The morning promised to be miserable, it was raining and windy with no signs of letting up to provide us with our second poor day of a three day trip. After a brief discussion prior to leaving the motel room we headed over to see if we could find some elk in the big field. We were not disappointed. I took this video of an Imperial (7x7) bull that seemed to "own" the field. He allowed his cows to return to the safety of the trees while he sat in the middle of the field demonstrating his dominance.
Here is a bit of a video,
Imperial bull before he decided to take a rest.
We decided to do a little more exploring in the nearby area buoyed by our success yesterday. We found this young hen Ruffed early in the morning. It is pretty easy to see the affects of the weather in these images.
The balance of the morning was very unproductive with some raptors being found but minimal photo opps provided. We headed back to town and got checked out of the room and decided on a route home. We made a pass through the Bison paddock on the way out, but the big animals were far off and dealing with the rain. Many miles later we were still only finding hawks, until we happened on this fella, he also hade a couple of smaller buddies with him.
As we continued our journey so did the miserable weather. So we jumped onto the highway and headed home. More than an hour from home we had an opportunity to shoot this majestic animal.
If you look closely at the back of his left antler it looks like he still has velvet hanging. This fella was very cooperative, I was able to get fairly close and could have even "brought him" down the hill but I thought it better to leave as far from the highway as possible. This large bull deserves a second look.
Even the fronts of his pans look like they still have some velvet, this would be quite late in the season to see this, especially on a moose of this maturity.
An hour up the road we found a cow moose near the highway but decided not to stop. and just a few minutes further along we found our first bear of the day. This is very close to "the Ranch". This was only the second cinnamon bear that we saw the whole trip.
That was pretty much the end of our wildlife viewing for the trip. While our findings were not what we were expecting, there was enough to keep us snapping for the three days. I will be posting a supplement of Landscape shots that Zelly took as soon as he sifts through his images and lets me know which are his favourites.
Turbo
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