Mother and calf

Because I'm on sabbatical, I have time to comb through all my old images. Of all my moose photographs, this sequence is probably my favorite. Even though a cow moose nursing her calf is common in the northern forest, how often do we see it?

How tall is a bull moose?

At 5'9" I seem to be about as tall as the hump behind this moose's back. Since the average male weighs between 850 pounds and 1,580 pounds, I'd guess he outweighs me by 1,000 pounds.

Size of the bear

Wildlife enthusiasts tend to overestimate the size of black bears like this one. If you tell Wildlife Biologist Kurt Rinehart that you saw a huge bear, he'll ask you, "How big were the ears?" If you answer "big," he'll say it was likely a small bear. Ear size doesn't change much while the bear's head grows with age. You can tell this was a small bear because of those big ears. To see bears of different sizes, see some of my other bear photos.

August bull moose

These moose antlers may the fastest-growing mammalian appendages on the planet. A large bull moose (which this is not) can grow an 80-pound rack in a summer, at the rate of one pound of growth per day. These antlers are still growing, but next month the soft velvet will strip, and this bull will enter the fall mating season with antlers of bone.