Coffee Table Book of: Deer, Elk and Moose (Paperback)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Deer, Elk and Moose is a large format book of deer, elk, moose and caribou, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: bucks, bulls, does and cows with their fawns and calves, antlers in velvet and polished for the rut, faces, hooves and coats seen close, rubs, scrapes, wallows, tracks and shed antlers, and the woods, meadows, bogs, rivers and tundra where they live, at many hours and in every season.

White tailed bucks stand at the edge of an autumn wood, in a snowy field at dusk and in a frosty clover field in the rut, and a buck in summer velvet waits in the dew at dawn. Does walk a misty meadow and stand in the summer grass at dusk with spotted fawns at their sides, a fawn lies curled and hidden in tall grass, and a doe stands in a snowy hardwood forest in its grey winter coat.

Bull elk bugle in frosty meadows at dawn and sunrise, their breath rising in plumes, walk a golden meadow at dusk and an open meadow in falling snow, wade a river at sunrise and stand frosted in deep winter snow, while a young bull carries its first spike antlers. Elk cows stand in mountain meadows of summer flowers with their spotted calves, a calf lies hidden among the wildflowers, and a cow waits at the edge of a misty winter river.

Moose feed belly deep in quiet ponds with water plants trailing from their mouths, wade a river at first light, stand among golden willows and in a frosted autumn bog, rest in tall grass, browse snowy willows and wade deep snow in late winter, and a cow stands in a summer meadow with twin red brown calves.

Faces, hooves, coats and growing antlers are seen close, and the signs of the year lie on the ground: a sapling rubbed bare, a pawed scrape, a muddy wallow, hoof prints and a bed in fresh snow, trails worn into a tundra hillside and antlers shed in spring.

Short notes run through the book, on how antlers grow and are shed each year, how deer, elk, moose and caribou feed, travel and raise their young, and the calls and rituals of the autumn rut: caribou make some of the longest seasonal journeys of any land animal, a mule deer’s antlers fork in two, and each branch often forks again, moose calves are born without spots, and a cow often bears twins, and in autumn a caribou bull grows a thick pale mane on its neck for the rut.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.