I think so Chavezshutter because I know this from my own experiences. There often low light in the forest and Greg Shchepanek doens't stack his pictures. And I think he uses no tripod at all don't you? So either you should use a tripod or maybe you can try to use focus stacking.Did you intend a shallow DOF for this photo or was it simply a matter of low light not allowing to increase fstop? I see you were at a high ISO and shutter speed was as low as you can for handheld