A group of bull moose having breakfast together one late Summer morning.
A group of misfit bulls having breakfast one late August morning in Northern Colorado.
For the most part, moose are loner animals but in late summer just before the rut begins, the bulls may be found together in groups. This photo was made only days before they would shed the velvet on their antlers. The cows have already decided on which bulls they want to impress, and this group is probably not going to see much action during the rut.
I particularly like the bull in the right foreground with the damaged antlers. The bad antlers on him are probably due to injury early in the season. The antlers will drop off sometime in December and he may very well re-grow a normal set of antlers the next season, but if the damage is to his reproductive organs, it’s possible he may never generate the hormones to grow a decent set of antlers. The photo was made in 2021, and I don’t recall seeing this moose with bad antlers in the subsequent years, so he probably did okay, or I just never stumbled upon him again. One never knows for sure, but I have watched a lot of these moose over the years and have probably photographed many of them in multiple seasons.
