YELLOWSTONE'S WILD WORLD

Here moosie, moosie, moosie…

I got the moose itch today and decided to go looking for one, unwilling to stop until I found nice bull in great evening light.

Every time I think of moose, I think of the first time hearing a tour guide tell his clients to call for a moose if they wanted to see one.  The whole group said, “Here moosie, moosie, moosie…” and I thought it was pretty silly.  It wasn’t until later that I realized that there was moose tree and rock way up the hill, above the Lamar den area.  Since then I have played that joke on several folks while trying to fill some time looking for wolves.

And so I drove south, through Hayden during the middle of the afternoon.  Not a great time to go through there, unless you have a lot of time.  It was a leisurely drive along the lake and I stopped to look for birds and otters but came up empty today.  And, so continued on. There was a ranger stop point along the way, north of the south entrance.  First time for seeing one of those.

Then I was in Grand Teton National Park where the mountains were fairly obscured by dense smoke but I smiled all the same.  Those are my mountains – the ones I love.  Could not find the otters at the Oxbow either but it was fairly busy down there with a lot of fishermen.  Also did not see any elk along the drive past Jenny Lake but, again, everything was covered in smoke.

I stopped at Moose Wilson Rd. and was not surprised to see it was closed but was disappointed.  Mama’s boy, 760, is chowing down on berries these days.

And so I went to Gros Ventre Campground and found this bull moose in the late afternoon sunshine.  Normally they are in the trees and bushes and so I had reasonable hope that there might me some nice light shots of him doing something besides lying down.

I waited and waited and waited.  He opened his eyes from time to time.  Even pretended to be going to stand, only to go back to sleep again.  Because there were cars parking behind the bull and people walking by, it was tough to find a place to photograph him without the distractions in the background.  And without sagebrush in his face.  I found about the only spot that worked well and by the time we were done, several people stood behind and close by.

And so I waited, watching the sun go down behind me, counting the minutes.  A crowd gathered around, everyone behaving so well, keeping their distance and being very respectful.  And, it was amazing to see how many people stayed to wait for him to stand while that beautiful light was still on him.  Kind of cool, actually, to see the patience and the anticipation.

But, the sun went below the mountains, leaving an orange glow behind.  The bull looked at the sun, looked at us, stretched, made faces and said, okay, I’ll get up

But, the light was so low by this time that getting enough speed for good focus was impossible.  He stretched and then wandered towards us to graze.  I did a lot of video.  He was quite the character.  And, I was told that there had been 8 bulls there this morning.  Why did I only get one?