Moose Kept A Walking

I just got back from an extended trip to Eastern Washington. What an incredible time! I was staying right at the base of the mountains and every day was either snowshoeing to different areas or snowmobiling to get into higher elevations and then snowshoeing from there. I had the usual range of whether, from a spectacularly sunny day, fog so thick I couldn’t see more than 75 feet in front of me, too gray overcast skies. On one of the gray days I was out snowshoeing up the side of a mountain. I was out for about 3 1/2 hours. To the left of me was a deep gully with a creek running through it. As I walked straight ahead my peripheral vision caught movement of something large. I turned to the left and the single large object became three large objects. I was a bit startled as I was hiking in cougar and bear country. The three animals are as large as horses and I realized quickly that I was looking at moose. The birch trees they were in were so thick that it took me 20 minutes of snowshoeing to even get across the gully to where they were. With all of that fooling around, you would expect any moose worth its salt to say “heck with this” and take off. Wouldn’t you know it? They were there when I got there. I suppose I was 50 yards from them when I took the first few pictures. Then I moved in 15 feet or so and took another set of pictures. I kept this up and I was able to make the photo that you see below. Unfortunately, when I moved in closer they left. I chased them around the mountain for about an hour and a half but the trees were just too thick. I couldn’t get them out into the open.

Enjoy the photo!

Moose in Birch