We often tell the stories of the times that we have seen moose and randomly they appeared in our travels. Other stories include driving into the mountains late afternoon to arrive at our favorite moose lake (which has the odd name of Deer Lakes). And there was the time we scampered out of the RV park to race to another moose sighting in the middle of the day. All of these events have a common theme – the anticipation of seeing the big bull moose – the mythical Bullwinkle, for those of a certain age.
This adventure started like many others. We went with friends to our favorite spot, in the waning light of a beautiful early Fall day in Colorado. We snacked on chips and salsa, summer sausage, cheese, and some drank wine and made toasts to old friendships. We laughed and joked. Told old stories and recounted some good times from our first meetings at a Mission RV Park. The sun began to set, but no moose made an appearance. We were skunked!
We packed up our picnic things, headed to the truck, and departed the lake area, somewhat dismayed, and headed back up the dirt road toward the highway. Up ahead, in the middle of the wilderness was a traffic jam. Cars were stopped and folks were out of their cars, pointing into the woods ahead at a young bull moose! He was magnificent and black and had fuzzy, stubby horns. Our prize had emerged!
He crossed the road, jumped over the bank, and disappeared before I got a couple of frames into the camera. Our friends drove off, thinking the excitement was over, but I jumped out of the truck and followed the young boy through the thicket and into a clearing. There was literally no light left except for that post-sunset glow that wraps everything with warm, comfortable light. And not much of it. I jacked the ISO up to 12,800, set the aperture to f/6.3, and steadied myself on the ground with the 900 mm lens on my knee. I changed the shot selector to burst mode, aimed and fired off a bunch of frames. The camera’s buffer filled quickly, and while it cleared, I repositioned to get a better composition.
This scenario repeated itself for quite a while as I was able to refine my composition as the moose ambled along, mostly oblivious to my presence. He was a young bull, carefree, and focused on more important things.
The image published here is what I consider to be the best image of the night. The Big Bullwinkle Moose with a massive rack will come at another encounter, but for now, I have this image to treasure.
