Bear Encounter

I loaded up the kids and headed to Yellowstone for Fall Break (aka UEA weekend). The hope was to spot some bears. I thought that we would have a great chance with the cooler temperatures and the reduced number of people in the park. For almost two days we were skunked until I pulled out the stops and headed to the Lamar Valley at dusk. Still we came up dry, until I decided to break down and stopped at a group of people with spotter scopes (actually this was my wife's idea, I must have been having one of those male ego things. If I was going to find a bear it was going to be on my own. But she had me pull over and then she ran up on the hill to ask what they were looking at). These were the most gracious people that I have encountered in a long time. They were people from all across the country and they all seemed to have a pretty good friendship with each other, though they may have only known each other for a few hours. They gladly let us look through their scopes. In fact they were all competing to have us look through their scopes.

They were watching a couple of wolves that were laying down not too far from a kill that they had brought down a day or so ago. I believe it was a buffalo carcass. These wolves were probably a half mile away and we could only see the tops of their heads amongst the sage brush. We would never have spotted them with the naked eye. We hung around for awhile watching these wolves doing nothing for a while until someone said, "I got a grizzly bear coming out of the woods." Sure enough there was a 500 lb-er, I'm guessing, walking towards the kill. The only problem was I don't think he initially saw the wolves. He was about 300 yards to start, out from the wolves (the wolves being in between him and the kill). The grizzly made good time as he was walking toward his intended dinner (boy they can cover a lot of ground in a short time) The whole time he was shaking his head back and forth sniffing the air. I am not quite sure who spotted whom first, the bear or the wolves, but eventually when the bear got within about 200 feet, the wolves all got on their feet. We then could see that there were at least 5 wolves. In the mean time, the bear just kept walking directly towards the wolves, taking the straightest path to the carcass. The wolves were all pacing around nervously until suddenly they and the bear all came to an abrupt halt staring at each other within spitting distance of one another. I might also mention that there was a group of elk that were off to the side several hundred feet away nervously watching the whole thing, just as we were with the spotter scopes. This was real live action. We were definitely far enough away that these animals were not being influenced by any humans. What was about to happen was only as nature intended. They all stood motionless, it seemed like, a minute or two, and then the bear took action...