^ Thanks, Budhleague. Appreciate it.
So… went out on Friday and today. Friday was kind of a short afternoon run (about 3 hours, maybe a little more).
A couple of camps that were set up near by, all moved out, so I was the first one in the area. Isn’t that nice? It is. I also came into some fresh snow and it was snowing on and off all afternoon (myself, not a fan of hunting while it is snowing heavily, mainly because you get wet from outside and inside, if sweating). After some hiking I went back to the trail that the moose I tracked for a couple of days crossed a couple of times and found some tracks covered with snow. It wasn’t possible to say how old the tracks were, but definitely not older than Tuesday, the last day I was there, and it appeared no human has been there since. The tracks followed the trail down the valley and so was (I was heading there anyway). Further down, where the trail turns to the river and another continues on, another set of tracks came from the opposite direction and followed the trail to the river as well. Both animals did some heavy feeding on the willow and it was hard to tell who went where(and how many were there) as the tracks were all over. I then headed to where the moose I was tracking previously crossed the river a couple of times. There were a couple more sets of “new” tracks at the same place. About the only things that isn’t random about moose movement that I found is where they cross certain places in their travels, including rivers, roads, etc.
Anyway, none of the tracks were really that fresh, all were covered with a good layer of snow and I had no idea when it snowed there before. I hiked the river down the stream a bit and ran across numerous moose tracks going onto and off the ice. At the end of the day, I found two sets of tracks of about the same size consistently going west, ie downstream.
The most exciting part of the day was watching this owl:
Big birds. Their head-turning abilities are freaky though, lol.
Today, I got there a bit later than I wanted, but early enough to put some distance on the legs. It snowed overnight, but there wasn’t much traffic of any kind. An occasional deer track here and there, most overnight with different amount of snow covering them. On Friday, deer were really busy moving around; today all was stale. No moose tracks anywhere either. Eventually, I head towards the valley again and downstream. Finally, I found some moose hoof prints that were only a few hours old. Again, on a smaller side (like most of the rest that I ran into so far):
So I followed the tracks that lead to the river, to a feeding ground, here and there, eventually poop (with some urine drops in it, no idea what I can tell from that, lol), a bed, more feeding, blah blah. Then, I noticed that now there were two sets of tracks, maybe. And then… Boom, two beds next to each other, on large and one small, lol:
Not the best pic, I guess, but you can see there is a bed on the left (the larger one) and one on the right (the smaller). The smaller one had some droppings next to it (for confirmation, lol). I even brought one piece from the other pile to show the difference to those interested (the one from the adult moose is circled):
The difference is obvious. Cow and a calf. F’s and other letters in my mind, but what are you gonna do. Why the cow was browsing around on her own previously and where the calf was, I don’t know. They stuck together after bedding down. I climbed out of the valley on the other side, walked around a bit, the day was ending and the mood was a bit on the down side, so I went back to the vehicle. Climbed through the valley again to get back to “my” side, nothing exciting and no more tracks. An occasional deer, probably a fox, some kind of cat, but no moose. Got to the car with 10 minutes to spare. I guess the positive is not having to hike in the dark, lol.
Planning to get out tomorrow. Not sure what the plan is yet. I was hoping to get there before the legal light, but something came up at 9:30 tomorrow, so I likely won’t get there before 11-ish at the earliest. Oh well.
Going to explore some area that I haven’t been to yet. These cows are driving me nuts., lol. Have a feeling that everything I tracked so far was cows. Funny that I haven’t seen one yet.
Looking through the pics now, here is another one likely confirming a calf:
That log is about 3-feet above the ground and it rubbed the belly on it when stepping over.
Here is the droppings with a bit of urine in them, if Bushleague (or someone else) wants to take a look and say anything definitive if possible (not resizing on purpose):
