Bull Moose and a New Gallery

Big day yesterday… finally got some pictures of a bull moose! Kevin and I left at sunrise for Jefferson Lake where we have been trying all summer to capture moose images. In fact we’ve been trying without success to find moose for a couple of years now. This summer we finally saw a few moose cows, one in Jefferson Lake and a couple in Rocky Mountain National Park. But no big beautiful bull moose with those magnificent antlers.

We wanted to get to the park as soon as possible so there were no side tours at all on the trip there… no waterfalls, no hawks, no foggy landscapes, just the direct route to the park. We spotted the big cow moose and her calf fairly early in the morning, but not in the beautifully lit beaver ponds as we had hoped. She made such a brief appearance near the base of the pine covered mountain that we didn’t have time to even snap off a single image. We made a note of which direction she was going and set up near another beaver pond that we hoped was on her route, but she never showed.

The leaves in the park were beautiful so I couldn’t resist capturing a couple of shots while we waited and as it turns out they are a couple of my all time favorites! Pretty happy about that I have to say 🙂

Eventually we decided to head on into Fairplay for some lunch but after one pass through the town we were aimed at Breckenridge so we just kept going, hoping for some great scenery to photograph on Hoosier Pass and a nice place to have lunch in the larger town. As we traveled along the Blue River nearing Breckenridge we noticed a large traffic jam in the road near a clearing in the river valley. In Colorado whenever you see a traffic jam in the middle of nowhere, there is sure to be some awesome looking animal at the center of it!

Turns out, it was our bull moose… He was out in the valley feeding on the tender reeds growing along the river banks. He was barely visible through the reeds but bunches of people were trying to get pictures with their phones from the top of the steep embankment. We were able to get a couple of unsatisfactory images but without going down the embankment to get on the other side of the trees there wasn’t much hope of a good capture. I looked the situation over and said to Kevin, “You know we are going down there…”! I heard the “Yup!” and we were scrambling down the embankment to get a closer look.

Eventually we got into a good position and were able to watch the majestic beast for a few minutes as he munched on the reeds. At first I feared he was never going to turn around for a head on shot, but eventually he turned sideways to get at a bush and looked in our direction a couple of times so we could get a nice shot.

After lunch we returned to the lake for a couple more passes by the beaver ponds to no avail. We never saw the big cow moose or any other wildlife in the park the rest of the day, save for a couple of red-tail hawks. We did however have some luck just outside the recreation area, spotting a herd of pronghorns and a small herd of elk cows on their way to the high country in a hurry! If you look really carefully off to the right in the image, I accidentally picked up a stray pronghorn watching the elk run by!

All in all it was a pretty great day and I hope you enjoy a few of the images that I have gotten processed thus far! Oh, and before I forget… I have created a new gallery on my website just for moose! I don’t have a whole bunch of moose images yet, but I certainly plan to!

 

As always, the best of these images and hundreds more are available for purchase on my website as wall art on glossy metal or acrylic sheets, stretched canvas and traditional matting and framing. Tons of cool household and gift items are also available with any image you like including coffee mugs, t-shirts, blankets and pillows, battery chargers, phone cases, stationary and much much more! Just click on any image you like and all the choices, sizes and prices will appear! For my viewers interested in images for commercial use, please visit my image licensing portal! Also, if you would like to see a more complete record of today’s images please follow my Instagram account!

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This post is not sponsored and all equipment used in it’s creation was purchased by me on my own volition.