The weather was brutal today, cold, wet, windy, just a nasty day. But, the kind of day that would hopefully get the moose to start thinking about the rut. First thing this morning, not 30 minutes from camp, we saw a young bull. We hadn’t seen a bull moose until today.
When we woke up we were all excited about how nasty the weather was, perfect moose weather at the perfect time. We watched the bull from about 300 yards for a bit and for a while we thought there might be another bull around because he was locked up in the wide open, looking in the same direction for 15 minutes or so.
I pulled out a new piece of gear, a Sig Sauer Electro Optics mini electro stabilized spotting scope. This little hand-held spotter has quickly become a favorite. I dialed it to 20x and right away could see that his back legs were bloody and chewed up. After we got out of camp this morning we saw a few sets of wolf tracks on top of our horse tracks from last night. It was pretty obvious this bull had a hell of a fight and won.
We kept riding as he slowly made his way into the timber. The rest of the day was slow, wet, and cold. We didn’t see another living creature. At last light we rode back through where the young wolf-fighting bull was and he was right where we left him this morning, standing in the willows in the freezing driving rain, trying to keep the wolves away.
The InReach weather forecast showed more bad weather tomorrow, but we had plenty of time and needed a few more cold wet days to kick the bulls into gear. Our first day of focusing on moose turned up our first bull moose. Baby steps . . . tomorrow would be a new day, another rainy, snowy, new day.