This year, my annual photographing moose, fishing, hiking and visiting friends trip with my daughter Karalyn got a late start, Sept. 26.

I felt that was a good time to go because not only would the foliage be at peak color, but it would be the height of the moose rut, and the bulls, in full antler display, would be on the move. Photographing one against that colorful backdrop would make for some great shots.

We left Saturday, stopping at my old friends Charlie and Ruth Willey's cottage outside Colebrook, N.H., to visit and check out the moose situation. We learned the region had suffered under drought conditions; the rivers and lakes were very low, but much-needed heavy rain was predicted for Sunday, not good weather for calling moose.

Charlie showed us how to call. It was a refresher course for me, having learned as a teenager many years ago the technique from an Ojibway Indian. I still have that birch-bark call and brought it along. At first my calling was pathetic. Karalyn, soon to be a music teacher, has a trained ear and immediately picked up the extended, low pitched, throbbing oooooooaaaaaaah.

That evening, up on Route 3 north of Pittsburgh in what is called "Moose Alley," we got our first surprise — tourists, hundreds of them creeping and crawling along in their vehicles, just hoping to spot a moose. Some came from dirt roads where Karalyn and I had seen no one in past years.

"I wouldn't blame a moose for getting the heck out of here," I told her. "Tomorrow let's try something else."

We were staying at a cabin at the Powderhorn Lodge on Back Lake in the heart of New Hampshire moose country. At daybreak Sunday, we headed south to the Indian Stream country, down seven miles of logging roads, stopping and calling at a couple of headers. We saw no people, but with the rain, the call didn't carry and we saw no moose either.

Back at the cabin, Karalyn took a nap while I fished, catching a couple of small brook trout that I released back. In the afternoon, we drove up to Deer Mountain Campground where I had camped in the past, and hiked in to Moose Falls, a dammed-up section of the upper Connecticut River, a place where summers I had seen moose. The water in the river was a mere trickle, but I fished anyway, catching nothing. One last trip on a tourist-crowded Route 3 that evening produced no moose. We were down to our last day.

The local TV weather backed up Charlie Willey's prediction for more rain for Monday, the next day, so I suggested going to Indian Stream again, but Karalyn responded, "We should try Route 3 again. In 18 years we've never been skunked and always saw a moose there."

I went along with her. After all, the weekend would be over and the tourists would be gone — right!

We were off very early on a drizzly, foggy Monday, me driving very slowly. I knew I would never get a usable picture, but Karalyn really wanted to see a moose. Up we went, the only car on the road — still no moose, so back we went. Then we saw the first of the vehicles traveling very slowly toward us up ahead, and I knew we were done. Few locals travel up here and even fewer stop to watch a moose; they see them all the time. In a way, I reflected, I and the other writers who publicized this type of trip are, to an extent, victims of our own success and are partially responsible for the crowds who now cruise moose alley.

On the drive back home, I reminded Karalyn that since she was 5 in 1992, her first trip with me, we had always seen a moose, so the streak would someday have to come to an end and that I was just happy she came with me. "What about next year?" I asked her. "Will you come again?"

"Of course," she answered. "It's our annual trip."

E-mail Dennis Aprill at daprill2000@yahoo.com and check out our Web site at www.pressrepublican.com/0105_outdoor_perspective for more photos and past articles.