Yellowstone Experience of a Lifetime

We had quite the experience at Yellowstone a couple of weeks ago. It was fun to go during the rut and see all the Elk. The bulls were exhausted and on edge to say the least. Most big bulls had their cows and were always on guard watching for other potential threats. A lot of broken antlers and bugles.



This bull grabbed my attention and I could tell he was just beat. He was kind of wondering around in circles and finally bedded down. I got within about 50 yards and just watched him. He was all alone and I could tell that he had been fighting. I noticed something on his forehead and come to find out this bull had been gored by another bull and the other bulls antler broke off and was stuck in his forehead. Ya, ouch... I really don't think this bull will live much longer, especially since the wolves were only 800 yards away in the trees. Some people might think this is sad, but it is merely the circle of life we hear so much about.


Here is the Grizzly we found. He was enjoying a nice meal - something he had previously killed would be my guess. We were pretty excited to have spotted him and we were about 500 yards away. As we watched him, my friend Eli spotted some wolves coming out of the trees. They wanted in on what the griz was eating and eventually made their way over to him. There were about 8 wolves total. This was the first time I had seen a wild griz and wolves in my life. I was blown away by their size and amazed they way the worked as a pack. The griz would not surrender its meal - as you will see in the video.


Here's a picture of the wolves moving in on the bear. They worked as a pack and never isolated themselves from one another.


Here's the first approach by the wolves. It's kind of hard to see, but the black wolf is showing teeth in a 'we mean business' way...




I can't tell you how bad I wish I had some deeper glass (camera lens) or at least I wish I could have been closer. I was shooting at 400mm with a cropped sensor, I had to crop in a bit after that so quality is not that great - still fun to see though. The funnest part of this whole experience was having my family there to see it with me. My boys were freaking out when they realized what was going on... 'they're going to fight, dad!'. When we got home they ran and told all their friends what they saw. I would say it was a success.