Wildhorses, maybe a grouse? (121020)

With the grouse that I have been finding this year I was hoping to get another couple of birds for the oven. The best area that I have for that is wild horse country, so Zel claimed "shotgun!" and we were off well before daylight. I knew the day was going to be a little dull from a light perspective as the weather forecast was for some snow, with scattered sun light. We avoided a nice Whitetail in the dark and fog on the way out.  We found fields of deer and even a few elk, in the low light of early day.
8:30 with heavy snow falling we found this herd of 14 horses.

The Stallion was very protective of his charges.

We couldn't find any grouse at all, it was like we were driving around in a continuous snowstorm. The termperature kept swinging bwtween -1 and -7C. We weren't the only hunters out in the weather though, we spotted this Northern Shrike.

11:00 and we found spotted our second herd of horses. They were a long way off and with the heavy snow, there was no way to get a decent shot, there were 8 of them at least. The day was pretty slow, one more hunter, a Rough Legged Hawk.

With the poor conditions an no sign of let up we headed home. On the way we were able to grab a couple of shots of this little cow.

We wrapped up with a trio of muley bucks, and 10-12 muley does.  This was the best of the bucks.

It was almost dark by the time we were home, almost 12 hours in the saddle. Just goes to prove even a poor day in the Alberta outdoors is better then good days most other places.  Have a super wildlife  week.
Turbo