They are SO MASSIVE, intimidating and BEAUTIFUL! Last year when we were camping at this same area we were able to see a few cows (female moose) as they wandered around through the willows by the campground. This year there was a larger group of females, a few with calves, but it wasn't until the end of our second week here that we saw our first, and only BULL!
He was magnificent, scary and regal all wrapped up into one gorgeous animal. When we first saw him, we didn't see that he also had a cow and a calf with him. Numerous times we had been told to be very aware around the females if they had a calf. Known to charge at you if they feel even the slight bit threatened, we had been keeping our distance all week and I was usually on the other side of the big creek when I was shooting them.
Once we spotted him, I quickly ran back to the bus to get my bigger lens and fortunately he didn't move while I was gone. I quietly crept through the tall grass to try and get a little closer to where we had seen him laying down from our vantage point on the hill above him. When I got down level with him I made my way slowly through the tall willows, creeping from pine tree to pine tree, to get a little closer to him. That was when Bob saw the cow and calf grazing about 25 ft. from him. He had his eye on them....and then all of sudden...he had his eye on ME!
I slowly backed up and got behind a large tree as he rose up in all his glory and started walking right towards me. By then I was backpedaling pretty quickly, trying not to fall into one of the hundreds of holes that the beavers or gophers had made by the side of the creek.
Over the next hour and a half we followed him, and his family, along the creek bed until another group of people driving by spotted him and tried to get a little to close. They crossed the big creek together and made their way into the willows. We didn't see him again.
