What a special moose encounter! Lately I've had my eye out for moose babies, and this turned out to be a great situation to photograph a mother with her newborn.

My best guess is that this moose calf was only a few hours old when I arrived on the scene. I decided to hike up a closed 4x4 road to a specific meadow that I thought would be a decent place for encountering a moose. I picked my spot and sat around for 30 or so minutes before my short-lived patience pushed me to hike further. Only a couple hundred yards down the path, I spotted this pair!

I was closer than I would have preferred in this circumstance, but the situation was relaxed enough that I stayed put and tried to earn mother's trust. The newborn was very wobbly on its feet and would only stand long enough to nurse for a few minutes before sitting back down to rest. Mother was hyper-focused on me at first, understandably. Before long though, she would relax and turn her attention to watching the rest of her surroundings. Eventually both would sit down and sleep.

One of the greatest things about this situation is that it was a weekday on a closed road which meant it was very unlikely that we'd be interrupted by anyone or anything. In a lot of my encounters this time of year, I'm within reach of casual observers and as soon as people see someone with a tripod and a long telephoto lens -- they drive up, walk up and usually crowd the situation. Most people are respectful, but a lot of folks are excited, loud and don't realize how fragile these things can be. In this case, we had the forest to ourselves and no concern of too many people loving the situation to death.

I stayed for about an hour and a half, before heading on back. The next day I returned to find them in essentially the same spot. Mom and calf didn't move nearly an inch in that three hour encounter, so I feel even more fortunate that I was able to get such a clear view on mom and newborn during this exchange. Always a pleasure to watch them in the wild!