My close encounter of the moose kind

Alright I know, this is a lot of posts but I have been jerry rigging blogspot to post my pictures (still having issues) and I have all these backed up posts I wanted to put pictures up for. Last one, I promise.
Ave had an elk tag this year. For a spike, which I am proud to say I now know what the heck that is. He literally went five separate days, hiked hundreds of miles (maybe tens of miles), and never got a damn thing. He was mad. Poor Avery. I was mad because he spent a lot of money on game bags, ammo, camo gear, and the like for this dumb hunt. Which, I was never quite clear why he felt he had to go in the first place. What would we do with an elk?! We do not even own a freezer. We live with my parents!! But he had to be a man, I guess.
So after the first weekend was a bummer he wanted to go back the following monday. He was skipping school to go hunting. Ask me how I felt about that? And he did not have anyone to go with, so he was going to go alone. I was not about to let that happen, so I went with. ON MY DAY OFF. Yes, I am crazy at times, as his uncle Kent so kindly pointed out while handing me an orange vest. I dragged my butt out of bed at 4:00 AM and hiked in the snow... yes snow... for five hours!! It sucked. I do not see the appeal in hunting... at all. We heard some bugles, that was freaky and cool at the same time. But never saw anything. Granted the scenery was beautiful and it was good exercise. But when he went again the next weekend, he went alone. I just resigned myself into deciding whether I would cremate his body or not when he died. Luckily, I did not have to go through with it, he lived. But never got anything. He is very sad. Do not mention it to him.
"There's always next year," he's says.
"Not if I have anything to do with it," I say.
Oh, and did I say we did not see anything on 'our' hunt. I lied.

We saw a family of him. This is the daddy, and there was a mommy, and a baby. And I was peeing my pants. Avery was throwing snowballs at them. Remember how I have said he is a genius, apparently it comes and goes. He got all excited because all of sudden there were tracks. Big tracks, not the deer tracks we had been seeing all morning. So he whispers, "Those are elk." Which by the way why do we have to whisper? Are the elk that hard of hearing? Anyways, nope not an elk because not ten feet in front of us is a moose. It made some wierd noise, like a whine and then wandered down the trail to the... oh look... two other moose, and one has huge stabbing antlers!!! Moose have antlers right? Is that what they are called. I am not joking when I say they were standing on the trail right in front of us while I am clinging to a tree because Avery just said that they cannot go around them quickly so it is the safest place to be. I have heard stories of scary moose chases, including my bestie Hanna who had one chase her into the girls bathroom at girls camp and try to tear down the stalls. I am re-telling this story to Ave (he has heard it before, whenever someone mentions a moose attack, what can I say I have no stories of my own, I live through others, until now) and picturing this moose wildly swinging meanwhile Ave hands me the rifle and walks closer... yes, there goes the genius again. Trying to shoo them off the trail so we can walk by. He throws rock and snowballs at the moose(s) *I know the plural of moose is in fact moose but I want you to picture three of them staring back at Avery trying to hit them with a snowball, If they were not so ornery looking I would think they would just be thinking, "Oh how fun! I want to play too!" Eventually, they climb up the hill and watch as we walk by. The whole time I keep checking my tail because I am picturing Mr. Moose getting pissed and taking off at me while I am not looking. "Watch this Moose Jr. This is how you kill a human when they are not looking." They don't. We were safe. YAY! Avery went by himself, and did not die, and did not see anymore moose. Next year he needs a moose tag.