Mountain Happiness

My friend came up with this saying:  "If you are lucky enough to be in the mountians; you are lucky enough."  I agree and since my wife wants me to get an elk to eat this winter, I have been spending evenings and weekends in the mountians.  All the elk have escaped me, but this week I have seen over 30 moose.  It is breeding time and there are usually numerous bulls with the cows.  Here is a cow with a lazy bull  sleeping behind her.

I have seen over 20 deer.  If you look close you can see four in this picture alone.

But the most thrilling were four more Great Grey owls and two Great-horned owls that I saw this week.  That makes nine Great Greys that I have seen in a week.  The most for me ever during a fall or winter.    Usually they work the old clear cuts that have some patches of grass for them to hunt rodents in.

Sorry for the sideways picture on this one, I just could not get it to straighten up.  But this one was successful  as it has a gopher in its right talons. 

What an exciting week.  Five partial or full days to spend in the wilds of Idaho.

Great Grey owls - five of them.

Yesterday I hit the jackpot - I observed five of them.  I flushed on out of some scattered pines.

Two others soon joined it.

They were working an area with scattered pines and aspen

I was finally able to sneak up behind several pines to get about 30 feet away from this one and get this shot through the trees.

It finally flew off with the other two.

As I was coming out of the mountains, I found a pair of them hunting the CRP ground about four miles from the other owls.  The light was bad but I was able to get this shot after it harvested a rodent.

Its mate continued to fly over me as it hunted the same area.

  By the way, I spent today looking for the five and I found all five of them again.

What a great way to end another wild day in Idaho.

Grandson trip

Saturday afternoon, my grandson and I decided to go for a trip in the mountains and look for my elk.  We did not find the elk, but did have a wonderful experience.  First we found four mule deer bounding through the sagebrush.  Then after a long walk, we flushed a Great Grey owl.  It was his first.

As we were headed home we watched the Alpenglow as it colored the mountains pink as the sun was setting.

Not much further, but after the sun had set, we saw 14 head of mule deer feeding on the CRP ground with dry grass as high as the deer.

With the sun set and darkness sitting in we came upon the most exciting sight of the day - four bull moose fighting.  It was amazing to watch as they battled about a hundred yards from us.  Horns would crash, making the sound almost vibrate the truck.

In the dwindling twilight, it was difficult to stop the action without blurring everything.  At one time three of the four were all fighting together.  As one would defeat another, the victor would goose the loser in the butt to send him off as another would attack the victor.  We watched this battle for 15 minutes before they headed up through the trees.

Darn, we missed another football game on TV.  Oh well, just another wild day in Idaho.