Animal Sightings- Bears!

All told, we had great luck sighting animals this past year- grizzlies, black bears, moose, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, bison, wolves, foxes, coyotes, pronghorn, elk, deer, eagles, osprey, pikas, marmots, and more.  It is always a pleasure to observe a wild animal in its natural environment, and that is just how I like to keep it- natural.  No following, luring, or otherwise harassing wildlife and always utilizing a zoom lens to give animals their rightful space.  There is a disturbing trend, especially in National Parks, for tourists (aka tourons) to approach or even feed wildlife in an attempt to secure a coveted selfie.  This has unfortunately been going on for quite a while, but it is impossible to give social media a pass in terms of its role in aggrandizing this behavior.
It's a toss-up for the title of poster child of terrible tourist/wildlife behavior between Yellowstone and Great Smoky Mountains National Parks.  Having grown up in the Smokies, I have seen some unbelievably idiotic behavior, but I'm going to have to give a slight edge to Yellowstone because of the sheer availability and accessibility of wildlife lending to more frequent and infuriating interactions.  God bless the bison is all I can say.  Those poor creatures endure some of the most ridiculous antics, and honestly, it's miraculous they haven't injured more people.  Thankfully for the bison, who would undoubtedly pay with their lives the price for human stupidity, incidents have been fairly rare.  National parks are not petting zoos or a drive-thru game park.  Those exist, and if you really just want to be close to animals, please do the entire animal kingdom a favor and go there.  Go where they let you feed animals loaves of bread or wave at a grizzly bear.  Please.  If that is your idea of enjoying nature, please, by all means, do that.  Or go to a zoo.  I don't care, but please don't go national parks or really anywhere in the backcountry if that is your intent.  You do not belong.  Animals are not here for our enjoyment, and we are not entitled to see them, get close to them, or even have our picture taken with them.  Seeing animals in their natural habitat, even in a sanctioned park or wilderness is an incredible experience and one that should be treated with appropriate reverence and appreciation.

To recap, NO!

A few things, I use a Nikon DSLR, either a d750 or d850 with either a 28-300 mm lens or a 150-600 mm lens.  For reference, when you open your iPhone camera, it's at 35 mm, so 600 mm is a lot longer and is plenty long enough for me.  Anything larger, I wouldn't be able to afford it or carry it, so while there are shots where photographers are seemingly in the animals face (and unfortunately sometimes they are and can be the worst offenders, worse than any touron with a selfie stick), often times they are quite a distance away and can crop into the photo to make it seem closer.  
Now that I'm off my soap box, I figured I would share some photos and stories of some of my favorite wildlife sightings (some with and some without photos), starting off with everyone's favorite- bears!!

Grizzlies
All grizzly sightings are special.  They are simply incredible animals.  Their sheer size (up to 800 pounds) makes it almost unbelievable that they can reach speeds of up to 35 mph in only three strides and maintain that speed for 100 yards over rough, unforgiving terrain.  They are strong, powerful, intelligent, and contrary to many beliefs misdirected by movies and pop culture, they are NOT interested in hanging out anywhere around humans.

Our closest encounter with a grizzly was of course the one I did not get a photo of and for good reason.  We were hiking from our base camp in the Bob Marshall Wilderness to a different alpine lake for some cutthroat fishing when Shaun spotted the large head and humped back in the bushes along the side of the trail, just ahead of us.  The bear didn't stir, didn't alarm, and definitely did not see the need to step aside.  We retreated and waited a few minutes.  Neither of us are experts in animal behavior, but in general, it's pretty obvious when an animal is going to be a while, and as we were getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, we decided it was time to walk the two and a half miles back to our base camp.  There was no conceivable alternative route to circumvent the bear, so we decided to take a loss on the fishing and count ourselves lucky to have this encounter.

This trail was just a little overgrown!  This isn't too far from where we encountered the grizzly and underscores why it's important to make noise, as poor visibility can mean more than cloudy conditions

Several weeks later, we pulled into our campsite at Many Glacier in Glacier National Park around 3:30 or so.  Having skipped lunch, we were pretty hungry, so we walked to our picnic table and made a couple of sandwiches.  While sitting at the table, I glanced up on the hillside just above the Many Glacier Hotel and saw three specs.  "I see grizzlies," I said to Shaun.  When spotting wildlife from such a distance, you always feel kind of silly because for every time you are correct, there are a hundred other times you convinced yourself a tuft of grass or a boulder is the almighty grizzly.  I quickly grabbed my zoom lens and attached it to my camera body while Shaun grabbed his binoculars.  Sure enough, a mother grizzly and two yearling cubs grazed along the hillside.  We quickly forgot all about our sandwiches and made a plan to get a better look.  A few other campers and tourists had congregated in the parking lot, and we all enjoyed viewing them and even spotted another trio even further away, far along the hillside.  Having hiked in the area a few years before and also seeing grizzlies there, we had a pretty good idea of their general route which would eventually intersect with a popular trail about 2 miles from the lodge area.  We had no plans of seeking out the grizzlies, just finding a better vantage point, so we set out on that trail to find a clearer view.  No luck, so we decided to head down to a lake where we knew moose sightings were common, more on that later.  As we left the lake, we decided to head back a different trail that led to another clearing, well before the likely intersection point of bears and trail.  We found a nice clearing and two other photographers watching them from about 150 yards away (the recommendation from the National Park Service is 100 yards).  The crazy thing is, hikers were coming down the trail and didn't even realize there were bears heading their direction (the bears were in fact heading toward the trail but on a diagonal course).  A few of them stopped, and we let them look through our cameras or binoculars.  A few of them started walking even faster back to the trailhead.  It was a great experience to watch them and appreciate their size and grace.  As the bears continued to move in the direction of the trailhead, everyone who had gathered decided it was a good time to head home and allow the bears unencumbered access to whatever part of the trail they desired.  It was one of my favorite group wildlife encounters I've ever had.  Everyone did the right thing!

This is a second year cub!

So beautiful, even from a loooong distance

Early the next morning, we saw one of the same sets of bears just off the roadside, but once a few cars pulled up, they were gone in a flash.

Fattening up for the long winter

People are here?  Time to leave.

This past spring, we were fortunate to get a glimpse of a mother grizzly and two fairly newborn cubs moving across a large field in the shadow of the Grand Teton.  It was getting closer to dusk, and they appeared to be on their way to their sleeping quarters for the night.  There is nothing cuter than seeing a grizzly bear cub stand on its hind legs, but mother bear didn't allow them to doddle for long.  It amazes me how intelligent mother bears prove to be.  One in two cubs doesn't survive to go out on its own, and while those sound like terrible odds, when you consider the environment in which they are tasked with living, it's actually quite remarkable.

Heading home for the night

Our last and probably most memorable grizzly encounter occurred as we were leaving Yellowstone this past spring and heading for Wyoming to visit some family.  You know the signs- cars pulled over (hopefully) on the side of the road.  Luckily, this bear was positioned nearby a parking lot, and we pulled in and grabbed a spot where we could easily see a huge grizzly dining on some kind of carcass (elk? bison?).  Again, most people had kept their heads, getting their photos and enjoying the view before giving way so others could see.

Yummy carcass!

Black bears
Probably the most memorable black bear sighting occurred in Lake Tahoe.  We had seen a mother and two cubs cross the highway in front of us a few hours earlier and after riding our bikes back to our campsite from the lake, we settled in to enjoy some juicy burgers.  A truck pulled up almost to our van and the passenger was saying something to me.  Chalk it up to hunger, but I thought she was asking if they could camp next to us which seemed weird.  I must have said "huh?" at least three times, but after the third time I recognized she was saying "bear" and pointing.  Sure enough, probably ten yards from me, the same mother and two cubs were just casually strolling through our campsite.  I immediately moved toward the van, and as they kept moving, I grabbed my small camera.  They went straight for the bear boxes, as if they knew where all the food was.  In another, surprising instance of people doing the right thing, everyone in the campground started banging pots and pans trying to scare the bears off and back into the woods.  I snapped a couple of pics of them as then went by us but left them in peace and went to neighboring campsites to warn them in case the bears headed toward their dinner as well.  While this experience was the most memorable, it was also one of the saddest, as it reflected the current state of the black bear population in Tahoe.  A growing percentage of bears in that area are no longer hibernating as one of the primary reasons for hibernation include lack of food sources due to winter weather and climates.  The bears are finding plenty of food foraging through garbage in the surrounding neighborhoods.  This increases the likelihood of human-bear encounters and habituation overall- a grave situation for the bears.

I fear these clearly habituated bears will have an unhappy ending eventually

Another black bear sighting in Yellowstone still makes me extremely angry and involves a photographer who called herself a professional (she wasn't) who actually interfered when a mother black bear was trying to reunite with her third cub who had become stranded on a bridge, blocked in by numerous cars, including ours, who were actually trying to do the right thing but got caught wrong place, wrong time.  The bears were driven closer to us by people acting inappropriately, blocking them from their desired escape route.  I can't repeat the things I said (yelled) to this woman/photographer, but she was and is in fact a horrible human who either doesn't know or care how to behave properly around wildlife.  It was absolutely terrifying for the bears, and looking back, I wish I would have grabbed her camera and thrown it off the bridge, but then I also would have been too close to the bears.  Anyway, I don't really want to talk more about that, but here's a brief video of these poor animals in distress.  

One more time for emphasis: animal sightings are a memorable and enriching part of any outdoor adventure, but we should always act with utmost respect toward our four legged forest friends.  Never approach or follow wildlife, this includes offering them snacks- I still can't believe people do this.  The National Park Service requires at least 100 yards between you and the bear (of course sometimes this can't be helped).  A handy trick is the thumb test.  Hold up your thumb in the direction of the bear, if the bear is obscured, you're good.  If you can see any of the bear, move further away.  Repeat until you are in a safe zone.  Bears are not inherently dangerous, but as with any wildlife, coming between a mother and its young is a precarious situation at best.  Back away calmly but immediately.  Speak calmly to the bear as you back away, and resist the urge to turn and run.  Wild animals are highly instinctual, and bears have a high prey drive (grizzlies more so, but don't be lulled to sleep by the goofy black bear).  Sending them the message that you are potentially a meal is the absolute wrong thing to do, in other words, you will have a bad time.

Keep following along as I'll be recounting other animal encounters in the future, and in the interim, give the bears their space and enjoy the outdoors!