The following recount some of the other main wildlife seen, but no pictures. I need to get a waterproof camera so as to carry it on my belt all the time.
Three moose and a wolf:
I have arisen a bit before daylight in the wee hours of the morning. I pre-pack as much as I can the night before. Occasionally bad weather in the morning with heavy rain or strong opposing winds means that I have to unpack again. I think the longest I have had to stay weather-bound when I wanted to move was one week when it just poured rain almost continuously, a rare event. (It was cold and damp. I burned a LOT of wood.) I never complain about the rain because it sure beats forest fire. I usually ask the rain gods to hold off on rain or snow when travelling until my camp is set up when I stop for the day. The rain gods are very often quite good to me. I more often ASK for rain, not as successfully, when it has been dry and there is forest fire smoke in the air. However, when I ask the wind gods for a tail wind on flat water, it seldom happens.
This is a working breakfast, where I eat as I am packing up camp. I prefer to get up early, as early as 03:00 in early summer when there is long daylight, and stop early to have an easy camp setup and often to at least have calm winds in the morning. I was canoeing across a bay into a narrowing channel of water below rapids. As is often the case I was daydreaming, just mindlessly paddling, when I realize there is a moose in front of me swimming across the channel. Then I spot three moose as they make their way out of the water across the stony bottom to the shore. It's a cow moose and her two young calves, less than half their mother's height. Awesome! This is one time I'm happy to have a headwind as she doesn't smell me yet. I get to within about 100 metres before she realizes there is something wrong, stares towards me for a moment, and fades off into the bush followed by her young.
I paddle on, getting closer to the rapids, and see a black animal, probably a bear, near shore about 400 metres away, on the side where the moose came from. As I get closer I realize it's a coal black wolf. Double awesome! He is moving along slowly, weaving in and out amongst brush. I still have a favourable wind and when the wolf finally sees my canoe he makes for a boulder and stands up on it with his two front legs to better observe above the grass and brush. I get to within approximately 200 metres at the closest. He continues to amble along towards the spot where the moose crossed. An unlikely coincidence. I would have loved to stay and watch to see if he was going to swim across the channel. My feeling is that he was probably trailing the moose before she swam across. It's a tough life for wolves, constantly seeking prey, and for moose whose main enemy here is the wolf ... and man if the moose get to an area easily accessible from roads. I root for the wolf. I usually hear wolves howling, and only occasionally see one, so I'm really happy about today's sighting, especially in conjunction with the moose.
Two rutting bull moose:
I was canoeing in early October, thinking I was not going to see any bull moose this year. I usually see at least one in mid-September when the rut season starts, but haven't even heard any. I have started on my way out to my vehicle to end the season. At a camp, I am limbing dry trees before sawing stove wood. All of a sudden I hear the low grunting of a rutting moose. I keep working, and the grunting gets closer. Then I see him, a big guy with large antlers, about 100 metres away through the trees. He's trying to figure out if I'm a competitor who is thrashing brush with antlers, but he realizes there is something wrong, and walks slowly away, stopping occasionally to look my way. I'm fortunate in having a favourable wind. After a few minutes he disappears into a muskeg. I anticipate that he will swing around to get my scent, but I never see him again. Smart moose.
At another camp site a few days later, I hear the grunting of another rutting bull moose, but he is downwind. I am limbing trees again for stove wood. I don't need to "call" moose (imitating a cow moose in heat) ... I just have to hit trees. He probably scents me, and although I hear him at two different times over a space of several hours, I never see him. A smarter moose.
Waterfowl:
It's amazing to see and hear so many waterfowl, flying overhead. In early spring, it's flocks of snow geese heading north, then later sandhill cranes, and lastly Canada geese. Starting in late summer, the birds head south but in the reverse order. After you get used to identifying each of their unique calls, it is easy to identify them unseen -- the loud honk of Canada geese, the quieter more frantic slightly squeaky "almost" honk of snow geese, the higher pitched more strident rolling rattling sound of the crane. It's interesting that there is not much overlap in the migrations, so I see mainly only one species at a time. In Northern Saskatchewan, sometimes these migrating birds will land in the spring, but rarely in the autumn. Occasionally, I will see and hear migrating swans, with their long extended neck and sporadic deep "hronk" call.
