says he didn't get that many good shots, but I think that's just because he is much more particular about the shots he gets. At this point I'm happy with something in focus and properly exposed...
All of these are taken on my Canon 20D with the aforementioned 70-300mm lens:
ISO 200 | 1/250 | f/11.0 | 115mm
ISO 200 | 1/250 | f/11.0 | 300mm
ISO 200 | 1/200 | f/11.0 | 300mm
ISO 200 | 1/500 | f/11.0 | 300mm
ISO 200 | 1/1250 | f/5.6 | 300mm
ISO 200 | 1/250 | f/11.0 | 300mm
