New camera fun

Just a quick one to keep the blog fresh. We got a new camera (works under water) for our trip to Hawaii in March. We were taking self photos and decided to post one. Love to all, Happy Thanksgiving!

A quick one

My bou finally came back from the taxidermist and well, it's a heck of a lot bigger than I remember. My plan was to put it over the window in the living room. We have vaulted ceilings and you'd think that would be tall enough. Or, at least I did. Wrong. We needed 5 ft of clearance minimum to mount the beast and that area was short by about a foot. So, I had to put him where the bear was over the front door. He looks great although he's  a little hidden. 

My taxi says he has a lot of "character traits" that make him very unique. His ears suffered some sort of injury that he can't explain, and hasn't seen before. It may have been from a predator attack or from thick brush or who knows what. I'm going with a wolf story. 

He also has a double bez on his right side that is somewhat rare. Bez are the parts of the antlers that stick up just above where the shovel is, if a bou even has a shovel. Mine has one full shovel on his left with both bez on the right. Typically they have a bez on each side. Although there isn't any thing very typical about caribou antlers. 

The last trait he mentioned was he has several light colored tufts of hair on his muzzle. He thinks this is where bugs had bitten into him or possibly laid eggs on him. He found several larvae under his hide when I brought it in. We found one in the field but though nothing of it.

Chase's first ptarmigan hunt

Well, I finally got to take Chase out ptarmigan hunting. And he did quite well. He shot three times and got three birds. The first two were on the ground, the last was on the wing about 30-40 yards away. It was a pretty good shot. So this is his first ptarmigan, and his first Alaskan game. If you click on the picture, it will enlarge and you can see Mt McKinley behind his left ear.

Here's all three of them.

While we were out we saw a parade of moose. Eight to be exact! Eight! First we saw one moose walk out of the valley, then another and they just kept coming. The last three were bulls. You can see the bulls in the left of the screen. The first one is huge! Points sticking up every where. It was one of the coolest things any of us have ever seen.

Early in our hike, we found this ice structure. There's a well that runs year round, even in the winter. You can see it's clear on the left and some how was broken and jumps across the space into another tunnel of ice. That's Chase in the background.

Uninvited (but welcome) guests

Today we had some visitors to our front yard. A cow moose and her two calves made a salad of the bush's in our side yard. You can see one calf behind the cow on the other side of the bush. The other calf is out of picture right.

This is the best picture of all three that we have. It was taken from our bedroom window. Megan's reflection is on the window. The calves dropped this year.
After leaving some fertilizer in our yard, they crossed the street and munched on the neighbors bush's. Then they crossed again to forage in the woods behind our house. It was very cool seeing them.