I love it when things come together so well!
Today I hiked up to a particular marsh that I know moose love, and it would have been so easy to walk right on by without seeing that anything was there. Notice in the second picture just how little of the moose was visible! And, this was zoomed in at 500mm (10x what normal eyesight sees).
As I walked up to the big patch of willows, I reminded myself that I needed to hike slowly since two of my recent encounters likely would have produced much better photos if I had been hiking much slower. It’s a tough balance, though, when it’s also possible that others on the trail may be coming up behind – and they could easily disturb wildlife on their way.
In this situation, I spotted her at 9:10am before anyone had made it past this part of the trail. She was barely visible and the deep grass fooled me into believing she was much smaller than she really was as I would soon find out.
She knew that I was nearby, but was hardly concerned – only glancing at me occasionally. I debated whether or not I should hike elsewhere since she could stay put for hours potentially. Based on her very cool and unconcerned demeanor, I was sure that she didn’t have a calf.
Almost exactly an hour after I had been hanging out about 60 ft away, a hiker approached from the opposite direction – and it was immediately obvious that she was much more concerned about him than she had been about me. He had a dog, and she perked up and got up to her feet. I called out and let the hiker know there was a moose nearby and that she was nervous about the dog. Luckily, the dog never saw the moose, didn’t bark and she almost seemed to understand that I was telling him to give her lots of space. The hiker went around without spooking her further, and then I noticed she had a little male calf!
Over the next hour, we had the forest to ourselves and she would approach to within 9 ft from me as I stayed put photographing the pair. The calf was probably about 4-5 weeks old, and he came to within ~14 ft from me while mom was grazing near me.
She was impressively calm with me, and again it felt deliberate that she came up to me after the dog had passed. Her body language was calm the entire time except those first moments when she noticed the canine. She and her calf vocalized with one another several times, and she lovingly nudged his little butt in the same way I’ve seen so many other caring mothers do with their young calves.
They eventually wandered into thicker willows and I packed it up for the day. Fantastic encounter. I’ll upload video from the day sometime within the next week when more time permits.
