Elk with odd antler placement Walk at the Cross (120914)

Last week I was hoping to get some Elk bugling for Zel, and we didn't have any luck. We were time constrained, so we didn't geto to some of the "prime" areas that I wanted to cover, so tonight we headed out an hour earlier with the anticipation of getting to the good the stuff. To start off we were putting up grasshoppers everywhere.

One Northern Harrier, and one Redtail hawk when we were more than halk way through our walk, things were looking slim. We came around a corner, and found this fellow feeding at about 110 yards.

When I got home and had time to take a better (and much more blown up) look, I noticed how odd his antler structure is.

He has two brow tines on the left antler and the right antler looks like it is coming out of his forehead.

In this shot you can see that he has a very short tine pointing almost straight forward on his right antler. As antlers are re-grown every year it would be interesting to see if the next set grow in the same places on his head. The bulls were bugling  occasionally and the cows were responding. It was a great experience. On the way out while I was checking the last washroom facility Zel spotted a black bear in the area where we had to walk through.  He seemed a little concerned, but we went walked through making a little noise, without any sort of incident. He was talking about that, all the way out to the truck. It was a great (and successful) evening out.
Turbo