Musk Ox and a Grizzly

Our flight to Cape Krusenstern was primarily to get a look at some Musk Ox.  A musk ox (or muskox) is an Arctic hoofed mammal noted for its thick coat and its strong musky odor emitted during the rutting season by males, hence its name.  Musk Ox live primarily in Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, Siberia, the Scandinavian Peninsula and Arctic Alaska.  My understanding is that the musk ox were introduced into Alaska to help sustain the people living there with a year round food source.

Musk ox are one of the Arctic’s oldest living species and were once a contemporary of the wooly mammoth and the saber-toothed tiger.  How’s that for ancient.   

We were not allowed to get too close to the musk ox.  We walked across the spit of land until we found a group of about 20 musk ox.  They were just grazing.  We photographed them for about 45 minutes.  I got some good photographs but the three included here are all Andrew’s photos.  His long lens worked much better.  They are a strange looking animal.  While I would have liked to get closer, I didn’t really want to get too close as the musk ox looked rather imposing.

We made our way back to our planes, crossing a creek and taking lots of micro photos as the ground was truly beautiful with all the colors and textures.

On our flight back to Kotzebue, our pilot spotted a grizzly bear in the preserve.  He circled around and going lower did a wing-dip to give us a chance for a photograph.  Andrew’s pilot saw us and he circled around as well.  Andrew got much better photographs than I did and you can see one of his in the last photo.  This was our only grizzly bear siting on this trip.